
Turning Down a Blockchain Job Offer - def-
https://hookrace.net/blog/turning-down-blockchain/?
======
nemild
The danger in a space like this is throwing the baby out with the bath water.

\- Yes, there are an insane amount of scams, and lots of dumb money flowing in

\- Yes, many use cases of blockchains should really be databases

\- Yes, many blockchain job posts are just PR initiatives for companies who
want to differentiate themselves

That said, it's an early time to have a tremendous amount of impact.

Don't like "proof of work"? Go hack on various other implementations. Get
angry at banks? Go figure out ways to remove custodial risk, so that we may
not need as onerous financial regulations that stifle innovation. Angry about
security in this space? Go find security holes and disclose them.

Even for fun side hacks, there's a huge app layer that could be built on your
smart contract blockchain of choice.

I say this having worked at the World Bank, Gates Foundation, and a mobile
payments startup in India: financial services could truly use innovation, and
providing safe, secure, broad access can have huge impact, especially in
countries with weak legal systems. Blockchains are a "shot on goal" of trying
this, though they may also never live up to the hype.

I'm all for calling bullshit on hyped trends (
[https://www.nemil.com/musings/shinyandnew.html](https://www.nemil.com/musings/shinyandnew.html)
), but just because a space attracts snake oil salesmen, "get rich quick"
schemers, and cargo culting programmers doesn't mean that there might not
still be great opportunities to do good engineering and have huge impact.

~~~
ChrisLomont
>Get angry at banks?

I've found in many fields that are as complex as finance, that when I think
something in that field is stupid, unnecessary, or onerous, it is I that am
wrong because I simply didn't understand the _why_ of how that thing came
about.

So I find it fascinating how many people/groups in history have gotten mad at
banks/finance, tried to make a "better" product, gotten stung or robbed
others, only to eventually re-invent many of the things safe, efficient
banking requires.

>I'm all for calling bullshit on hyped trends ... doesn't mean that there
might not still be great opportunities to do good engineering and have huge
impact

The problem is that as a field gets flooded with bullshit and scams, smart
money (and people) turn their talents to other areas the world can be
improved, avoiding the crap.

~~~
danudey
This is true of a lot of Silicon Valley startups I've seen lately as well.
They make a big show of how they can do things better, faster, more
efficiently, and cheaper than existing incumbents, until the government comes
in and says "Did you buy your insurance? Are you paying your employees (or
treating them as employees in the first place)? Are you providing benefits?
Are you certified?"

Then suddenly, the SV companies say "hey, this is BS, we can't be competitive
like this! If we have to do all these things then we can't be cheaper than the
incumbents!"

Joel Spolsky said it pretty well[0]:

 _There’s a subtle reason that programmers always want to throw away the code
and start over. The reason is that they think the old code is a mess. And here
is the interesting observation: they are probably wrong. The reason that they
think the old code is a mess is because of a cardinal, fundamental law of
programming: it’s harder to read code than to write it._

Now we've gotten to the point where people are taking entire buildings and
making them short-term rentals (they're called Hotels), ride-sharing services
are talking about multi-person trips to and from designated locations (it's
called a bus or shuttle), and so on.

Everyone wants to be Stripe or Square and reinvent and simplify things that
people hate, but no one stops to think if this is an area that's complicated
on purpose or if people just think they're smarter than everyone else who came
before them.

[0] [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-
should-...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-
do-part-i/)

~~~
hectorr1
Airbnb and Uber going into hotels and public transportation respectively are
examples of successful companies diversifying their income. The point is that
their core innovation has provided the capital and human resources to tackle
higher level challenges. It had to be a substantial improvement on the
original problem to get that kind of traction in the first place.

The hotel experience needed improvement. So did the taxi experience.
Incumbents were preventing competition through monopoly and regulatory
capture. They won, and in doing so they lost their edge.

Some of the regulations Airbnb and Uber skirted have good reasons. Others had
good reasons, but new ideas and technologies made these reasons less
important. And some were just bad and anti-competitive. The same is true in
financial services.

'You shouldn't do that because it is illegal' argument is actually not an
argument, it's an appeal to authority. Opening the Overton window to consider
why we have the regulations we do, how we got there, and what makes sense
moving forward is key to progress. And it often takes unreasonable people (eg:
Kalanick) to make that happen.

~~~
jstandard
It seems like you're responding to a different argument u/danudey isn't
making.

Their point seems more about people getting too caught up in "disruption for
disruption's sake".

