Crypto currencies (or atleast DeFI) is trying to solve a pretty pragmatic problem: There is 1.7B unbanked people in the world and banking services are outdated and unavailable for large portion of humankind.
I mean that is pretty good problem to work on IMO. I think articles like this that talk about monetary politics are missing the point a bit.
I live in Denmark, and even then it takes approx ~10-24 hours to transfer funds between banks, imagine if we could reduce that time to mere seconds- or minutes?
You hit on a point that bothers me in all the discussions of cryptocurrency. Not having access to banks is a real issue; quicker bank transfers a less critical, but still real concern. Neither of these need cryptocurrency to be solved, and neither of them are solved by cryptocurrency; so why are they used as arguments?
Concrete example: I have an app on my phone that allows me to instantly transfer funds from my bank account to other people using a QR code with no transaction cost. That was part of the promise of cryptocurrencies and is still trotted out as a potential benefit - but this system does not use cryptocurrency at all and has none of its downsides.
If a problem is solved without cryptocurrency, and without cryptocurrency's crippling problems, cryptocurrency clearly wasn't the answer to begin with.
> Crypto currencies (or atleast DeFI) is trying to solve a pretty pragmatic problem: There is 1.7B unbanked people in the world and banking services are outdated and unavailable for large portion of humankind.
This take is quite plainly absurd. If anyone has enough access to a working internet connection to make crypto transactions possible, they already meet all the requirements to perform transactions through any other service such as PayPal or even any bank at all.
I'm not sure if you're just being naive, but there are lots of people deemed "unbankable", e.g. Imigrants and refugees. And in the coming years, the number of people with that position will only raise. It's 2021, most people in the world have access to a cheap phone and celular, but might not have the same right to certain services that you enjoy...
> Crypto currencies (or atleast DeFI) is trying to solve a pretty pragmatic problem: There is 1.7B unbanked people in the world and banking services are outdated and unavailable for large portion of humankind.
Huh? Is that the story now? I thought cryptocurrencies were about 1) implementing some kind of cyberpunk-libertarian vision of a world free from the control of central bankers, 2) getting rich quick off of speculation, or 3) rushing to apply a faddish technology to be hip and cool.
I would be very surprised if DeFI's relationship to the unbanked was anything besides "uh, so now that we've made this thing, what use cases could we use to sell it?" (e.g. exactly opposite to what you've described).
I don't think that most DeFi projects are REALLY about solving the problem that the unbanked face, despite some of them say so. Facts speak louder than words.
"The president of the Ford Foundation, Mr. Walker, said in an email that he had confidence in Ozy. “We need new media companies to challenge the status quo, shake things up, and go deep on the issues that matter most,” he said. “In an increasingly diverse world, it’s no coincidence that a company with co-founders of Black and Indian descent would be so successful.”
Remember this is the sort person investing capital nowadays..
I’m glad someone is pointing this out. The article makes it sound like the accused company is wrapped up in a lot of social justice propaganda. Hucksters like this CEO know how to leverage woke messaging to their benefit. Woke is good for business.
That their first instinct was to frame the excuse as empathy for an employee struggling with a “mental health episode” says it all. They know their audience.
Their YouTube Channel [1] makes it immediately obvious they do not have anything close to a consistent viewership audience of millions. Anyone who invested in this should fire their entire due diligence staff. Existing investors are the main idiots here, with Goldman only redeeming themselves at the last minute. YouTube doesn’t have much skin (no pun intended) in the game. Nobody is gonna pursue this further because it will look bad.
This is what made me angry about this story the most. "Mental health episode" is quickly becoming a universal excuse anybody can use for anything for mild discomfort to downright criminal behavior. Elizabeth Holmes is going down the same path in her defense. Woke is good for business, let's see if good enough to stay out of jail. For Samir Rao, it probably is.
> Their "Carlos Watson Show" channel looks a lot more legit
Best part of 100k subscribers - and views for the videos 1 week ago: 223, 223000, 249, 188, 82, 232, 570, 123, 14000, 102.
I guess they forgot to buy followers for the Carlos Watson Show instagram account, 1,075 followers. Although it does get about as many likes and comments as the posts on the 'corporate' Instagram account with its 655k followers.
They're just vapid and corporate, and vapid and corporate means a lot of warmed over cultural studies buzzwords. Raising capital based on wokeness is a no-lose situation (ask Theranos.) As an investor, you can count your investment as pseudo-charity work in your press releases and reports.
It has to be some kind of money laundering scam, or other fraud, right?
Surely, no matter how out of touch they are, these old investors understand that not a single teen and college studens actually watches Ted Talks every day, reads Vox, listens to the NYT Daily on their way to classes, and has the Open Society Foundations RSS feed on their phone, right? They understand no one actually gives a F** about "media companies that challenge the status quo, shake things up, and go deep on the issues that matter most". Come on! The most "media" they watch is Linus Media Group, the Daily Show, and John Oliver. Only slightly exaggerating. It's impossible for them to be this out of touch!
Is there any data to back this up? IIRC, the NYT is performing very well in the 20-something demographic.
Also, IME generally people start reading more seriously, such as the NY Times, etc., when they're older; we need data on how such a media company performs in markets relative to some standard for realistic expectations. I'm sure the NY Times has few readers among high schoolers, but that doesn't indicate future problems
Not an investor. Never worked as an investor. Only worked for charities. Marc Lasry, however, is a very well-known investor.
Investing and charity does seem to be merging in quite a puzzling way. Saying that this company has been "so successful" after the founders have been caught committing fraud (not in the legal sense) is inexplicable.
I worked in finance. If this happened at a company that I recommended, I would have lost my job (I actually know a fund manager who had a well-publicised 5% position in a company that failed, they had institutional money only so the reaction was swift...50% drop in AUM, investors demanded they fire 75% of the analyst team...this does happen in finance). I guess not everyone has to play by those rules.
Ironically, it sounds just like old media. Pay a few good 'ol boys to put out the stuff I like and agree with. I will lose all my money but...who cares?
The president of the Ford Foundation might attend the same cocktail parties as the investment leadership at the US's large banks, but you can rest easy knowing that (1) both are still very cool with fossil fuels, and (2) only the latter is investing any meaningful amount of capital.
Why not just train on your codebase/IDE? The best practice you can get is by actually using vim when developing. I do not see a need to go "practice" on a website.
Would you mind to clarify what exactly you find to be a non-sense? I am aware that there is almost no options trading in Denmark (in fact worst in the whole Europe). Which is funny given that all its neighbours (Netherlands, Sweden, Germany) have relatively ok options markets. So indeed, if you never heard of options then it's quite likely to you it sounds like some alien nonsense..
But I would really appreciate to hear your thoughts on crypto. The Danes I know tend to be super conservative (imo) and advocate a complete worldwide ban on crypto.. Are you one of them??
I built an online flashcard platform (memordo.com) which support live-rendering of latex and codeblocks, and custom study/repetition schedules. Memordo has totally replaced Anki for me, which is nice to build something you actually prefer to use.
I mean that is pretty good problem to work on IMO. I think articles like this that talk about monetary politics are missing the point a bit.
I live in Denmark, and even then it takes approx ~10-24 hours to transfer funds between banks, imagine if we could reduce that time to mere seconds- or minutes?