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Comment by jondubois | Hacker News Reader

Yep, only accredited investors could buy Filecoin at the ICO. The rest of us can still buy Siacoin which is similar.

I don't think these VC-backed cryptocurrencies will win in the long term. It's the same principle as with stocks, cryptocurrencies are going to work in favour those who understand them the most; in this case, developers.

The mission of cryptocurrencies is to take control away from finance people. Hobbyist developers are going to decide which cryptocurrencies deserve their precious development time.

Cryptocurrencies are all about the tooling and infrastructure around them.

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> in this case, developers.

i dont think developers are the ones who will profit - after all, developers are the ones who wrote the code for a lot of financial institutions, and none of them gain much more than just a salary.

At the same time though, 3 of the 5 largest companies in the US have CEOs with a background in software development/computer science. 5 years ago, 0 of 10 did. There's definitely a trend toward developers having more power.

Not to be contrary, but "citation"?

This (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_r...) lists the 5 largest companies in the US as:

1. Walmart

2. Berkshire Hathaway

3. Apple

4. Exxon Mobil

5. McKesson

Walmart's CEO, Doug McMillon, career at Walmart was in distribution and then buying before moving to the executive.

Buffett had a background in business admin, economics and insurance.

Tim Cook has that CS background.

Daren Woods of Exxon Mobil has a degree in Electrical Engineering in the early 80s, which might be at best half a point.

John Hammergren of McKesson has a pure business background, with a Bachelors and Masters in Business Administration.

I think the poster's metric was largest in terms of capitalization and not revenue. The top 5 in terms of capitalization:

1. Apple 2. Alphabet 3. Microsoft 4. Amazon 5. Berkshire Hathaway

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_corporations_by...

Depends on your definition of "largest company". Revenue is one metric. Market cap is another.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_corporations_by...

1. Apple

2. Alphabet

3. Microsoft

4. Amazon

5. Berkshire Hathaway

> Tim Cook has that CS background.

Does he? He certainly has decades of experience in computer companies, but his educational background was, to my knowledge, in industrial engineering.

That trend started further back than the last couple of years, as billg can confirm.

and yet, are those CEO's doing dev when they are being paid their large sums of money? They may have learnt something as a developer, but _doing_ development isn't their major money making activity.

jondubois said understand, not do.

Well you'd be a fool not to do or negotiate some mining upfront.

Finally a voice of reason in this thread... Man so much hate, somebody is jealous. And is not investors they're putting their money here with liquidity in days not years, and no board seats so you can just chill... I love it.

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