To a certain degree, watching the evolution of cryptocurrency is like watching
techies reinvent banking, one scam or lost transaction at a time.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely see value of many blockchain-related
innovations. Distributed ledgers. Decentralized transactions. Smart contracts
for IoT.

But, I've also met many folks who are more enamored with the concept of
"disrupting banking" without spending much time understanding the what and why
of the disruption.

------
fullshark
> It seems like people already know that they want to use a blockchain even
> before they understand what the problem is, basically a solution in search
> of problems.

This is the story with basically any startup in a hot space. This could be
just as easily about AI / Machine Learning.

~~~
fwdpropaganda
I hear you, but I have to point out that ML at least have already shown that
can solve problems that need to be solved which had no solution before.

~~~
alex_duf
So did the blockchain

Edit: not trying to defend bitcoin here, just pointing that the blockchain
brought a new solution to a trust issue

~~~
Sangermaine
No, it didn't. Blockchain technology is perhaps the biggest recent example of
a solution in search of a problem. It's interesting but still not clear at all
what it would be useful for over what already exists:

>"Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain"

[https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-
with-...](https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-a-use-
case-for-blockchain-ee98c180100)

~~~
chowells
Huh? It's a trustless timestamping service. That's a thing that some protocols
benefit from. Digital notaries, for instance.

That surely justifies a valuation around a few cents per bitcoin.

~~~
fwdpropaganda
Lets say we agree that this timestampting service is trustless (I don't, but
for the sake of the argument lets say I do).

Care to explain how you go from that to "few cents per bitcoin"? I'm asking
for an actual calculation.

~~~
chowells
You're asking for "an actual calculation" to back up a Fermi estimate of the
true value of an irrationally-priced good?

Of course there isn't one. It's a Fermi estimate. The main points were that
the value is greater than 0 but the use is exceptionally niche. Pick any other
Fermi estimate you feel is appropriate for those conditions. It doesn't change
my point.

~~~
fwdpropaganda
"Fermi estimate"? You know that Fermi was known for backing up his talk with
numbers, right? How can you say that then "surely it's a few cents"?

~~~
chowells
So, you have no disagreement with my actual point?

~~~
fwdpropaganda
Is your actual point that bitcoin should be worth at last a few cents just
because the blockchain can be used for timestamping?

------
marcelogranja
I disagree, although the ecosystem is filled with scams, and evangelists have
financial interests in promoting their believes, there are some promising
advantages.

Also the energy requirements for PoW systems are cheap compared to its gains
as pointed out by Nick Szabo: "We need more socially scalable ways to securely
count nodes, or to put it another way to with as much robustness against
corruption as possible, assess contributions to securing the integrity of a
blockchain. That is what proof-of-work and broadcast-replication are about:
greatly sacrificing computational scalability in order to improve social
scalability. That is Satoshi’s brilliant tradeoff. It is brilliant because
humans are far more expensive than computers and that gap widens further each
year. And it is brilliant because it allows one to seamlessly and securely
work across human trust boundaries (e.g. national borders), in contrast to
“call-the-cop” architectures like PayPal and Visa that continually depend on
expensive, error-prone, and sometimes corruptible bureaucracies to function
with a reasonable amount of integrity."

~~~
ttul
Yeah but... the crypto algorithm chosen for Bitcoin is about as energy
intensive as they come. Other algorithms which are more equipment intensive -
scrypt etc - provide the same benefits but without the same disgusting
externality of power consumption.

I wish I grasped proof of stake better. I’m not yet convinced it can be made
to work as well as PoW.

~~~
philipodonnell
The investment in energy-intensive GPUs will also serve as a disincentive for
any change to Bitcoin that does not require energy-intensive GPUs, which will
lock us into this paradigm until something drastic happens.

EDIT: I stand corrected as to the terminology, but if you replace [GPUs] with
[POW hardware], the disincentive will remain.

~~~
jnbiche
No one has seriously mined Bitcoin using GPUs since like 2013. By 2014,
everyone was using FPGAs or ASICs. Now, only ASICs are used.

~~~
philipodonnell
I thought there was a change to the protocol that prevented ASICs from being
as effective?

Perhaps I misunderstood in the context of Bitcoin, but in the context of the
investment in GPUs providing support to pricing, I think that is validated
just from the news a few days ago that GPU pricing because of crypto demand
was causing pricing issues in PC-gaming. And the same principle should apply
to whatever "effort-based" mining technology is in use; any significant
investment in hardware will be a disincentive to allowing improvements in the
efficiency of said hardware.

