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Comment by gdbsjjdn | Hacker News Reader

Everyone who was trading monkey JPEGs has moved on to claiming that they can replace your staff with an LLM.

I have no idea what the former has to do with the latter. NFTs were a scam (I think the same about crypto more generally, but know that's a more idiosyncratic belief). LLMs are not.

Is your point that LLMs are overhyped? Everything is overhyped. That's not what distinguished NFTs from previous hype cycles; the fact that there was literally nothing there is what distinguished it.

I believe his point is something like this: entrepreneurs used to look for ideas on how to create something of value that people want, and then create a sustainable business model out of it, in order to turn a profit. There was some pride in pleasing customers. Now they look for ideas to make a profit, whether or not something of actual value is created or if people actually want it.

I think the point is that many of the individuals involved in hyping NFTs moved on to hyping projects in AI. Even if there's immediate real world utility in AI, it's reasonable to approach the space cautiously if you have concern over the demographics contributing to a significant portion of it.

The point literally may be that the get-rich-quick-type founders who were doing NFTs have now pivoted to doing something in AI.

I know at least 2-3 people that fit that profile.

Except for a16z who are multi-track-grifting with both at the same time, and trying to find ways to put crypto in AI, or AI in crypto, or something.

Can you expand on this? I see this brought up a lot but if they don’t return capital they’ll have to shut down?

Probably not hard to return the fund when Coinbase is in their portfolio.

Do you know what round / multiple they got?

They are big enough that they basically make the market in venture.

The fact that even they couldn't force much interest in web 3.0 should tell you what a bad idea it really is.

They are huge but only like 4% of the entire VC market so not necessarily enough to substantially move it?

They are held in very high regard and are very well connected so other VCs will throw money at their portcos.

What is a16z?

> AH Capital Management, LLC (commonly known as Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z) is an American privately held venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.

$46B under management, so one of the larger players.

It was a monkey business, wasn’t it. /s

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