Wayne, you said earlier that your vegan billionaire friend Sam was a strong advocate for the animals. My question is.....before he lost everything financially and was still a billionaire.....did he use his $$$$$$$ to help animals?
Wayne, I trust you. Usually I'm right there with you, or you bring me around and broaden my perspective as I read through your blog and other publications (especially the previous one about SBF, I had no idea he was interested in animal welfare). But this one seems an overstretch.
Disclosures: I haven't listened to the podcast. This was all typed on my phone on a whim, so please excuse the less-than-perfect formatting. This was originally an email to Wayne personally but ive decided to comment it here as well. Also I do not expect you to expend energy for a direct response but of course welcome any.
I invested in some Bitcoin in 2014. I quickly lost interest for many reasons, but mostly when it became evident (to me) that scalability was infeasible due to high transaction costs and competition for the computing resources needed to make transactions. This reality led to the need for centralized authorities to govern transactions off of any blockchain, and defeats the entire purpose that crypto was supposed to fulfill: decentralization. Maybe proof of stake will solve this, I'm honestly not informed enough on that to know as I stopped researching crypto/blockchain as a serious venture a long time ago. (I presently don't even see value of the promised decentralization blockchain attempts to offer. I actually have more faith in our public institutions than I ever have before. But that's another topic). From what I do see though, the crypto marketplace is failing to even meet its fundamental goals of democratization and decentralization as it funnels billions of dollars into the pockets of SBF and even much more slimy actors. The crypto marketplace has devolved into dizzying levels of false promises, obscurities, and negative returns stemming from what is in reality a simple level of complexity being warped to sound more complicated than it is in order to confuse and rob the gullible and desperate layman.
Has this company proven to have a positive impact yet, or is it all still just promises and fanciful ideas? What makes this cryptocurrency different from all the other rug pulls that also promise huge output (be it public good or financial gain) from zero or minimal input and go on to clean out investors while delivering exactly nothing of substance? At least traditional corporations, with their hoarding CEOs and single-minded profit motive, usually sell products and services that have real tangible uses. I would tread extremely carefully into the crypto hive if I were you, and not make assertions that crypto is or even can be a force for good. Historically it's only been a hype-driven cesspool of scams and fraud, with utility only as a small-scale black market.
This company's website is full to the brim with the same techno babble and overuse of obscure acronyms that every blockchain venture uses to obscure reality. If an idea can only be expressed with self-referencing jargon then it has no application to the real world. I reject the notion that the smartest among us are the hardest to understand. Intelligence is, to a large degree, knowing how to convey your message appropriately. So as you can tell I'm not a very smart man.
Crypto, and more broadly blockchain, is shown by history to be a negative sum game, a pyramid scheme through and through. Of course, I'm intrigued that you are entertaining the idea that a casino can turn into a min-maxed force for good, and look forward to learning more. If you are invested enough in this to write a dedicated blog post I'll certainly give it a read.
As always, thank you for the stimulating and relevant ideas. Congratulations on winning the smithfield case and establishing a judicial precedent for the right to rescue. I'm glad you are not headed to prison, though I'm sure you will be able to continue your level-headed, yet awesomely inspirational, work in any environment, and that's no small part of what makes you inspirational to me.
Wayne, you said earlier that your vegan billionaire friend Sam was a strong advocate for the animals. My question is.....before he lost everything financially and was still a billionaire.....did he use his $$$$$$$ to help animals?
The problem of trust remains: who ist engineering and what into that crypto at the beginning, and who is able to control it?
Wayne, I trust you. Usually I'm right there with you, or you bring me around and broaden my perspective as I read through your blog and other publications (especially the previous one about SBF, I had no idea he was interested in animal welfare). But this one seems an overstretch.
Disclosures: I haven't listened to the podcast. This was all typed on my phone on a whim, so please excuse the less-than-perfect formatting. This was originally an email to Wayne personally but ive decided to comment it here as well. Also I do not expect you to expend energy for a direct response but of course welcome any.
I invested in some Bitcoin in 2014. I quickly lost interest for many reasons, but mostly when it became evident (to me) that scalability was infeasible due to high transaction costs and competition for the computing resources needed to make transactions. This reality led to the need for centralized authorities to govern transactions off of any blockchain, and defeats the entire purpose that crypto was supposed to fulfill: decentralization. Maybe proof of stake will solve this, I'm honestly not informed enough on that to know as I stopped researching crypto/blockchain as a serious venture a long time ago. (I presently don't even see value of the promised decentralization blockchain attempts to offer. I actually have more faith in our public institutions than I ever have before. But that's another topic). From what I do see though, the crypto marketplace is failing to even meet its fundamental goals of democratization and decentralization as it funnels billions of dollars into the pockets of SBF and even much more slimy actors. The crypto marketplace has devolved into dizzying levels of false promises, obscurities, and negative returns stemming from what is in reality a simple level of complexity being warped to sound more complicated than it is in order to confuse and rob the gullible and desperate layman.
Has this company proven to have a positive impact yet, or is it all still just promises and fanciful ideas? What makes this cryptocurrency different from all the other rug pulls that also promise huge output (be it public good or financial gain) from zero or minimal input and go on to clean out investors while delivering exactly nothing of substance? At least traditional corporations, with their hoarding CEOs and single-minded profit motive, usually sell products and services that have real tangible uses. I would tread extremely carefully into the crypto hive if I were you, and not make assertions that crypto is or even can be a force for good. Historically it's only been a hype-driven cesspool of scams and fraud, with utility only as a small-scale black market.
This company's website is full to the brim with the same techno babble and overuse of obscure acronyms that every blockchain venture uses to obscure reality. If an idea can only be expressed with self-referencing jargon then it has no application to the real world. I reject the notion that the smartest among us are the hardest to understand. Intelligence is, to a large degree, knowing how to convey your message appropriately. So as you can tell I'm not a very smart man.
Crypto, and more broadly blockchain, is shown by history to be a negative sum game, a pyramid scheme through and through. Of course, I'm intrigued that you are entertaining the idea that a casino can turn into a min-maxed force for good, and look forward to learning more. If you are invested enough in this to write a dedicated blog post I'll certainly give it a read.
As always, thank you for the stimulating and relevant ideas. Congratulations on winning the smithfield case and establishing a judicial precedent for the right to rescue. I'm glad you are not headed to prison, though I'm sure you will be able to continue your level-headed, yet awesomely inspirational, work in any environment, and that's no small part of what makes you inspirational to me.
Cheers,
Zach S