Octagon Networks converts its entire balance sheet into Bitcoin | Hacker News Reader

Octagon Networks converts its entire balance sheet into Bitcoin

octagon.net

16 pointsjanandonly27 comments

> 50% discount when paid in Bitcoin

.. and no obvious incorporation details or company number? With which country are they going to file this balance sheet?

Or is it like the various local tradesmen who will offer me a 20% discount for payment in physical currency? That is, we both know that's not going onto any balance sheet that the taxman will see.

> not going onto any balance sheet that the taxman will see

Doesn’t the entire world have access to that balance sheet in their case?

Not really if they follow the standard advice to use a different wallet address for each payment. And they don't use a mixer. It is after all pseudonymous.

‘Use a different wallet every time’ only works if you don’t think about it.

If you’re a company you need to pay your employee, vendors etc. Tracking down all related transactions is not that hard.

My guess is they wouldn’t even attempt to stay anonymous that way since they don’t have to and it doesn’t work anyway (for an organization like them)

> We believe Bitcoin will lead the world toward a better future.

This sentence reminds me of The Operative in the movie Serenity (2005), played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, who kept telling everyone over the course of the movie, "We're making a better world" -- with the conviction of a true believer. I guess only true believers talk like that.

Octagon Networks is a cyber security research and development company with mostly remote workers.

Since they've started, they have grown and expanded to employ many extremely talented ethical hackers and software developers in the US and across the globe.

„All liquid assets“, „many“, „extremely talented“, it’s all so non factional as is their website.

Just,… why? Even if you believe in Bitcoin, we currently do not live in a Bitcoin dominated world. Their only reasoning is that they believe Bitcoin will be the future and felt inspired by Saylor? That’s pretty weak.

I didn't know what an Octagon Networks was prior to their (six month old!) company announcing their intention to exchange their liquid assets for a highly volatile (has lost 50% of its value since November) speculative asset.

Perhaps, their motivating reason was to ensure that I would know what an Octagon Networks was?

How many liquid assets did they have anyway?

> Perhaps, their motivating reason was to ensure that I would know what an Octagon Networks was?

You might be right, it’s likely to be good PR for them.

They say it in the press release:

> We believe Bitcoin will lead the world toward a better future. Bitcoin will help accelerate our other goals to bring high-quality cybersecurity solutions to the masses and help tackle the complicated bureaucracy involved with acquiring international customers and talent. Our inspirations for these ideas are many, but our implementation of this specific model was inspired by MicroStrategy Inc.

You don't get to a Bitcoin dominated world by waiting for everyone else to make it happen, you do it yourself. They're just a first mover.

That's a big bet... especially the 50% discount on payments in BTC!

>We will also start accepting Bitcoin payments for all of our services, with a 50% discount when paid in Bitcoin.

I'm pro BTC but that is a big bet!

Doesn't say whether that's priced at the start or end of a contract, so there might be a 50% variance in there too.

They can always take the Tesla approach: charge the full price on BTC up front, and reserve the right to give the 50% rebate in either BTC or cash, depending on which is more advantageous

Bitcoin Magazine had an article, on this development:

Octagon Networks: First Cybersecurity Firm To Convert Balance Sheet Into Bitcoin https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/octagon-networks-conver...

I'm converting my company's balance sheet into telsa stock, pay with tesla stock and get a 50% discount.

Well, that's obviously a bad idea since Tesla's fate is largely in the hands of one human.

That's an awfully low bus number to trust your treasury to.

Power to them, but this doesn't look like an organization that has a significant balance sheet.

Nice! Get yourselves added to the bitcoin balance sheet list: https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/treasuries/

Looks like and reminds me of 2011, except those small organizations werent calling it a balance sheet at the time

“we have always admired Bitcoin’s ongoing contributions to the advancement of humanity”

Word salad.

> We believe Bitcoin will lead the world toward a better future.

I believe Bitcoin is obsolete and will destroy our planet if we let it proceed. Bitcoin was revolutionary but it's time for it to step aside and let the 3rd gen decentralized technology (if you consider Ethereum to be 2nd gen) take over.

This. If you don’t look at price or market cap there’s so many interesting tech our there. Mina, Algorand, Mysten Labs, Aptos, Avalanche, Axelar, Celestia, etc.

Relevant XKCD, https://xkcd.com/927/

Bitcoin is scaling rapidly with higher layer development. The foundational blockchain layer is simple but rock solid and expressive enough to allow for some incredibly creative development, like the lightning network. Projects like https://www.rsk.co/ are attempting to bring ethereum like smart contracting to bitcoin's second layer.

Don't fall into the trying to build a new TCP/IP because alternative protocols are somewhat better. Once network effects take over, alternatives don't just need to be marginally better to supplant the dominant network. They need to be several orders of magnitude better.

Does xkcd apply here? It's not like there haven't been huge advances covering most, if not all of the aspects that are holding bitcoin back today.

> Bitcoin is scaling rapidly with higher layer development. ...

> Don't fall into the trying to build a new TCP/IP because alternative protocols are somewhat better.

Scaling Bitcoin with higher layers is like tunneling IPv6 over IPv4 even if you could just deploy IPv6 directly.

There's the huge waste environmental problem. And even Bitcoins consensus safety (51%) is bested by more recent advances in algorithms. Why hold on?

Some people/firms have figured out that increasing brand-awareness is not through traditional product marketing but PR releases and tweets on things that has nothing to do with your product.

See: Musk and Microstrategy and My Pillow...

It's so transparent, but folks fall for it every time.

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