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I spent most of the last two years working on an NFT anti-fraud solution[0]. My two prior startups were (essentially) in telecom and healthcare. Coming from th

I spent most of the last two years working on an NFT anti-fraud solution[0]. My two prior startups were (essentially) in telecom and healthcare. Coming from these well established, highly regulated, somewhat legacy industries to "crypto"/NFTs/web3 was a very interesting experience, to say the least. Users/potential customers for our solution ranged from creators to marketplaces to collectors/investors. Several very general and broad observations: 1) The anonymous/pseudo anonymous nature of the space is bizarre. I would have multiple voice-only meetings with people using aliases and avatars for all communications. To this day I only know some people as "Mango Man" or whatever. Meeting people who could just burn down an entire identity and start fresh when things go sideways is an indicator of the nature of the space. 2) There is a general lack of "adults in the room". I would get on a call with the Founder/CEO of a marketplace or project that was valued (at least) in the > $100m range and hear and see things that were horrifying. My final breaking point was a call with the founder of a well known highly valued NFT marketplace who showed up (Tuesday morning, 10 AM) obviously high on some sort of stimulant. Within the first five minutes of the call they repeated their mantra of "I'm just trying to get made, paid, and laid" several times. They spent the remainder of the (very brief) call describing all kinds of things I'm pretty sure are illegal. On an introductory call. 3) The fraud and overall criminality is well beyond what is publicly known from FTX, Celsius, web3 is going great, etc. The most common reply regarding our solution was along the lines of "Why would we want this? We make our money on fraud". I was frequently reminded me of the scene in The Big Short when they talk to mortgage brokers and come away saying "Why are they confessing?" with the response being "They're not confessing, they're bragging". 4) Any semblance of professionalism and basic standards is generally non-existent. A HEAD OF LEGAL for a well known exchange (Superbowl commercial) would say and post things on LinkedIn that would get you terminated immediately in any other field. Daily. 5) The more technical startups/partners (infrastructure providers, etc) were generally the best to work with. However, the profiles of the founders and team were interesting - many of them had 1-2 years of junior experience at a FAANG (for better or worse). 6) VC in the space is even more wild than what has been reported in the media. I'll just leave this one at that. 7) Many people in the space seemed to just appear from nowhere. Like some of the technical founders with 1-2 years of junior experience and SBF who had a few years doing something at Jane Street I often times couldn't figure out where these people came from or why/how they were here. Of course this is common in tech (from Google to Facebook founders often "appear out of nowhere") but it was still extremely bizarre for SBF type characters to be dealing with hundreds of millions or billions of dollars of other people's money with either no reputation/background or a shady one. 8) In my 25 years of experience I've never dealt with a more generally unimpressive group of people. After nearly two years in the space, meeting hundreds of people, there are only a handful I want to maintain any sort of personal or professional relationship with. With my background I knew I would experience some culture shock (for lack of a better term) entering a space that was still (after 14 years) the Wild West. What I experienced was (almost universally) so beyond the pale I finally ran away screaming. I spent more and more of my time and energy attempting to motivate myself and the team by focusing on our efforts to do good in the space but after all of this no amount of rationalizing could make up for the cesspool I was living in every day. Like the famous saying goes - "If you think you might be depressed, first make sure you're not just surrounded by assholes". Basically, what I'm saying is, when I see the unbelievable-to-most FTX (and other) stories unfolding in the media all I can think is "Yep, sounds about right". When I see stories like this and people asking "What are all of these people doing?" I can firmly respond with either "I have no idea" or "Trying to manage this crazy world takes a lot of people". Thankfully I'm not in the space any longer but as shoes keep dropping left and right I don't think I could be surprised by anything anymore. [0] - https://fnftf.io/ https://fnftf.io/

