recursive4

Yes; BTC is non-fungible with the majority of your potential trading partners. However, depending on your locality, the same can be said about USD, Renminbi, Euro, et al. You are biased in that you are discounting the shifting Overton Window of what your trading partners will accept in the future.

Monopolies assume all forms.

You’re correct that the insurance policies cover operational risk (again, akin to FDIC) but not default risk.

There are a few salient points to unpack here:

1. Are these companies breaking the law?

2. Are Nexo and others "tak[ing] advantage of unsuspecting investors"?

3. Does these companies think they're "above the law"?

4. Is the Martin Act protecting the investing public in this case?

Each of these is deserving of its own in-depth answer, but TLDRs are sufficient:

1. Yes, because securities law is written to be a catch all (both the Martin Act and the 1933/34 Securities Acts) where exceptions are drawn as to what is _not_ a security. While these accounts may act more like traditional "bank accounts", bank accounts are specifically excluded from securities law because they fall under a (stricter) regulatory regime.

2. No. The risk profiles on these products match that of Robhinhood, Wealthfront, or a Chase checking account (Genesis' custodial insurance policy beats the FDIC's $200k ceiling). Biggest issue is that you don't own your private keys but that's not unique here.

3. I don't think so, but they do know they're not in full compliance. This is a game of Natural Law (see point 4) and cat and mouse, and staying ahead of regulators is different than being "above" the law.

4. Stablecoin yield-accounts are one of the few liquid, low-risk options for beating inflation and likely the only one accessible for every-day people. If anything, they should be more pervasive in accordance with the principal that BlockFi, Nexo, etc. and their ilk are offering a social good even if it is outside of what they are _permitted_ to allow by law. It is US fiscal policy, brittle supply chains, and lagging regulatory regimes that are detrimental to the investing public here.

And GUSD.

Check out multi-sig, which transfigures this point of failure into a cooperation problem.

For context, I've accepted ~$400k (Eth, USDT, USDC) in payments for physical assets.

A few important questions here:

- What currencies do your customers hold?

– At what price points are you transacting?

– What are you selling?

– How much of this process are you looking to automate?

– Estimated monthly trx volume?

Presumably you are not interested in exposure to price volatility (since you're not holding as an investment) so your holdings should be denominated in USDC and custodied, earning a yield through BlockFi or Nexo.

I'll keep an eye out for your answer in the comments.

Check the bird

In college I studied both CS and Studio Fine Arts (painting), and subsequently while working in tech (startup SE) showed work – that I had painted "for fun" – in NYC art galleries. From there I became part of the NYC arts community and began thinking about interesting ways to combine art & code. I built a few of these in my spare time, which caught up to my day job and led to a SE position at a startup that built software for the art market.

Assuming you reside in a city that has a strong arts community, I would focus on the nexus between where you are at and where you want to be: how could your skill set move the needle in a creative field? If you're living in a cultural desert, take your search online.

There is exciting work being done at the application layer across creative fields from Generative Art (https://artblocks.io/) to revenue management for musicians (https://www.ampled.com/) to publishing (https://mirror.xyz).

At the protocol layer I'm specifically interested in royalty payments streams (https://superfluid.finance), fictionalized ownership models, and partial common ownership (https://www.radicalxchange.org/media/papers/ownership-and-pu...).

Asking the question in this manner indicates to me that you're lacking inspiration and the resulting specific intrinsic motivation; find this first and the steps to transition will become clear.

This comment is top rated yet misconstrues – in order to advance the author's values – both the argument and the context. Topically, Wenger is a partner at USV (Manhattan) and _The World After Capital_ was published as a Gitbook in order to be open source.

It is not intended to describe nor comment, politically, on the day to day of capital flows. Attacking it as such is a straw man argument at best and intellectually lazy at worst.

The article does not explicitly note that GMU is a public university, an important detail. If it were private, such a determination would be unfounded on the principal that two entities have the right to enter into a transaction strictly upon mutually and exclusively amenable terms.

Without further information informed answers and suggestions cannot be provided.

An alternative, market-powered fix: lift the regulatory statues that prevent insurance companies from raising the cost of coverage of their unvaccinated customers.

This is on the less expensive side of alternatives and doesn't require a minimum annual spend quota. They nailed this for startups, which I imagine is a combination response to / anticipation of regulatory requirements in Web3 apps.

The best way to learn is to do because learning requires tight feedback loops.

You have more or less the correct idea with these steps, however they should be weighted (and continuously re-weighted as you progress).

I would add an additional step 0: commit to yourself that this is something you're going to see through. Do you want to start something because of a sense of FOMO or because you genuinely enjoy creating? Are you ready to quit your job and start, having the confidence in your tenacity? Importantly, your internal motivations will inform the amount of weight that should be put into each step.

For example, if you're building something to solve a problem that you yourself experience, steps 1 through 4 can be weighed at 0 and 5a (5 should be split into distinct parts) should be weighted at 1. Assuming the behaviors which give rise to your need are distributed, within the general population, on a bell curve and you fall somewhere within a standard deviation of the median, you are your average customer and don't need to prove the market ahead of time.

Overall, YC's advice to "build something people want" is spot on. Do that systematically and everything else is more likely to fall into place in spite of your weaknesses.

For those not familiar, check out Postgraphile.

I share these curiosities and agree with the sentiment that something that requires skill to de-risk should not simply have its perception of risk lowered but actually educate. This is likely a contrarian view, but there is a benefit in novices losing non-trivial amounts of money so that they learn risk avoidance and develop a respect for expertise & experience. It's no different from how children learn from mistakes and the risk is proportional to the learning experience.

Upvote if you're pro-humanity after witnessing this bramble.

I second this.

I spent 3-4 hours per day sitting on a park-bench in NYC reading, playing guitar, and writing between Jan-June of this year (and before you ask, I work a 9am to 5am). If you keep a friendly disposition and are welcoming by saying hello when people take notice of you, they will open up quickly – I must note with full sincerity and severity that this assumes you listen and ask thoughtful questions; people are quick to sense when someone is not genuinely and empathetically interested in them.

I've made friends with musicians (and had some great impromptu jam sessions), homeless people, CEOs, software engineers, mentally ill, folks addicted to hard drugs, guys formerly homeless, people who were in prison for a decade and trying to get by and reconnect with their kids, students, tourists, professionals, hourly-workers, and everyone in-between.

Now if you live in an area with a low-density of foot traffic this will not work and I do not have first-hand advice besides, perhaps, move to a more densely populated area. That you asked this question speaks to what you're looking for in this life.