Liron

Side-by-side pic: https://twitter.com/liron/status/1469321611400646659

I know you technically "responded", but you're not understanding what I'm asking in my last comment. Please re-read my comment and understand what's required of you to actually think deeply about this topic. The inability of folks like you to do this is at the heart of this whole situation.

Thinking through a topic has a type signature. The required type is "example scenario of your point". You are making points that are vacuous, points that have no example scenarios. It's a problem that can be caught in type checking.

May I suggest another Office Space clip for this situation: https://twitter.com/liron/status/1527376821045473304

Written as if no mistakes were made on their end. Paraphrasing:

"We all thought UST and Anchor were a source of stable >10%/yr gains that you could trust for your corporate treasury. That the yield instead turned out to be -99% is quite disappointing, and makes this a natural time for us to bring our service to an end. It's been a pleasure to serve you."

Now try playing out a detailed scenario of what happens when someone builds an "on-chain Twitter clone", and what different players do in that scenario, and what competitive equilibrium emerges. That's what I've attempted to do here [0].

[0] https://medium.com/bloated-mvp/why-web3s-shared-data-across-...

You don't seem to be responding on the topic of the relationship between data-layer technology and business strategy. Try saying what you think is the counterfactual if the companies in any particular scenario want or don't want to share data, but blockchain technology isn't in the picture vs is in the picture.

Seems like you're not responding to anything in my last comment

I think the author, Lyall Taylor, was on point describing the main weaknesses that have led the stock market to devalue Netflix.

Shared data is a choice any company can make in web2 or web3. The ability to share data in a blockchain rather than an API and regular downloadable data dumps changes nothing about the strategic business implications of shared data. For a detailed example of what I mean by business dynamics being unrelated to the database layer, see my post about Twitter vs a hypothetical web3 version [0]

[0] https://medium.com/bloated-mvp/why-web3s-shared-data-across-...

I admit it's a slight stretch, but I do think there's something gaslighting about it. The reader is expected to think they're reading a valid argument put together by a top research analyst whom they can trust to follow basic standards of competence, and not notice their own inner voice objecting that the numbers on the slide are logical non-sequiturs that wouldn't even be acceptable in the context of a high school class presentation.

I don't get what context could possibly make OpenSea's take rate vs YouTube's take rate make logical sense. If a realtor charges a 3% commission to help sell your house, are they less extortionist than Meta? If Robinhood charges 0% commission on trades, are they less extortionist than OpenSea?

I would say it's gaslighting to the extent that "the emperor has no clothes" is an instance of gaslighting.

I found my rental on Zillow. Imagine you could hire Zillow to manage your rental house... it's an interesting idea, yet Zillow is only valued at $11B. Why not say Zillow is $100B because that's such a cool hypothetical opportunity? Because cool opportunities need to be valued at low valuations until they're more validated, so that the investors get a 100x upside if they succeed, not 10%/yr yield as the bull case.

If we grant 30% operating margins, they would still already need 4x higher revenue today to justify $100B valuation.

Clearly a great company in many ways, but if I attempt to quantify how great in terms of a reasonable market cap, I get maybe $30B, not $100B.

Does anyone have a plausible model of how Airbnb can ever make over 5x more revenue than it’s making today? Is the $100B market cap building in an assumption that it’s going to invent new business lines and push them through its distribution channel, or what?

Top line needs to keep growing 30%/yr for next 5 years, then reach a stable state of 30%/yr earnings+growth yield...

Then if that optimistic scenario comes true, congratulations, you can expect a modest 10%/yr yield investing at $100B today. I believe that’s roughly the math.

We need a ciechanow.ski explainer for how ciechanow.sky explainers are built

He’s elevated technical explanations to a delicious art form

Yes, those are obvious important truths, but weird to cite without related truths that shed more light on why Meta has the money, power and influence it does. Like that people there are smart, believe in the vision, care to do a good job. And that users love the products. If you’re summarizing positive bullet points from the article, you’ve only listed 3 of about 10.

Your dad will need to take more responsibility about who he listens to or suffer the consequences. If you don’t think your dad is capable of doing that, you can help explain these subjects to him, or delete his Facebook account, or whatever you need to do. Blaming Meta seems to me like basically learned helplessness on your part.

It’s nice to see a post that acknowledges the obvious truth that Meta is a great company with great people that does great things. Sure they do bad things too, but calling them bad and evil is usually all I ever see on HN and Twitter.

Sure, I agree they’ll likely manage to pull a lot of money out and not go too negative even as they drink their own kool-aid and imagine that a valueless speculation bubble is a substantive field of research.

Huh? They've already pulled money out and banked a historic return for their fund. In fact one of their partners whose investment thesis is based on publicly-documented logically flimsy claims [0] was #1 on this year's Midas List because he made $3B for his LPs.

My point is that since they're drinking their own kool-aid, they're not securing the bag / leaving the poker table right now, a time I believe is close to peak crypto bubble (although the bubble could also plausibly last another 5 years and inflate another 5x). They're Leeroy Jenkinsing another $3.5B right now [1] which I think they're at high risk of losing and tanking the IRR of the combined funds.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28664995

[1] https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/20/andreessen-horo...

IMO they authentically but wrongly think there's something of value to research, i.e. they drink their own kool-aid. Which means they'll fail to pull their money out at the peak of the bubble, undoing their impressive returns to date.

Note there are two components to this: (1) paying all cash-based compensation (2) giving the ability to invest at fair market price. I believe both components should be considered best practices.

“The $100M Startup That Checked Out Fast”

I thought this was going to be about Stripe's investment in Fast Checkout

Yes Monero is great as private digital cash… as long as its usage level remains relatively low-profile so that governments keep allowing sites like Kraken to legally act as fiat on and off ramps, voluntarily handicapping their ability to track money laundering.

This is why Monero today is useful for tech-savvy people and motivated black-market buyers/sellers, but we will never see a user-friendly Monero market for the masses.

It feels like everyone has read The Lean Startup but hasn't understood the key message. I read it a few years ago, and I still ended up wasting too much of my time building something that no one wanted. Then I started advising other founders, and I see that most of them are still failing exactly how the book describes failing.

It apparently takes multiple exposures to the Lean Startup concept from different angles for people to get the core message. My own attempt to teach Lean Startup from another angle is called Bloated MVP [0]

[0] https://bloatedmvp.com

Important to note that Stripe has NOT announced any crypto/blockchain/NFT products or tech of its own.

The only news here is that Stripe is letting crypto companies use their various fiat processing services, now that they feel comfortable that they can legally do so. Confirmed by pc's comment [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30629169

I agree that use case makes complete sense for you today. But shouldn't we expect that your government will also get around to blocking crypto? E.g. declaring it criminal for you to use, and/or blocking all the fiat on/offramps so you can't buy anything with it?

YC alum here, witness my HN submissions page full of 1- and 2-pointers.

Yeah if you’re just looking at the graph trend, you might only start panicking if BTC drops below the previous 2017 cycle’s peak of $19k.