Don't be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy. In fact, that's a good sign. That's probably why everyone else has been overlooking the idea. The first microcomputers were dismissed as toys. And the first planes, and the first cars. At this point, when someone comes to us with something that users like but that we could envision forum trolls dismissing as a toy, it makes us especially likely to invest.
> you can't use this currency for day to day transactions
Not with this attitude, you can't. ;)
What currency is "this"? BTC, ETH, Doge, USDC, DAI?
> incredibly volatile
How volatile is USDC, DAI, GUSD?
> risky to hold significant amounts of it
It's also risky to walk around with significant amounts of cash in the wallet. It doesn't stop people from wanting to carry some money around. And more importantly, the alternative of "going cashless" is a whole other set of systemic risks.
> it might be useful!
The use cases exist already. Micropayments and streaming transfers (as an alternative for subscriptions) using stable currencies are already possible. If you don't care about it, it's a different story.
The part where you moved BTC and ETH from the 'ponzi' slot to the 'not practical' slot will continue for other elements. BTC will slide into the next slot soon probably, going from 'not practical' to 'practical for a very narrow set of things that aren't the set of things people originally expected.' So it goes.
Eeeeh? I think not. A toy implies that is has no, or cannot have, practical uses and is a property of the object or idea. Not practical is an engineering problem, it is contingent on external factors. A fidget spinner is a toy, a space elevator is not practical.
> It's been plenty long enough to find a use case that isn't breaking laws.
It's impressive... Like clockwork, there will always be one coming to throw the "only use-case is illegal stuff!" line. It's like people can't wait to throw their opinions about a topic while displaying their complete ignorance of it.
Tell me how you can do the use-case for Brave - ie, sharing revenue from the ads with millions of users from anywhere in the world - within the traditional payment networks.
You can't. There is no Paypal or any other financial institution interested in making monthly transactions that can go as low as a few dollar cents. And somehow Brave does it, legally, and it all works out.
> Tell me how you can do the use-case for Brave - ie, sharing revenue from the ads with millions of users from anywhere in the world - within the traditional payment networks
Brave collects money from advertisers, Brave sends money to sites and users. Nothing in that requires any sort of blockchain. If the monthly amounts are so small as to make flat transaction costs significant, then the amounts are themselves insignificant. None of this requires a decentralized trustless ledger.
> If the monthly amounts are so small as to make flat transaction costs significant, then the amounts are themselves insignificant.
That is the hole in your argument. Imagine the amount of business opportunities if the total cost of a transaction was a fraction of a cent.
> None of this requires a decentralized trustless ledger.
That is an implementation detail. If you find any other method to securely send value across the world for fractions of a cent (even if with intermediaries), I'm all for it.
I could also go with full of himself, pompous, pretentious, more-boring-than-a-slatestarcodex-post-at-3AM-without-drugs, but incompetent is a good recap for a man whose career can be resumed as "got lucky during the dot com boom and has been riding that money ever since"
Paul Graham is a successful entrepreneur, investor, and essayist. He's done multiple things which have a global impact - YC and HN for example. He's made a billion plus dollars for himself. Calling him "incompetent" is, objectively, wrong.
And we all wished that he skipped the essays part, because it's a bunch of self centered bullshit from a man who got rich and had an easy life.
YC is not a miracle product. The man had money and said "Hey I'm going to give it to higher risk companies to get some money back". It takes zero ability. Venture capital has existed for centuries. He's a glorified bank, except my bank doesn't put out pompous essays on their blog at least.
HN, aside from being a great purveyor of laughably inaccurate comments does not nearly have the global impact you think it has. It's the laughing stock of most of the tech internet. But at least sometimes the links posted are good.
You're damn right, I'm fucking hilarious at parties. But maybe not the ones where it's just a bunch of VC bros.
Once again, you said it yourself. His accomplishments are "he made money" and "he found ways to give money". Let's not mention the fact that YC has funded many extremely dubious companies and that _giving money isn't work_. Had PG not been here, someone else would have had that money, and would have given it to startups. He's a glorified (quite bad) essayist with money.
I am not into VC parties either, and I have no intention of budding with anyone into the Silicon Valley life.
Anyway, I've heard lots of PG critics, and some of them I even say I'd admire because they actually did something of interest and according to their values. But you? You haven't shown anything of value that you can do. Let me repeat: I'd love to know more about your accomplishments.
My man, I am not looking for your admiration. And I'm not looking to make you an admirer either. Worship your billionaires all you want, and I have nothing to prove to you.
But if anything, you just keep proving that you might just have a talent for egregiously mind numbing, self absorbed essays just like PG
(http://www.paulgraham.com/organic.html)
> you can't use this currency for day to day transactions
Not with this attitude, you can't. ;)
What currency is "this"? BTC, ETH, Doge, USDC, DAI?
> incredibly volatile
How volatile is USDC, DAI, GUSD?
> risky to hold significant amounts of it
It's also risky to walk around with significant amounts of cash in the wallet. It doesn't stop people from wanting to carry some money around. And more importantly, the alternative of "going cashless" is a whole other set of systemic risks.
> it might be useful!
The use cases exist already. Micropayments and streaming transfers (as an alternative for subscriptions) using stable currencies are already possible. If you don't care about it, it's a different story.