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Comment by acatton | Hacker News Reader

Looking into the linked data,[1] it looks like a lot of these "unicorns" are blockchain technology companies. I might be biased here as a shitcoin sceptic, but I would love to see in 10 years what happened to these "unicorns"

[1] https://app.dealroom.co/unicorns/f/slug_locations/anyof_euro...

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how many of the unicorns out of SV are actually viable businesses that will gain genuine traction 10 years from now? I suspect not a whole lot

This is a testable proposition. We can look at the list of billion dollar startups from 10 years ago (all 11 of them) and see how they fared since: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicoleperlroth/2011/06/02/the-b...

Kayak, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Bloom Energy and Integra Telecom (Electric Lightwave) are still doing well, Groupon and Zynga are significantly diminished and Living Social, Gilt Group and Better Place are dead.

So the answer appears to be 50/50 and social commerce was a huge fad.

A billion dollars today and a billion 10 years ago are not the same thing. It's not just a question of inflation either; there is more money sloshing around in VC (or similar non-retail funding sources) than ever.

This is important. Current QE policy is over $100B/month. Lots and lots of free money floating around.

0 as soon as the law catches up and fixes the loopholes that are the basis for what seems like the majority of startups these days.

Given that a steady stream of VC money could keep Uber running since 2009 I wouldn't bet on those 10 years.

One could argue that Uber provide a useful service - one that may not be profitable but that is definitely useful.

What use - and to whom - are the array of shitcoins?

That’s definitely not the story they sold investors

Look at other forms of dodgy fintech, like some hedge funds. There seems to be an infinite amount of money available to move money so you can move money.

I increasingly feel like a total sucker for trying to do useful work. I could get rich by moving money around and accomplishing nothing but here I am trying to actually create useful things.

Yeah, but you'd be shirking your social responsibility to create value ... if everyone was to do the same, how would the parasites survive? /s

Actually, only 5 of the 72 have "blockchain" listed in the description, but 28 are fintech companies.

I think what you meant to say is I'll be curious to see what happens to "America". We're behind the ball on crypto companies due to the regulatory environment. Here's hoping that changes but lots of crypto people are offshore at the moment.

Yes, there are shitcoins but there are real things being built as well.

Many so called "shitcoins" generate more revenue, get more transactions and offer more utility (loans, market makers etc) than your beloved bitcoin, so let's be humble.

https://cryptofees.info/

Who said I loved bitcoin? I'm a crypto sceptic.

You used the term ‘shitcoin’, which is commonly used pejorative term by bitcoiners against anything that isn’t bitcoin.

It’s also used by the rest of us to describe anything that isn’t bitcoin, our skepticism of bitcoin notwithstanding.

I believe shitcoin was a play on bitcoin, and not suggesting that normal coinage was shitcoin in comparison to bitcoin.

Statutory "blockchain != bitcoin" comment.

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