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Yes I have seen midjourney. Indeed it is a great example of what I'm talking about. What is the business model? Yes I started doubting Bitcoin about a decade a

Yes I have seen midjourney. Indeed it is a great example of what I'm talking about. What is the business model? Yes I started doubting Bitcoin about a decade ago and have been right about it ever since. (I've been more ambivalent about Ethereum and remain unsure whether my cynical phases or optimistic phases were closer to the mark.)

__pache__ 4y ago
What's midjourney revenue? Bitcoin is the fastest growing asset ever. What.
- sanderjd 4y ago
  > What's midjourney revenue? I don't know, do you? Bitcoin's growth as an "asset" is not very interesting to me. What is it for? Back when it was conceived, it was for digital payments. But that didn't work for obvious reasons. There has never been another plausible explanation of what it's for since the failure of that first narrative.
  - __pache__ 4y ago
    > I don't know, do you? Nope. Just a subscriber and see thousands of others using it on Discord. You pay to get access to their awesome models, it works incredibly well. It's mind boggling. > Bitcoin's growth as an "asset" is not very interesting to me. What is it for? Go back to 2013 and read what they predicted, and try to fathom how something like this happened. Fastest growing asset ever and you don't understand it, and it's in your (presumably) computer science realm. > Back when it was conceived, it was for digital payments. What's the first message in the first block of Bitcoin? "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks." ................................................ some serious dunning kruger going on here.... "failure of that first narrative, that I just made up"
    - sanderjd 4y ago
      > it works incredibly well. It's mind boggling. Yeah I find all the AI stuff really amazing and mind boggling. But that's not the point I made. My point is that I'm not sure it's going to be sustainable. I think it's currently being subsidized by investors, but I'm curious whether the marginal revenue will ever be able to exceed the marginal cost by enough to justify many businesses. Things can't just be cool, they also have to be cost effective. (I wish we hadn't gone down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, it's boring while the midjourney discussion is interesting, but oh well.) I don't have to go back in time, I remember what the idea of Bitcoin was, and it had nothing to do with speculation on its price. There were two ideas: 1. That it would be useful for digital payments; a secure and anonymous way to pay for things on the Internet, and 2. That it would be an inflation and banking crisis hedge (as your second paragraph alludes to). It's been a laughable failure at both of those things and now all anyone talks about is price speculation.
      - __pache__ 4y ago
        Man if only computing got cheaper year to year, oh well!
        sanderjd 4y ago
        It doesn't, really, for these big ML models. Most of the cost savings, and thus progress, in recent years has come from innovations in the algorithms. It remains very expensive to run ML systems at huge scale. Everyone is betting (for example, Microsoft through its billions subsidizing OpenAI) that either hardware or software breakthroughs will make this all cost effective over time. That bet may well be right. All I'm saying is that it isn't obvious to me that it will be, and there's this entire mini-boom of companies is dependent on how that gamble turns out.
        __pache__ 4y ago
        > It doesn't, really, for these big ML models. Hard to take this seriously, sorry man.

__pache__ 4y ago

What's midjourney revenue? Bitcoin is the fastest growing asset ever. What.

sanderjd 4y ago
> What's midjourney revenue? I don't know, do you? Bitcoin's growth as an "asset" is not very interesting to me. What is it for? Back when it was conceived, it was for digital payments. But that didn't work for obvious reasons. There has never been another plausible explanation of what it's for since the failure of that first narrative.
- __pache__ 4y ago
  > I don't know, do you? Nope. Just a subscriber and see thousands of others using it on Discord. You pay to get access to their awesome models, it works incredibly well. It's mind boggling. > Bitcoin's growth as an "asset" is not very interesting to me. What is it for? Go back to 2013 and read what they predicted, and try to fathom how something like this happened. Fastest growing asset ever and you don't understand it, and it's in your (presumably) computer science realm. > Back when it was conceived, it was for digital payments. What's the first message in the first block of Bitcoin? "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks." ................................................ some serious dunning kruger going on here.... "failure of that first narrative, that I just made up"
  - sanderjd 4y ago
    > it works incredibly well. It's mind boggling. Yeah I find all the AI stuff really amazing and mind boggling. But that's not the point I made. My point is that I'm not sure it's going to be sustainable. I think it's currently being subsidized by investors, but I'm curious whether the marginal revenue will ever be able to exceed the marginal cost by enough to justify many businesses. Things can't just be cool, they also have to be cost effective. (I wish we hadn't gone down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, it's boring while the midjourney discussion is interesting, but oh well.) I don't have to go back in time, I remember what the idea of Bitcoin was, and it had nothing to do with speculation on its price. There were two ideas: 1. That it would be useful for digital payments; a secure and anonymous way to pay for things on the Internet, and 2. That it would be an inflation and banking crisis hedge (as your second paragraph alludes to). It's been a laughable failure at both of those things and now all anyone talks about is price speculation.
    - __pache__ 4y ago
      Man if only computing got cheaper year to year, oh well!
      - sanderjd 4y ago
        It doesn't, really, for these big ML models. Most of the cost savings, and thus progress, in recent years has come from innovations in the algorithms. It remains very expensive to run ML systems at huge scale. Everyone is betting (for example, Microsoft through its billions subsidizing OpenAI) that either hardware or software breakthroughs will make this all cost effective over time. That bet may well be right. All I'm saying is that it isn't obvious to me that it will be, and there's this entire mini-boom of companies is dependent on how that gamble turns out.
        __pache__ 4y ago
        > It doesn't, really, for these big ML models. Hard to take this seriously, sorry man.