It seems to me that possibly the highest return on investment a government can do is investing in education.
More intelligent people likely impacts tax revenue, crime etc. does anyone know if there are studies done on this?
833 karma · joined December 6, 2013
As someone who sorta accepts some parts of the crypto narrative and use it on a daily basis the chapter about NFTs just does not make sense to me. All these people high on play-to-earn games and buying non existant land in a game/virtual place that doesn't really yet exist. The world just isn't there yet, this is a classic overhype situation and will have to go through years of winter before maybe actually working.
Could you see virtual land being worth something in a world where the Ready Player One Oasis exists? Yes sure.. but we're so far from that and I think a lot of these finance guys don't understand the gaming/technical challenges to get there.
Rates like these are absolutely possible to get using Defi, futures and so on. One example of doing it risk free (staying delta neutral) is by selling crypto futures contracts and buying the underlying asset to hedge.
With that said, lenders like Celsius, Nexo, Crypto.com etc. should have transparent audits for sure. Same goes for stablecoin providers. Everyone pretty much agrees on this.
Valuations:
August 2020: 46b [1]
Feb 2021: 74b [1]
Oct 2021: 100b [2]
And I'm sure a lot of private investors would love to buy a piece. Half of HN would buy at 100b valuation I think.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2021/04/16/is...
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/08/elon-musks-spacex-valuation-...
Cryptocurrency-related crime fell sharply in 2020 to just under $10 billion worth of total transaction volume. With non-illicit transactions also rising, just 0.34% of all cryptocurrency activity in 2020 was related to crime. [1]
- Inflation is not transitory and the market will panic once the fed raises rates. They do not reverse their position like in 2018.
- Covid continues to be a thing. Stupid people who refuse vaccines and medicine continue to die in record numbers.
- China does not invade Taiwan and the China bubble does not pop. Everyone continues to be concerned.
- The metaverse will continue to not be a thing.
- A major breakthrough will happen in genomics, possibly related to aging.
- Elon Musk will commit 6 billion to end world hunger. Mostly for the lulz
- Significant legal troubles will arise for Facebook. Ultimately ending up splitting the company. This will make no difference to the social media issues.
There seems to be pretty strong sentiment out there that the minimum wage American worker is not being compensated correctly.
The market is supposed to fix this by adding wage growth and maybe it will.
[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1386821144037236737?lang...
It makes sense to me. I don't think we have any idea how it's going to turn out though. Certainly the 30+ people here do not understand why teens buy Fortnite hats or have fun in Roblox. The lines between the "real" world and the digital world are blurring and will continue to merge as technology increasingly allows for more and more compelling digital experiences.
Also you gotta wonder if NSO employees know that their work is being used to target human rights activists, lawyers and journalists. I mean that puts you on the level of ransomware blackhats, maybe even worse right?
A product is transformed from non-software to (entirely or mainly) software. Music compact discs become MP3’s and then streams. An alarm clock goes from a physical device on your bedside table to an app on your phone. A car goes from bent metal and glass, to software wrapped in bent metal and glass.
The producers of these products are transformed from manufacturing or media or financial services companies to (entirely or mainly) software companies. Their core capability becomes creating and running software. This is, of course, a very different discipline and culture from what they used to do.
As software redefines the product, and assuming a competitive market not protected by a monopoly position or regulatory capture, the nature of competition in the industry changes until the best software wins, which means the best software company wins. The best software company may be an incumbent or a startup, whoever makes the best software."
I've never seen this idea stated so succinctly before. Maybe it's time to go back and read the original op-ed [1]. It rings so very true to me but a lot of people are not aware of it happening in this way.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903480904576512...
It's a luxury but one that Americans should be able to afford for all.
I suppose that's what he's supposed to say. Good to at least get a discussion about this topic. How good internet people should have is very much a question of viewpoint. Is 10mbit good internet?
Not a single mention of Ethereum switching to proof-of-stake which will reduce the power requirements by ~99,9%. Because the author doesn't know or because he wants to only show one side of the argument?
The "article" is written by the author of: "Against the smart city". So I'm gonna go with him just wanting clicks and to show only one side of the argument.
"Genetically proxied earlier diurnal preference was associated with a 23% lower risk of depression"
"Every investor is making bets on the future. It’s only called speculation when you disagree with someone else’s bet.
