Comment by MaknMoreGtnLess | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MaknMoreGtnLess | Hacker News Reader

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MaknMoreGtnLess

> I see you all over this thread accusing Marc Andressen of engaging in massive fraud, so I don't feel like you are debating in good faith.

If:

i. We know that consumer electronics depreciate rapidly over time eventually to become obsolete

ii. I were you tell you that "Assets gain value over time so I will sell you this CD player from Walmart today for $10 that you will be able to sell for $100 in the future" and you said "No, it's untrue that a CD player is an asset likely to gain value over time, so you wont even get $10 leave alone $100 in the future", than you arn't debating in bad faith.

What you are doing is using the system and logic and inferences. High school stuff

> https://www.lofty.ai/

Do you have any stake in this venture (or exclusively a fee paying user)?

Here are 3 red flags about https://www.lofty.ai/ right off their homepage:

> Investing in real estate is now easier than buying stocks

> Become a direct owner of A.I. vetted real estate in 5 minutes and sell anytime.

> Invest in tokenized real estate for only $50

This company will make a lot of people loose money. I am glad to see you're making 9% in a market that's currently averaging ~15+% Net IRR.

Using deep neural networks in real estate? Wasn't Zillow's iBuying massacre enough educational experience?

You have been around a long time to form an quality opinion: you think this is a good solution to a hyperlocalized, human scale problem?

No actual RE investor in the real world gives a hoot about $10 avocado toasts and Tesla charging stations as prominently shown on the website. It's all about cashflow, tenant rolls and contracts.

Anyways, I wish you and the current users there, luck. We need even more ~speculation~ investors in RE in the U.S.

> Of course not, I specifically said that they represent ownership in an LLC, which participates in the normal real estate market in the normal way.

So instead of NFTs, you could have used a shared, versioned, auditable Excel spreadsheet/AirTable to get the exact same effect without losing any functionality?

What additional gain does NFTs bring over this AirTable solution (and I am aware of the DropBox comment)?

What am I missing?

> What you are doing is using the system and logic and inferences. High school stuff

And yet, used cars are now selling for more than new cars. I actually have equity in my car. So even in a market with a long history, it can still be wrong. And NFTs don't have a long history to go on. So accusing someone of fraud is a bit of a stretch.

> Do you have any stake in this venture (or exclusively a fee paying user)?

If I did I would have disclosed it when I linked it.

> I am glad to see you're making 9% in a market that's currently averaging ~15+% Net IRR.

Then 9% I'm making is just on the rent, it doesn't include appreciation. The IRR on my properties is closer to 20% when you include appreciation.

> Using deep neural networks in real estate? Wasn't Zillow's iBuying massacre enough educational experience?

Unlike Zillow, this company only uses the AI as a tool to identify potential properties. There is still a human that vets it and buys it, and then I get to personally vet it and choose if I want to buy it. This is the right way to use AI -- as a tool to augment your own capabilities.

> It's all about cashflow, tenant rolls and contracts.

And that's all I look at. Their website is a marketing tool, they are trying to get millennials/genZ into the real estate market by making it cheap enough to be affordable to them, so their website uses those things in their marketing. I don't care, I look at the cash flow and tenant rolls and they look good.

> We need even more ~speculation~ investors in RE in the U.S.

Speculation is not what is damaging the real estate market. It's local zoning boards preventing construction. It's simple supply and demand -- demand for housing far outstrips supply. Me not investing will not make any difference. In fact what I'm doing is providing liquidity to the market, so I'm actually making it better. I'm not buying real estate and sitting on it -- I'm helping turn homes into rentals for people to live in.

> So instead of NFTs, you could have used a shared, versioned, auditable Excel spreadsheet/AirTable to get the exact same effect without losing any functionality? ... What am I missing?

Not at all. You lack vision if you think that is the case.

First off, lofty would need to continue to exist to use Airtable/SQL/whatever. With the NFTs, lofty can go away and I still own my share of the LLC.

Secondly, a shared spreadsheet with audibility is what a blockchain is.

Thirdly, I don't need permission from anyone the sell my shares. A shared table run by lofty would require me to ask them for permission to make the transaction. Which means it's subject to US law. So anyone else around the world who doesn't want to onus of filing US tax paperwork can't buy these assets.

The permissionless part and the governance part are key. We (the other owners of the LLC and myself) don't have to rely on a gatekeeper (lofty in this case) to transact business with each other.

But also lofty provides a service, making it easier for us to transact business, so they take a fee for that and make money. We don't need them but they provide a benefit, so everyone wins.

I thank you for this reply. You think deeply and your use of lofty as augmentation is very well placed.

I am unsure if most people there behave so, I can hope it is.

> Thirdly, I don't need permission from anyone the sell my shares

I believe you do and that's lofty. I don't believe you can transact outside and independent of lofty - i.e., if you built a replica of lofty tomorrow that transacted using the underlying blockchain, you couldn't.

> We (the other owners of the LLC and myself) don't have to rely on a gatekeeper (lofty in this case) to transact business with each other

Untrue - there's significant external process that relies on U.S. contract and property law that lofty handles that's undocumented and will need to be re-implemented from scratch if lofty were to close doors.

That said, again, I thank you for this reply and you have given me thoughts to consider.

I just want to pick on this point a little -

> Speculation is not what is damaging the real estate market. It's local zoning boards preventing construction. It's simple supply and demand -- demand for housing far outstrips supply.

At the most technical/fundamental level you are correct. However, it glosses over how a lot of that demand is sort of artificial and certainly temporary. A lot of the increase in demand is wealthy people buying up housing to feed AirBNB/VRBO/etc. As areas move to increase supply to match demand we will end up with multiple instances of, essentially, Detroit or Italy. As family numbers dwindle, reproduction rates drop, and Boomers die off (they're a very large generation), the demand for housing is going to start falling pretty substantially in the next decade. We'll be left with unwanted housing which leads to vacant properties which leads to crime which leads to devalued property. And we'll be right back to selling homes for $1 or demolishing them just to protect the occupied ones next door.

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