cableshaft 4y ago
> The anonymous/pseudo anonymous nature of the space is bizarre. I would have multiple voice-only meetings with people using aliases and avatars for all communications. To this day I only know some people as "Mango Man" or whatever. Meeting people who could just burn down an entire identity and start fresh when things go sideways is an indicator of the nature of the space. I can't blame them. It involves money and it's a new and risky and currently unregulated space. Things go sideways unexpectedly or the SEC changes their rules suddenly (see them possibly classifying a bunch of tokens as securities when they didn't before, with all the KYC and other regulations that requires) and you run the risk of having both users that went too deep into it (like exist for damn near everything, including Pokemon cards) trying to kill you and SEC trying to put you in jail. I've done a little code assistance on a web3 project (mostly just helping a friend who's doing the actual coding, when they have questions) and I'm doing my best not to have my name associated with it, just in case, even though I think the project is trying to make positive changes and will be one of the 'good' ones eventually. For the longest time I avoided any jobs involving money specifically because I didn't want to risk screwing something up and causing a lot of pain or lost money for people (reason why I avoided healthcare too). And yet now I've got professional experience working for a healthcare company and as a consultant for a major financial company, so I ended up down that path anyway.
coffeebeqn 4y ago
func fraudDetect() if nft return true
- kkielhofner 4y ago
  At this point I can't say I disagree. The genesis story is early 2021 I was talking to my sister (who is a respected digital artist) and she asked me about "these NFT things". Being technical I was of course aware of them. She then followed up with "Yeah, my friends and I have tried them but all of our stuff just ends up stolen anyway". Needless to say I was intrigued. My general thinking was - this stuff is here, people are buying into it for whatever reasons, and the more I look the more fraud and shady stuff there is. Broadly speaking I tend to have a "harm reduction" mindset - everything from safe injection sites to crypto. For some things it just seems like people can't help themselves so once the "cat is out of the bag" there's value and nobility in making inherently risky things at least somewhat safer. I know there are plenty of people here on HN and elsewhere with the mindset of "they're idiots, they deserve to lose everything" and/or a desire to just watch the entire thing burn. I (clearly) have a more measured and nuanced take. That said, my experience ended up being less like "safe injection sites" and more like "this entire space IS the cartel and there are few (if any) people doing any good whatsoever". As I noted I can't recall anything positive or beneficial in my time dealing with it. The impact on my mental health and general feeling of spitting in the ocean finally drove me out.

cableshaft 4y ago

> The anonymous/pseudo anonymous nature of the space is bizarre. I would have multiple voice-only meetings with people using aliases and avatars for all communications. To this day I only know some people as "Mango Man" or whatever. Meeting people who could just burn down an entire identity and start fresh when things go sideways is an indicator of the nature of the space. I can't blame them. It involves money and it's a new and risky and currently unregulated space. Things go sideways unexpectedly or the SEC changes their rules suddenly (see them possibly classifying a bunch of tokens as securities when they didn't before, with all the KYC and other regulations that requires) and you run the risk of having both users that went too deep into it (like exist for damn near everything, including Pokemon cards) trying to kill you and SEC trying to put you in jail. I've done a little code assistance on a web3 project (mostly just helping a friend who's doing the actual coding, when they have questions) and I'm doing my best not to have my name associated with it, just in case, even though I think the project is trying to make positive changes and will be one of the 'good' ones eventually. For the longest time I avoided any jobs involving money specifically because I didn't want to risk screwing something up and causing a lot of pain or lost money for people (reason why I avoided healthcare too). And yet now I've got professional experience working for a healthcare company and as a consultant for a major financial company, so I ended up down that path anyway.

coffeebeqn 4y ago

func fraudDetect() if nft return true

kkielhofner 4y ago
At this point I can't say I disagree. The genesis story is early 2021 I was talking to my sister (who is a respected digital artist) and she asked me about "these NFT things". Being technical I was of course aware of them. She then followed up with "Yeah, my friends and I have tried them but all of our stuff just ends up stolen anyway". Needless to say I was intrigued. My general thinking was - this stuff is here, people are buying into it for whatever reasons, and the more I look the more fraud and shady stuff there is. Broadly speaking I tend to have a "harm reduction" mindset - everything from safe injection sites to crypto. For some things it just seems like people can't help themselves so once the "cat is out of the bag" there's value and nobility in making inherently risky things at least somewhat safer. I know there are plenty of people here on HN and elsewhere with the mindset of "they're idiots, they deserve to lose everything" and/or a desire to just watch the entire thing burn. I (clearly) have a more measured and nuanced take. That said, my experience ended up being less like "safe injection sites" and more like "this entire space IS the cartel and there are few (if any) people doing any good whatsoever". As I noted I can't recall anything positive or beneficial in my time dealing with it. The impact on my mental health and general feeling of spitting in the ocean finally drove me out.