Comment by Liron
4 years ago
Here's patio11's thread: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1459682519360491523
I was shocked to see A16z recently investing $150M in Axie Infinity and doubling down on their justification of play-to-earn as a coherent concept, as if it's not fundamentally a pyramid scheme. It's lowered my expectation of what passes for thought leadership in our industry.
Thought leadership smeadership.
A16z's goal is to make money, lots of it. Shouldn't confuse its purpose by giving it other goals.
Yes but even an amoral organization could be expected to anticipate damage to their reputation when they're seen to be propping up a sufficiently transparent pyramid scheme, and decide not to cross that line. I'm still not sure they made the right move for their long-term interests, considering there's more reputational damage to come when the pyramid implodes. (They probably won't take financial damage though, as they're likely to sell near the peak.)
you mistakenly assume that A16z has the requirement to maintain a reputation in the same way you personally would.
Their reputation doesn't come from being moral. It comes from being able to make lots of money, and if this allows them to make lots of money, their reputation (as a VC) would only grow.
Indeed, the classic line, "Don't make the mistake of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison," seems apropos here.
You'd be surprised how much VCs idolize ponzi schemes. They aren't even shy about it, and haven't been for years if you get to talking to them.
Some examples would be appreciated, please.
Oh my god. That podcast with the Axie dude made me recoil with disgust. The way they're selling the pay-to-earn concepts comparing it to mobile games is absolutely vile especially when mobile games are equally predatory
Sometimes I wish I didn't have any scruples so I could mint money from misery like this
Play-to-earn would be a coherent concept if the playing produced something of value.
HN is play-to-earn. Except all you earn is worthless non-exchangeable karma.
> Except all you earn is worthless non-exchangeable karma.
I think you look at it the wrong way:
For me that "karma" counter on the profile only roughly signals someones worth here: it might either be because they've been helping others for a long time or it might be because of tactical posting of a few interesting stories ahead if everyone else or even just grinding by trying out a couple of (non spam) stories a day or something.
The real value of HN comes from what I have learned over the years, and for many others from the business opportunities they have found as well.
Bonus: I think the only real value of those stupid internet points is to look at threads and see which ones are getting upvoted or downvoted.
If they are upvoted it signals that people found them useful.
If nothing happens that either means the comment was seen by others as correct but not very interesting or few people read it because discussion moved elsewhere.
If they get downvoted then either they:
- said something mean
- was wrong
- said something widely believed to be wrong
- wrote in a way that made people misunderstand your otherwise correct explanation
- you poked a wasps nest, saying something correct that angered many easily angered individuals.
In fact I think we could (not should) remove the accumulated scores from profiles and not lose much of value (though I think many glances profiles sometimes to get a feel for who the person they talk to are).
> playing produced something of value.
some games manage to do this - EVE Online has a play-to-earn model, and those who grind to earn become gameplay elements for other players (the whole game is PVP non-consensually).
EVE definitely doesn’t have a play-to-earn model. It has a way to pay your “subscription” via the in-game currency but this transaction is still one way and you can’t redeem the playtime token outside of the game for real money (without breaking T&Cs). The play-to-earn elements are the same as all MMOs, in the meta-game with gold farming which CCP still crack down on heavily.
VCs have to put their monthly influx of FedBux somewhere!
Less sarcastically: cheap money effectively lowers the cost of risk, thus increasing the number of risky investments made. And Axie seems like less of a risky investment than Yo was, at least.
Ponzi schemes are great if you leave early enough.
Thought leadership sounds a lot like mind steering.