mrwong

Your realize that pointing yo the tiny nation of Iceland as the only one who actually put people in jail just sounds like sarcasm

The railroad sucks because its an old outdated businessmodel when it comes to personal transport. Only railroadbusiness that make sense is Heave industries and inner city subways. Everything else ist just romantazied waste full bs. So of course these kind if business can only be sustained by wasteful public spending.

God your socialist are aweful, everytime that fails you guys point it to the random single event that made that whole thing fail and act as if that were some unqie exception. “... single bone headed reliance...”

So what?

Like I said its hidden. E.g. my employe pays around 90k for me of which I only see 78k then they apply Tax, pension, healthcare, mandatory unemployment insurance etc, Im left with around 40k. Then i go and spend it and it again gets taxed with 19%. Many products have beeryax, coffetax etc. higest is petrol tax which is 70%. So If i spend 200€ on petrol an month, 70% is tax. I could go on and on. like I said those tax are hidden.

Example please? By that line of thinking the Soviet Union must have had the best and cheapest service and products. Also Venezuela should be a total Dream right now without empty stores, starving children, no murder rampage.

Tax burden in Germany for middleclass is at around 70%. Beeing a software engineer in germany means that you code 8months for the government and 4months for yourself.

The western governments introduced more and more “hidden” taxes. So just looking at income tax is not fair.

Just because he advocates for lower taxes doesn’t mean he want anarchy.

Gl in the future dinosaur

Thats like WarnerBrothers saying in 1995 That movie streaming will never be a thing because its ridiculous to stream with a 56k Modem. Now we have Netflix and Youtube etc.

I could go on and on, but the kneejerk resistance is extremely polarised and I feel like preaching the Internet in 1995 to some 65year old Executives at a newspaper.

Watch this to remind yourself that the internet was not always around. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L3Y2_YiT-A

There was some other interview where Marc Andressen holds a presentation of the Netscape browser and is asked by a reporter what cool websites he can show or think of. He didn't have a good answer and for sure were not able to predict products like Facebook.

Watch this if you want to here some good arguments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SYVX2wcMVM

Daily trading of bitcoin is 5b$

Thats just one single exhange fuer one single fiat currency pair

Guess what there is Euros, KRW, Jen, Rimimbi.

Insane to see how buthurt HN is ober missing out on one of the best tech opportunities in the last decade.

Many here will probably hate the big family Christmas gathering because every relative assumes that the geeky guy surly must have bought some bitcoins.

But HN is no better then IBM or Dell. Its always easy to bash IBM and the way they went under, but beeing mid 30s and dismissing Cryptocurrency as fad of some kid traders is just the same.

Having said that, does anyone have an inspirational name for my Yacht? Satoshicruise?

Thats like saying that investing in facebook at 1b$ valuation is a bet idea because its just a company with a website.

#1 reason for privat bankruptcy in Germany are consumer credit default. From buying/leasing expensive cars and gadgets.

So people are going broke by the masses from buring money on shit they don’t need to impress people they hate cus advertisement told them to.

Shutting people off from investing their own money however they like is Elitist thinking!

Musk should do a SpaceX ICO

You assume there would be no capital flight if there would be a superior finance place in the world?

Why dont we regulate everything like that. Why do we allow people to spend 2M$ on a Car or 6k$ on a bag? Why do we allow people to buy unlimited lottery tickets or gamble everything away in the casino?

Those examples have cleary less benefit for society then the dumbest investment strategy. Let people invest, sure tons if people will lose their shirt but they will learn from it and stay away. Everyone else in the society gets to Enjoy the increased liquidity in the society. Why does anyone think that its ok that we created this random gatekeeps in the society that block ordinary people from investing beciase they are to “stupid”. The accredited investors sheme is a fraud, the arbitrary number on 1m$ networth to be an accredited investor is a joke. Thats means that even a Business Prof. Can’t invest because the SEC deems him to be to stupid.

Wallstreet has a monopoly on IPOs, they are clearly threatened by the ICO boom. Its just the internet all over again. Candlemakers wanted to ban light bulbs. Newspaper wanted to regulate online media. They all failed. So will wallstreet. Its just a matter of time, the forcing function is way to strong.

