It's the perfect setup for likely getting owned for being wrong / callous due to future events.

Exactly right. It seems like once these people get too big, then they just lose their minds and do stupid crap. What SoftBank + Son did with WeWork was beyond idiotic.

Musk making a stupid high and fast offer for Twitter is another example. At least he realized his mistake and tried to back out, but it's probably too late.

"Adam is a visionary leader who revolutionized the second largest asset class in the world -- commercial real estate -- by bringing community and brand to an industry in which neither existed before"

Neumann's "revolution" was to burn billions of his investors' dollars by trying to turn work into a party. It was an utter and complete failure.

WeWork took nearly $13B in investment before it immolated. Today, it is valued at something like $5.5B and it is STILL losing money. It is unclear if they will ever achieve breakeven and may very well be on their way to bankruptcy and liquidation in a year or two.

Neumann's conduct in running the company was egregious. He basically ran a successful Ponzi scheme all while partying on others' money. He personally walked away a billionaire.

Andreessen is allowing himself to be conned by Neumann's personal charisma exactly like Son was. Given what we all just saw with WeWork it is simply mind boggling that anyone would be eager to make the same mistake again as BankSoft did.

"And then the market turned."

That's the real core of it.

He has buyer's remorse because he is likely to lose many tens of billions of dollars all due to his massive ego because he believed he knew better than everyone else and no one will tell him 'no.'

You seemed to skip over my comment that Bitcoin intentionally and permanently caps the throughput at around 7 transactions per second.

I 100% agree that Bitcoin can't possibly be a substitute for systems like our credit card and banking systems. The transaction rates it supports are *WAY* too low for that.

Blockheads will argue that "Layer 2 solutions" like Lightning will solve the throughput problem. Well, that's a whole other BFT system that you also need to trust works properly and can't be exploited, etc.

Color me unconvinced.

Bitcoin rate limits the amount of transactions that can be pushed through permanently at about 7 per second, regardless of how many are trying to get through.

When there are "too many" transactions to process, then the ones who pay more get prioritized and everyone else gets to wait.

So, if/when Bitcoin is overwhelmed then the price of doing business skyrockets.

PS - Mass storage is ridiculously cheap. The entire history of Bitcoin (its full ledger) is about 324 GB right now. That's after 10+ years of running. Most laptops have 10x that.

PPS - Also, there's no good reason to keep the whole history unless you want to analyze it for some reason.

"...isn't that a Ponzi scheme?"

Bitcoin, etc., is no more a Ponzi scheme than gold (or other similar hard commodities).

Pretty much the only reason to buy and hold gold is because you believe in the future people will trade you money or other goods for it, preferably in a better exchange than you bought it.

The exact same is true for Bitcoin if you are "investing" in it in hopes that people will give you more money for it in the future than you originally paid.

I wouldn't call that a Ponzi Scheme but rather speculative "investing."

Because it is hilarious that people are getting so worked up over the "promise" of this kind of system.

"Since Ethereum can only process 15 transactions per second ..."

This is the alleged future of finance?

Anyone who believes that a transfer program like SS is a Ponzi Scheme has already proven they don't have a clue about what they are talking.

I could have been more precise and said and "non global warming gas producing" energy, but that's a mouthful. So, I used a less precise shorthand instead.

Geothermal energy is "renewable" so long as the Earth's core keeps directing magma towards from where we are drawing that energy. We use the energy and Earth renews it by replacing the heat we withdrew.

You are correct that there is a finite amount of energy available from Earth, from Sun, indeed the entire universe before we get to a uniform heat death.

Of course, that has jack squat to do with mankind over the next century or so, which is why I (and anyone with their head screwed on straight) didn't address it.

"A typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year."

So, only $2,750 per year per vehicle! Plus, that is only the marginal cost and assumes the capture process is powered by 100% renewable energy!

"We're going to need a bigger boat ..."

If a clause in a contract is illegal, then why on Earth should a court enforce it after they've determined that it was illegal in the first place?

Also, if you go your route, then it may be very difficult to get standing in the first place because you have to somehow first prove that you've suffered a harm to even get into court. Think about illegal non-compete clauses in an employment contract for example. How on Earth do you prove that you've suffered harm before you even try violating it?

By violating the contract and then having the counter party sue you, then your case is much more likely to actually get heard and evaluated as your counter party will clearly seem to have standing and the contract likely stipulates that violating it causes harm in-and-of-itself.

"... she ordered the Cupertino, California-based technology giant to allow all app and game developers to steer consumers to outside payment methods on the web. All developers for the first time could be able to include a button in their apps to let users pay for transactions online, circumventing Apple's fees.

She also ordered Epic to pay at least $4 million in damages to Apple for breach of contract, which included collecting payments outside of Apple's in-app-purchase system."

Okay, so Apple contractually forcing developers to use their in-app-purchase system is anti-competitive and no longer allowed, but Fornite needs to pay millions of dollars for forcing a legal issue and then proving that point in court???

That Barbie incident sprung to my mind too.

I think the situations are largely analogous. The Barbie one was worse because its targeted audience was specifically young girls rather than the general population, but the same reasoning basically holds true.