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Comment by boeingUH60 | Hacker News Reader

It baffles me that Altman picked up such a creepy, woo-woo tech project. It's not like the guy is desperate for cash, he's already really rich and has a stellar reputation from running Y Combinator (formerly) and OpenAI (currently) as well as investing in many other startups...it's just weird

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Not so far off when Paul Graham also vouched for Coinbase, which CFTC ordered it to settle on its False, Misleading, or Inaccurate Reporting and Wash Trading.

It's quite unbelievable that this type of grift is defended by YC. When the crypto mania ends and the obvious consequences from tens of thousands of people who have been destroyed by Coinbase are realized, they will be just as quick to distance themselves.

I'm really disappointed in YC, especially in its founders. When Paul Graham mentioned that he specifically looks for Founders who break the rules but not outright illegal, I had no idea he meant a break from moral ethics and brushing very close with US securities law.

I just don't get how some people can look away at what's truly happening in crypto—it is a systematic wealth transfer via digitized ponzi. any money you make in crypto comes directly from somebody's loss and this is NOT at all like the financial markets where pricing mechanism are enforced and regulated for price discovery on real world assets that is widely adopted.

Yet this will not stop thousands of applicants who apply to YC for their chance at riches. It's a shame how we glorify grift and enrichment through the destruction of others.

It is this specific culture that we chose not associate ourselves with YC, others are already aware of the grift that YC founders have publicly supported, invested, and vouched for. What saddens me is that many YC hopefuls and commenters will look the other way because of what they seek to gain.

If you drink from water that others had muddied, you too are dirty.

> tens of thousands of people who have been destroyed by Coinbase

Could you elaborate on this part? Are you referring to people whose crypto was stolen?

Likely referring to normal people who lose money with coinbase. Trading stocks has at least some amount of protection because stocks have some legal requirements/vetting/etc to get on the major exchanges. Where as there are a whole lot of shitcoins, rugpulling, fraud/etc enabled by coinbase.

Not to mention the exorbitant monopolistic fees they can get away with because regulation keeps competitors out of the US, compared to the extremely low fees associated with trading stocks.

I’d stomach the holier than thou attitude more if we didn’t just experience the SoftBank WeWork era of “real” companies being just as fraudulent and pumped by hype as dogecoin.

Except that there are legitimate and non fraudulent "real" companies.

Consider percentages and probabilities rather than anecdotes.

dogecoin was invented as an intentionally inflationary currency as a joke on financial speculation; it was literally designed to stay worthless. THAT was the joke. The doge was a reflection of laughing at overly serious people. Dogecoin at its outset was a really fun and entertaining project and scene, because the entire thesis was about removing the get-rich part of crypto to just play around and experiment. It has, over time, warped into something else entirely.

Two things can be bad at the same time.

The startup bubble will be the next dotcom. Only the best, led by nietzschean Musk clones, will live.

"Moral ethics" are not a thing, they're conflicting concepts at their core on an individual level.

just because you do not possess a moral compass does not invalidate the rest of us who value it.

SA: "The thing most people get wrong is that if labor costs go to zero... The cost of a great life comes way down. If we get fusion to work and electricity is free, then transportation is substantially cheaper, and the cost of electricity flows through to water and food. People pay a lot for a great education now, but you can become expert level on most things by looking at your phone. So, if an American family of four now requires seventy thousand dollars to be happy, which is the number you most often hear, then in ten to twenty years it could be an order of magnitude cheaper, with an error factor of 2x. Excluding the cost of housing, thirty-five hundred to fourteen thousand dollars could be all a family needs to enjoy a really good life.”

> an order of magnitude cheaper, with an error factor of 2x.

How can anyone take this person seriously, spewing pseudomathematical woo like this.

Do you have a source?

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-ma...

Thanks!

So Sam Altman has never heard of the hedonic treadmill, I guess.

Quite the contrary. When you're rich, you start doing projects that have impact that are not necessarily tied to money, but rather power.

Bezo's owning WaPo

Elon taking board position at Twitter

Zuck/Gates giving away net worth to charity

etc. etc.

For sure. But I fail to see the impact here. If the crypto currency element is not intended to be a get-rich-quickly scam, how else will this thing benefit anyone? The value proposition looks ... funky.

Impact? They're talking about providing a universal global currency. The geopolitical power and capabilities there are enumerable.

Charity didn't stop Gates from becoming richer. It's weird. In my opinion the biggest problem in the world is that people don't want to step down and let someone else have fun.

Outside of HN, publications like the NYT/Buzzfeed/etc, and maybe far-left twitter, crypto isn't hated that much. So what seems like woo-woo tech to you, in reality is a fairly valid crypto project. I think HN's hatred towards crypto is borderline irrational, and will likely be similar to the infamous dropbox launch comment over the next decade.

"Worldcoin says it eventually wants to erase the iris images to protect the privacy of those who sign up for its currency. If perfected, the company says the technology will distill the image of each set of irises into a unique string of letters and numbers, called an iris-hash, to be stored in Worldcoin’s database. As the company’s data consent form states, data gathered by the Orb will be used for “purposes such as training of our neural network for the recognition of human irises.”"

Didn't the Dropbox launch comment end up being true in the longer run ? I don't hate crypto, but most of it is just mania that VCs are exploiting. There's a couple of nice ideas that may live on in other forms

Having a proof-of-human system for crypto which avoids storage of biometric data and allows pseudonymous wallets would be a massive win that would change literally everything about what's being developed right now. It's a pretty big and important problem.

You don't offer a convincing argument.

We're witnessing the current real estate system destroy society before our very eyes, to propose then this idea that an inherently deflationary currency system is going to be a win is, I say as respectfully as I can, abhorrent.

Let's please learn this and just move on: the ones who got in early are rich just like it is with housing, just by virtue of having gotten in early; at this point it is only defrauding the ignorant.

I couldn't have come up with a better way to fuck humanity as efficiently as cryptocurrency manages to if I was paid to.

> It baffles me that Altman picked up such a creepy, woo-woo tech project.

As the kids say today, maybe check your priors.

Have you seen the creepy interview of Altman and Zuckerberg? Upright posture, hands on thighs... the borg talking with itself...

https://www.facebook.com/YCombinator/videos/1015399369382910...

its on Facebook, but no need to log in

SA and PG only have a stellar reputation in entrepeneuer-religion circles. To the rest of the world they are just annoying billionaires rotting society.

Doesn't baffle me at all.

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