There will be enough marketplaces in the world that will provide a solid legal structure for ICOs. The US certainly wont be a part if them. Switzerland, Singapore and Japan already moved ahead with the legal structure.

The world is global, money is global.

I think your opposition is a political one. I would argue that the free market will sort it out.

Sure people will get scammed a ton. But we can't ignore the insane liquidity that those types of fundraises allow. This has huge overall benefits for the society, after the first few waves of mania settle down.

After a while some people will stay away from it, others will benefit.

We have a ton of high variance financial instruments on the market already, like options, and tons of people got burned. We kept the financial instruments because they were overall beneficial for price discovery and liquidity in the market. The people that got burned now stay away and we didn't need to ban anything.

What I always notice is that those discussion tend to be very nationalistic, which means that its usually 95% of the world is excluded from the picture.

There are maybe guys in Israel, Ukraine, Singapore, Japan etc. that want to raise money with an ICO or that fund to fund an ICO with 100$ or 10000$.

I think the next silicon valley will be the jurisdiction that will offer the best legal structure to run serious ICOs. It will be a no-brainer for the founding teams to move to this jurisdictions. Just like many international startups setup offices in Silicon Valley to get better access to capital.

Your point that most ICOs so far were shitty companies actually shows how much potential this mechanism has. Serious founders with a track record will be able to raise billions this way.

ICO sales took of this summer, early stage startups usually, so would be naive to think that most of them should be profitable already.

But here are a two.

Startup that issues you a Mastercard that is backed by your BTC, ETC. So you can shop at any store that accepts CCs, but never hold actual Fiat currencies. You recieve tokens as a form of cashback for your CC revenue. And all tokenholder get a share of all the revenue that happens on all the TenX issued CCs. https://www.tenx.tech/

An online casino that shares it profits with the tokenholders (shareholders) https://www.edgeless.io/#!/index

just like the market corrected after Bitcoin hit 1$ the first time 10$ the first time 100$ the first time 1000$ the first time. 8000$ the first time.

Sure markets correct, but somehow the ride continued.

I love how Silicon Valley was ridiculing industries like print, brick and mortar commerce and old-media for not adopting to the new future technologies.

But now that something appeared that challenges SVs status quo, they do just the same and dismiss it. I think this shows that legacy thinking is a psychological problem and not an IQ problem.

Dismissing ICO in this early stage is equal to dismissing eCommerce 20years ago because someone got scammed buying something online.

Countries like Switzerland and Singapore created and will further create a legal structure to connect the real world transactions to the tokens.

Sure some countries will ban it, just like China has banned free internet access, this doesn't mean that free internet access is bad.

95% of People on this planet are not affected by the SEC. (they live outside of the US)

Bitcoin was a good proof of concept, the true value will come from things like Ethereum and others.

Even thought the ICOs are in a clear bubble right now, the mechanism behind the ICOs is a solid one and could provide low friction VC funding for the next generation of Start Ups. Taking out rent seeking institutions like Private Equity banks, VCs and traditional banks will create a lot of value.

Ethereums first mover advantage for the ICO market will proof to be of a huge value in the race for the dominating world crypto currency.

Its interesting to see how hostile HN is towards Cryptos. Completely ignoring the opportunities that it offers for fund raising Start Ups. At the same time HN likes to bash VCs that are uptight and how hard it is to find capital. I think this is a sign that even the tech world is not resistant to legacy thinking. Just like the legacy thinkers of other industries, like print and brick and mortar commerce were dismissing the new innovation that is happening on the internet. This time the "internet guys" that are so familiar with the legacy VC model are dismissing the new innovation in VC.

As with most legacy thinker its almost impossible to change there mind with arguments, they like to ponder on the risks and counter arguments, just to stay comfy in the status quo.

Banking, Finance, VC is one of the oldest industries with the least innovation in the last century.

The really smart VCs did already realize that and instead of shuffing their head into the sand. They started proactivaly getting involved into the field

Tim Draper of DFJ, (Tesla, SpaceX, Skype Early Investor) holds over 1B$ in the crypto space.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obKtE1in7NA

That article is incorrect. The youngest self made billionaire is Vitalik Buterin at an age of 23, the founder of Ethereum. Ethereum has a market cap of currently 35B. Its rumoured that he has 5-10% of the coin supply.