In hindsight there was as much speculation in the 1990s that Kodak and Sears would keep their market share as there was that eToys and Pets.com would gain market share. Both were bets on the future. Both were wrong. It happens.
Of course there’s a speculation spectrum. But let’s not pretend that others speculate while you only deal with certainties."
https://cryptohayes.medium.com/ - Arthur Hayes blog. Crypto trading mostly.
"I am an arbitrage trader at heart. In May 2013 brimming with my experience as a delta one trader, I entered the crypto capital markets. The first trade I ever put on was buying Bitcoin from Mt. Gox, depositing them on ICBIT, then selling BTC/USD June 2013 inverse futures contracts at a premium. My first trade captured a premium of 200% per annum (PA). When the futures expired, and my PNL matched my spreadsheet calculations exactly, I thought to myself, holy shit, “Bitcoin is LIT!”"
https://www.lynalden.com/inflation/
Inflation is a complicated subject and is not as exact a science as some believe. For instance see this adjustment based on increase in quality:
"Let’s pick the Toyota Camry as a direct comparison to reduce the size/type changes. The starting MSRP for the automatic was $12,258 in 1990. The starting MSRP in 2020 was $24,425. That’s a 100% price increase, almost exactly. That’s about 2.5% per year.
Certainly we can allow for a substantial amount of quality adjustment in the new car CPI calculation. The new Camry has power everything, a navigation system, better safety features, and better gas mileage. But is the quality/size adjustment enough to reduce the actual price appreciation from 100% down to just 22% on a quality-adjusted basis during this three-decade period, as official new car CPI says was the case?"
Obvious answers:
- Biotech, our ability to handle large amounts of data and compute should enable biotech to make huge strides forward in all sorts of ways. Personalized medicine (pill made for you etc) and so on.
- AR/VR, we've been talking about this for a long time but it seems like Apple will be launching something fairly soon for AR. It could very well kickstart a new boom. VR has been steadily building for about 10 years and will continue to do so. Better headsets means more widespread adoption. Nearing a tipping point now I think.
- Getting 2 billion more people on the internet. Should allow for more niche products.
Outside the box:
- Online reality TV with avatars. An online world where people play different roles and you can choose which viewpoint you want to watch from. Online 24/7 with professionally built narratives happening in real time.
See GTA RP NoPixel streams on Twitch for an early example.
The best places to live in a city should have people living there. It's really that simple.
Personally I view Bitcoin as the first implementation, we can and should improve on that concept. See Polkadot, Algorand, Eth 2.0 etc. as the new generation which does not use up a lot of energy.
1) If you research anything about blockchain/cryptocurrency you inevitably stumble into fanatics who shill the project without knowing anything technical. As this is the usual method for the HN crowd to understand subjects it turns them off immediately.
2) The HN crowd mostly have cushy US jobs and as such do not value trustless systems as much as people in other parts of the world. Banking mostly works for Americans and alternatives don't seem to give much benefit.
3) It threatens US control of the international monetary system. Swift, USD etc.
4) The environmental impact of the first generation PoW systems, mostly Bitcoin at this point, is a waste of energy in the mind of HN. The trust and security that it provides to the blockchain is not valued.
5) Many are tired of getting asked about blockchain/crypto by people who have made a lot of money on it, especially if the HN people have not. It has to be a bubble since the tech savvy guys don't believe in it.. right?
It also makes new things possible, for instance the original artist could get a cut of every resale of his art. People can own parts of art, music etc. Artists can go directly to their fans.
Another example is Defi which also cuts out the middleman. I want to send you 100 usd. I have euro, right now I need to go to my bank app and they will convert for a pretty big fee , they will also take 5 days to send it to you if it's international and god help me if there are holidays involved. With defi I send instantly and I will be able to choose what kind of value I send and you will be able to choose what kind of value you want to receive. I don't even need to know. I could send you euros and you receive in usd, it passes through a defi smart contract on the way without any of us knowing. If I'm a farmer and I have corn futures I could probably pay in that and you would still just get usd. Again cuts out the middleman.
Does it help that it's also censorship resistant and trustless? Yes. The ease of use is not on par with legacy for my mum.. yet. But that was also the case in 1995 with the internet.
Just like normal folk will never use TCP/IP, know HTML etc?
Nobody needs to know that something runs on a blockchain or how NFTs work. Yes you need to know now but in 10 years my mum will use these things without having any idea what they are. Same as she's using an ipad now without knowing objective C or any underlying protocols and tech.