~~~
Karrot_Kream
A lot of altcoins have come up that are ASIC-resistant. A lot of these use
memory as a bound, but GPUs sill have the memory bandwidth to make mining
fast.

~~~
philipodonnell
I must have mixed up some notes about ASIC-resistant altcoins with some older
info about Bitcoin, its quite difficult to keep track.

------
Alex3917
The space really is getting pretty crazy. I feel like my biggest fear these
days is getting kidnapped by a van full of venture capitalists and forced to
develop cryptocurrencies.

~~~
solotronics
it puts the block on the chain or else it gets the hose again!

------
tlb
In the US, the financial system is about 10% of GDP. (The number depends on
your definitions of financial system, US, GDP, and "is"). It also consumes
vast amounts of resources ranging from gasoline to drive mortgage brokers to
and from work, to the cost of mailing out free low-introductory rate credit
cards.

It's a fair criticism of Bitcoin that it uses a lot of energy, but it's hard
to predict whether it will ultimately use more or less than the existing
system as a percentage of value created.

~~~
jraines
mortgage & credit generally are bad comparisons, because cryptocurrency
doesn't solve this. You still need a credit score or similar reputation metric
associated with your real legal name/entity.

In general I agree, though. Turning energy into trust is definitely worth it,
and we're in a price discovery phase to find out what "it" is.

~~~
fastball
Bitcoin doesn't solve this, but there are plenty[1][2][3][4] of cryptos that
realize this failing in Bitcoin and others and are trying to address it.

1\. [https://www.civic.com/](https://www.civic.com/)

2\.
[https://stratisplatform.com/identity/](https://stratisplatform.com/identity/)

3\. [https://whycardano.com/#social-elements-of-
money](https://whycardano.com/#social-elements-of-money)

4\. [https://neo.org/](https://neo.org/)

------
cocktailpeanuts
While turning down the job is just fine, here's what happened instead:

\- Someone else with similar capabilities as OP's probably took the job.

\- This person will make significantly more money than what OP will be making
(as OP points out)

\- This person will have learned way more about the implication of the
technology, whether it actually is as bad as what mainstream media says or if
those are all coming from ignorance.

Even if this whole Bitcoin thing comes crashing, accepting a job that's much
higher paying, and lets you explore a new edge technology, all while being
able to work remotely, all sound like a game you can't lose.

p.s.

All this narrative about how proof of work == global warming, and how bitcoin
won't work because of such and such are mostly based on lack of deep
knowledge.

Sure, they say "yeah i've read the whitepaper and I totally understand how it
works", but that's not enough. I've been there and now that I know more about
it I feel ashamed of blabbering my mouth to people about these things because
to people who actually know things, these words immediately turn on red flag
and they mentally mark you as "don't know what you're saying".

It's funny how most people who criticize bitcoin and blockchain for all these
things actually haven't gone deep enough to have the expertise to say these
things. They are basing their "opinions" on what someone else--who is most
likely also less than enough informed--said.

If you really want to talk shit about Bitcoin, at least spend about a month,
learning everything possible. Otherwise you'll be ashamed of yourself ever
saying those things (just like I did) when maybe later on in your life you
learn more about the technology.

[Edit] To those who are saying: "if you know so much, why don't you just show
us what you've got? Prove to us that proof of work can work" or things like
that, if it was that simple to explain in a single comment, would I say learn
for one month? (Actually one month is not even enough. It took me a full 3
months of doing nothing but teaching myself to get even closer to
understanding the landscape) Even if I did my best to explain to you here, I
would fail to convince you because it not only involves technology but
everything around the ecosystem. I'm not trying to be condescending. I'm
saying do yourself a favor and teach yourself wth is going on so that you can
make informed decisions about whether you do want to jump in or not. Don't
believe what uninformed people are saying.

~~~
earthtolazlo
Bitcoin mining uses as much energy as the nation of Denmark. Each transaction
confirmation uses as much energy as nine American households do in an entire
day. What “deep knowledge” am I lacking here?

