Crypto’s Business Model Is Familiar. What Isn’t Is Who Benefits(a16z.com)

12 pointsby todsacerdotivor 6 Jahren30 comments

Crypto’s Business Model Is Familiar. What Isn’t Is Who Benefits

https://a16z.com/2020/04/08/crypto-network-effects/

31 comments

ohazivor 6 Jahren

For fuck's sake, call it cryptocurrency. The default suffix for "crypto" is "graphy."

Respectfully, language evolves over time and words change all the time, sometimes fairly quickly. The prevailing use of crypto right now is in the context of cryptocurrency. I'm not particularly thrilled with it, but I don't want to sound like a curmudgeon just because I'm set in my ways.

hprotagonistvor 6 Jahren

descriptivism is not some unstoppable force; it’s a social argument we work out in the public sphere.

pushback is normal and beneficial.

HenryBemisvor 6 Jahren

(test message)(please ignore just trying out something) 0123456789 abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

bdcravensvor 6 Jahren

To be fair though we are in an industry that loves to take words and redefine them. Just look at a package manifest for a typical project - Rails, cucumber, express, capybara, express, puppeteer, electron, etc. You could probably “npm/gem install (random noun)” and it’ll work.

chowardvor 6 Jahren

This is why I hate shortened variable names.

EthanHeilmanvor 6 Jahren

crypto means cryptanalysis =)

emilibellotvor 6 Jahren

elevenohvor 6 Jahren

I'd say the conical suffix reference - like all else in lang. - is dynamic & arrived at by rough consensus.

And the long term trend is for folks to search (and perhaps say) cryptocurrency more than cryptography:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=%2Fm%2F01l...

ryanlolvor 6 Jahren

If “crypto” is “cryptocurrency”, is “cryptocurrency” actually “cryptocurrencycurrency”?

rayuelavor 6 Jahren

What is clear is that as an entity heavily invested in cryptocurrency they benefit from peddling it to poor ignorant plebs. Maybe this article should start by first disclosing their large long position in cryptocurrency. This is marketing garbage, please stop posting trash like this.

karatestompvor 6 Jahren

Kinda like all those "buy gold (from us!)" ads on AM radio.

wpietrivor 6 Jahren

Is there something novel here? This broadly feels like something that could have been written 5 years ago. And surely was. Written today, it seems weird to me that it's so heavy on theoretical possibility and so light on actual data.

X6S1x6Okd1stvor 6 Jahren

Thoughts on cryptocurrencies are still pretty poorly disseminated through the population, even the tech-literate population.

xkjklsvor 6 Jahren

Written today it feels like some of these technologies mentioned in the article should actually have demonstrated some real purpose.

X6S1x6Okd1stvor 6 Jahren

I've regularly used bitcoin to fund my cash app account because I don't have a functioning debit card right now.

xkjklsvor 6 Jahren

And for 99.99% of people the normal banking system is a better solution

shadowprofile77vor 6 Jahren

Your claim reeks of settled financial and maybe even first world comfort. It's really much more than 0.001% of people that could use something which doesn't require them to have access to an easy credit card, debit card or formal digital banking. There are millions of unbanked even in many highly developed nations and crypto or some middleman-free version of it could be a viable solution for many of them if it's user.friendliness could be improved a bit as well as wider knowledge of its usability.

wpietrivor 6 Jahren

Sure, but the same is true of the current banking system: if it were made more usable and accessible, we could broaden the set of people using it.

And in fact that has happened in some places. Take a look at M-Pesa, which started at about the same time as Bitcoin, but is actually used on a daily basis by millions of formerly unbanked people.

Cryptocurrencies can't get credit for potential anymore. It's time for them to demonstrate actual results or admit that they're niche technical toys.

GTPvor 6 Jahren

I think there is at least one: with a blockchain you can register a document's hash and have a proof that that document existed in a precise point in time. This is an application lawyers and notaries are interested about.

wpietrivor 6 Jahren

When somebody says "actually have demonstrated some real purpose", I don't think it's helpful to say that some people are perhaps interested in doing something eventually.

GTPvor 6 Jahren

They aren't perhaps interested, they are actually interested. And I know at least one lawyer that will use such technology. in the short term.

wpietrivor 6 Jahren

You knowing one lawyer who says they would use something is not, not, not, an actual demonstration of real use. Somebody being interested is a demonstration of interest.

I understand that the cryptocurrency world has long been coasting on potential. On what it might be one day. But sorry, it's 11+ years in at this point. Bitcoin and the Android platform are about the same age. When people ask about Android's actual use, the correct answer is, "about 2.5 billion active devices", not, "I, an anonymous person, claim to know one hazily specified person who tells me he's very interested in getting one. In the short term."

GTPvor 6 Jahren

Not that would, but that will. And from what he told me seems that he isn't alone, but I admit I don't have a proof for this.

wpietrivor 6 Jahren

Quibble over words all you like, that's still not a demonstration of real use.

GTPvor 6 Jahren

I'm not quibbling, there's an actual difference between showing interest in something and taking action to actually use something. You were the first to focus on the meaning of words, so I just corrected you when you misread what I wrote, that's all. On a side note, I think that cryptocurrencies tend to attract highly polarized opinions: from what I saw so far, seems that there are people that try to defend their use at all cost, but there are also others that seems to think that everything that uses a blockchain is gibberish by definition. Please note that I'm not saying that you belong to the latter group, I just wish to point out that in my opinion each use of the blockchain has to be evaluated on its own, and in this case I think there might be some value.

wpietrivor 6 Jahren

It's quibbling, because you are apparently unable to understand that a person saying words is not what was being asked for, which was "actual data" that "demonstrated some real purpose". It's quibbling because you keep ignoring the meat of my point, picking instead a word choice to argue about.

I don't believe that everything that uses a blockchain is "gibberish by definition". I do believe that so far every single thing I've seen promoted under the banner of "blockchain" has ended up being vastly more hype than substance. Or, as I said, "so heavy on theoretical possibility and so light on actual data." Your turning up with more hype, more airy possibility is willfully unhelpful.

wmfvor 6 Jahren

There was a company doing this long before Bitcoin but nobody really cared. If people claim to be interested now they probably just want to get rich from speculation.

xkjklsvor 6 Jahren

Why does this need to be decentralized? There are plenty of ways to do this without any of the huge costs of decentralization.

tormehvor 6 Jahren

Well, decentralization has benefits. It's just that we already have a system for keeping track of documents and their histories in a distributed manner and it is called git.

GTPvor 6 Jahren

But who guarantees the timestamp of a git commit? Hironically here's a blogpost suggesting that could be a good idea to timestamp those using a blockchain and explains how: https://petertodd.org/2016/opentimestamps-announcement :D The point here isn't to version documents, which the blockchain does not, but to have an independently verifiable timestamp.