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I spent most of the last two years working on an NFT anti-fraud solution[0]

I spent most of the last two years working on an NFT anti-fraud solution[0]. My two prior startups were (essentially) in telecom and healthcare. Coming from these well established, highly regulated, somewhat legacy industries to "crypto"/NFTs/web3 was a very interesting experience, to say the least. Users/potential customers for our solution ranged from creators to marketplaces to collectors/investors. Several very general and broad observations: 1) The anonymous/pseudo anonymous nature of the space is bizarre. I would have multiple voice-only meetings with people using aliases and avatars for all communications. To this day I only know some people as "Mango Man" or whatever. Meeting people who could just burn down an entire identity and start fresh when things go sideways is an indicator of the nature of the space. 2) There is a general lack of "adults in the room". I would get on a call with the Founder/CEO of a marketplace or project that was valued (at least) in the > $100m range and hear and see things that were horrifying. …

Original discussionCoinbase cuts staff by a further 20%486 source comments · at import
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JE

They literally had people with 1-2 years of experience conducting interviews last I remember. They were on an unhinged hiring spree before they ipo’d, so this was coming no matter what.

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CA

> The anonymous/pseudo anonymous nature of the space is bizarre. I would have multiple voice-only meetings with people using aliases and avatars for all communications. To this day I only know some people as "Mango Man" or whatever. Meeting people who could just burn down an entire identity and start fresh when things go sideways is an indicator of the nature of the space. I can't blame them. It involves money and it's a new and risky and currently unregulated space. Things go sideways unexpectedly or the SEC changes their rules suddenly (see them possibly classifying a bunch of tokens as securities when they didn't before, with all the KYC and other regulations that requires) and you run the risk of having both users that went too deep into it (like exist for damn near everything, including Pokemon cards) trying to kill you and SEC trying to put you in jail. I've done a little code assi…

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KR

> 1) The anonymous/pseudo anonymous nature of the space is bizarre. I would have multiple voice-only meetings with people using aliases and avatars for all communications. To this day I only know some people as "Mango Man" or whatever. Meeting people who could just burn down an entire identity and start fresh when things go sideways is an indicator of the nature of the space. Most employees at Kraken don't know what the CTO looks like. He never turns the camera on during meetings and as far as I'm aware hasn't showed up to the in person events. He wrote most of the legacy backend. This was mostly a curiosity though. None of the other points apply to him. He was professional. > 6) VC in the space is even more wild than what has been reported in the media. I'll just leave this one at that. I know a guy who went to a crypto hackathon (which is a chance for devs and start ups to show off for…

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