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Comment by akerro | Hacker News Reader

Interesting considering that a lot of cities and countries started war against this business model, it's highly regulated, restricted or completely banned.

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Regulation poses a risk but if done in a non-destructive way it could actually legitimize Airbnb in the eyes of governments.

Airbnb has to comply though. There is regulation in NYC, and Airbnb doesn't help the city verify at all. So if you show up here, you never know if the cops are going to knock on your door.

Not just cities and countries, lease agreements also increasingly have an explicit anti-Airbnb clause.

My lease has one.

Not interesting at all IMO. Better IPO before it's too late.

Then 2020 is too far.

Every day after today seems too late.

That's not even remotely a concern as far as their IPO goes. Airbnb's business is a spectacular success and will remain so. There's no serious threats on the horizon, that includes regulation and competition. They smashed their own 2017 forecast numbers, delivering $2.6 billion in sales and were profitable.

Do you think countries banning AirBnB has no effect on price of their shares?

Which countries are those?

Not countries, and not illegal _but_ :-) I personally know that Barcelona an Dublin have introduced laws that make it more difficult to have more apartments hit the market (Licences with heavy penalties)

It’s not all black and white, though. Limited supply pushes up the prices (and AirBnB’s earnings are a percentage of the total spend), licensing requirements remove a few unknowns, decrease the potential of the host running some kind of bait-and-switch scam and make a rental appear more legitimate from the guest’s point of view.

(typing this from an AirBnB apartment run by a licensed host in Barcelona)

My old home of Edinburgh has also talked about similar restrictions:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-427...

Japan

Japan, recently a few cities in Spain and Portugal, also UK Manchester and Cardiff have stricter regulations.

I’m not aware of any countries they’re outright banned from. But regardless, every company faces regulatory challenges at scale. I don’t see why this is any different.

I use a few platforms, including airbnb, when I look for accomodation. What makes airbnb better? The only different thing I noticed is that they validate my ID.

Of course the obvious answer is network effect, but I guess you're saying that's negligible here? I think I agree. I also think that a decentralized version, which can more easily avoid censorship, will deliver more value.

Is there a decentralized anything that has been successful outside of email?

Generally not unless there is an actual need for the decentralization. Otherwise it's easier and more profitable to build a centralized platform. BitTorrent is a decentralized success because there is an actual requirement that it is decentralized.

DNS, although the individual registries are each centralized.

The great Dyn attack of 2016 would disagree with you in practice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Dyn_cyberattack

BitTorrent Bitcoin

couch surfing

oops i guess not in terms of having a website. but it _feels_ totally different— like a distributed community— than all these top down financially motivated “sharing” economies.

Very easy to provide fake ID actually.

If you don't think regulation is a serious threat, you're crazy. The fact that Airbnb being completely outlawed is on the table in a lot of places should tell you that regulation is a big concern.

You don't think it's remotely a concern that a new law in Japan wiped out 40,000 Airbnbs overnight?

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