I first started seeing these blog posts and Twitter threads documenting reasons for leaving SF at the start of the pandemic, and they tend to get a significant amount of engagement/comments/likes. I had never before seen anyone write such long and detailed reasons for something as routine and boring as moving cities. I can only imagine the reason for doing this is to increase their following on social media. Just stoking the rage-engagement machine.
Regardless of the divisible nature, it's still an asset - not money. Poor people don't have enough to invest in assets. They live week to week with enough cash to buy shelter, food, and the bare necessities. If they do have enough to save, it makes more sense to keep that savings in cash so they can pay for unexpected incidents and needs without having to first convert BTC into their local currency.
Absolutely, but the bitcoin maximalists (including Jack Dorsey) should stop evangelizing it as the solution to so many societal problems when it's indistinguishable from any other asset at this point.
I think the same should be said of Chris Dixon / a16z / pretty much every VC-turned-cryptoEnthusiast. I hate hearing them talk about making things better for people in 3rd world countries and helping starving artists - it's all a joke. These guys have raised billions of dollars from some of the wealthiest and most powerful institutions and families to invest in this "decentralized future", and certainly not to help 3rd world citizens and artists.
Just because there weren't early VCs into bitcoin doesn't mean that most BTC is distributed fairly amongst a large portion of people. Most BTC seems to be owned and controlled by a fairly small concentration of wealthy people at this point. It will do no good for average people, so it shouldn't be hyped as "a form of "freedom" or "revolution" or anything of that sort - it's just another asset for wealthy people to buy up.
Agreed, and while SF certainly does have a fair amount of old money, I'd argue that most of it is new money. From my point of view, most of the homes selling in my neighborhood over the past year (average sale price of $2.2 million) are young-ish families in their 30s and 40s who have made their money in tech over the past 10 or so years.
Despite the dubious "tech exodus" there are still a lot of insanely wealthy people in this city. One recent example being a house in a not-particularly-desirable neighborhood selling for $1million over asking price:
I mean.. my simple but privileged answer is that I avoid the handful of bad neighborhoods. I have no idea why anyone would choose to live in the Mission and certainly not the Tenderloin unless that was the only place they could afford, in which case I'd probably not live in SF. My friends who love SF are the ones who can afford to ignore/avoid the ugly side of it.
This is a seemingly harmless albeit embarrassing incident. But more broadly I'm really curious as to how the Coinbase product is still so bad. Half of the time I try to 'trade' on the app, the transaction will fail and I'll get some generic error message. The user experience is thoroughly lacking. I have to imagine they employ a lot of talented engineers at this point, and they should know how to build a nice scalable product, but they just can't seem to do it. Really baffling... And in exchange for the poor experience, they charge absurd fees.
They give people the feeling of being "cool, rich, smart, part of an exclusive club" with the click of a button while they sit on their couch doing nothing of importance.
You don't (or shouldn't) join an early stage startup with the expectation that you'll get rich by any measure from the equity. You join an early stage startup because you likely want to eventually found your own startup in which you'll own > 50% of it. That's your shot at getting rich. The experience as an early stage employee just exposes you to the chaos and ups and downs of it all, and if it goes well then yeah maybe you make some money, but even more worthwhile is the connections you make in the process (other employees plus potentially the VCs who invested and may ultimately invest in you down the line).
*edit: realized I didn't actually address the question of topic - I would expect the range to be between 0.25% and 0.75%
Listening to privileged successful and wealthy people has gotten boring. Everyone feels like they're a "creator" these days, and there are far more non-sophisticated and average people out there than the typical successful Silicon Valley characters.
> Sadly, this does seem to be true for the majority of junior folks. They just can't code. I don't really know how you get out of a degree program without that, but they somehow do.
I don't know if this applies to the top CS schools, but now that CS is quickly becoming the most popular major at the majority of US colleges, you have to expect the average quality to drop. Once upon a time, CS programs were filled with the kids who were innately just really into computers. Now they're filled with all of the kids who don't necessarily love tech, but just compared "SWE Salary" vs "Doctor Salary" vs "I-banker Salary" when deciding what to major in. Now that crazy FAANG salaries and "day in the life" videos are splattered all over Twitter and YouTube, more and more money/prestige chasers will be graduating with CS degrees even if they just scraped by without really absorbing the material and writing a lot of code.
I think it's poorly named. It's not a new major version of the web. Forget the fact that the vast majority of the web's users don't care about decentralization vs. centralization even a single bit. People will continue to mindlessly use WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Coinbase because decentralization is not a concern for _most_ users. Most users of these apps just want to socialize with friends and family, show off / humble brag / argue, and gamble.
Any SF resident will tell you it depends on which neighborhood you're in... it's pretty nice over here in Noe - tons of young families pushing strollers and hanging out on the sidewalks in front of homes and cafes. Some parts of SF are a dump, but certainly not all of it.
Anecdotal but my neighbor (in SF) owns an apartment building, and he said he's renting units for ~$100-200 below pre-pandemic level which was $2,995 for a 1-bedroom and $3,995 for a 2-bedroom.
You don't even live here. Your twitter bio says you live in Germany... "Homeless literally everywhere" - no, not literally at all. "Trash piles lining the gutters" - you don't even know what you're talking about.
I've lived here for over 5 years and can absolutely confirm there are a few parts of the city that are dirty and have the feces/needles that people who honestly can't afford to live here love to talk about when they're denigrating the city. As you've noted, there are lots of neighborhoods, MOST of the city, that are very clean, safe, and obviously very desirable to live in.
Uber/Lyft was such an important factor in my daily equation during my 20s (2010's). I remember those black car rides for $8. Haven't opened the Uber/Lyft apps in about 2 years. I can imagine using it again for business travel when it's not linked to my personal credit card though.
I think it's exciting too, but I'm also a little weary of making these complex financial instruments more prevalent. I see more of a downside to the increase in these instruments overall. Still fascinating to watch unfold though.
I get your point, but I think it's worth considering the sheer beauty of a Van Gogh painting. Have you been to MoMA and spent 30+ minutes looking at The Starry Night. Compared to Beeple https://www.beeple-crap.com/archive who straight up says: "Most of my work is complete fucking garbage, but this old shit is reallllllly fucking bad. Seriously. I mean, you can look at this shit if you want to but just know that it is most likely making you dumber and a shittier human being. It’s that bad."
"A fool and his money are soon parted"... This is a great way to part the early, non-sophisticated but luckily wealthy bitcoiner and ETH-holders from their rapid and "easily" won windfall.
And the bragging typically manifests by hanging the physical work on the walls of your home(s) so your guests can view it and be impressed as if they're at a museum or gallery. I'm wondering how the bragging rights for NFTs will manifest... 25 OLED screens decorating my walls with jpegs?