~~~
deevolution
Thats because the bitcoin network is over relied on and the cyptocurrency
space is still infantile and not decentralized enough. Once people realize
that bitcoin isn't the only cryptocurrency out there, they will switch to
other, less expensive coins and the pressure on bitcoin will, hopefully, be
relieved some. Thats the beauty of this space! There can be so many coins and
all with unique and improved attributes!

~~~
hndamien
Until we have functional decentralised exchanges, using a common protocol
would be a nice thing for humanity. Most people don't care about the bigger
picture, they just want to get rich quickly, rather than try and make the
world a better place by working together.

------
jakefuentes
The crypto community is the organized religion of tech
[https://twitter.com/jakefuentes/status/955151552984920064](https://twitter.com/jakefuentes/status/955151552984920064)

~~~
baby
I don't see what this has to do with cryptography.

~~~
Kiro
Crypto = cryptocurrency. Cryptography = cryptography. We may not like it but
the public has decided and there's nothing we can do to prevent it.

~~~
clux
Crypto still just means hidden or secret though. Both sides here probably
ought to increase their specificity by one level.

Interestingly, r/crypto is the cryptography subreddit and has
[https://www.reddit.com/r/crypto/comments/7jrba2/crypto_is_no...](https://www.reddit.com/r/crypto/comments/7jrba2/crypto_is_not_cryptocurrency/)
stickied.

------
philipodonnell
I don't necessarily disagree with the author here, but I would be genuinely
curious if the job offer was for one of the "scammy cryptocurrency ICOs" or
for one of the industry use case that seem to be destined to survive after the
current round of scamminess passes.

~~~
peterkelly
His reasons seemed really strange to me. If I was considering such an offer,
my decision would be based in large part on what exactly the company was doing
in the space and whether I felt it was good or bad.

It's like turning down a job with government just because governments
sometimes do bad things.

~~~
philipodonnell
The last phrase about declining it because of the state of the ecosystem was
what confused me. There are good parts and bad parts of every system, even
when the system is majority bad parts. It seems dismissive to discard both to
avoid one.

------
jondubois
I accepted an offer to join a top cryptocurrency project recently. I worked
for many companies in different industries as a software engineer in the past
and this job feels more meaningful than all of them.

Cryptocurrency is like banking, venture capital, social networking and
religion all rolled into one.

Before, startups used to get traction by joining popular accelerators like
YCombinator, from now on, startups will get traction by affiliating themselves
with popular cryptocurrency projects. It's funding by the people, for the
people; nobody is locked out, everyone can participate.

------
Asdfbla
I liked his comment about trust, it's something that always bothered me with
the very radical trust model of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It is not
entirely clear why you have to go all the way and do away with _all_ trust,
except for niche applications such as transactions for people in repressive
regimes (which are necessary but do not require us to replace conventional
currencies with cryptocoins). In normally stable countries and economies,
trust works great and makes everything so much more efficient.

If you don't like single central banks or intransparent financial institutions
- cool, good thing there are Byzantine consensus algorithms that don't require
proof-of-work but simply some known identities (in blockchain lingo this would
probably be permissioned blockchains). You can get much of the benefits and
build an ecosystem around known, trustworthy actors and don't have to use
awkward mechanisms like proof-of-work.

------
jurandom
I just accepted a generous blockchain job offer with a fortune 500 company.
But they are not interested in building a new blockchain implementation, but
rather exploring smart contracts and their possible relevance to their
business.

~~~
shawabawa3
More likely, they want to be able to show their investors that they're
exploring blockchains so that they aren't seen as dinosaurs missing out on the
hottest new tech

~~~
bduerst
For those of you doubting that this type of market signalling happens, look at
Kodak: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-09/kodak-
sto...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-09/kodak-stock-surges-
after-announcing-coin-to-join-crypto-craze)

------
maze-le
>> It seems like people already know that they want to use a blockchain even
before they understand what the problem is.

I kind of agree with this notion, but it is not limited to blockchains or
cryptocurrencies. I had discussions about using deep learning on a problem
that was very ill suited for machine learning approaches (in the end it was
solved by regular expressions and some simple statistics). Other overhyped
technologies include: microservices, nosql-databases, rdf/sparql/semantic web
and IoT-devices. Some items on this list were overhyped in the past, but have
found a reasonable technological ecosystem in fields that are suited to it,
like rdf. I think the same will happen with the blockchain.

------
jerkstate
> Everyone who is talking positively about cryptocurrencies and making
> hyperbolic claims seems to have invested in them.

I thought this was an interesting claim to use as a disqualifier. If you see
the promise of blockchain, why _wouldn 't_ you invest in them?

~~~
alexbeloi
Because investing in coins is non-productive, those coins don't generate
anything besides demand. If one believes in the technology, one should be
investing in companies working on expanding blockchain tech. Also blockchain
!= coins.

~~~
jerkstate
many of the teams working on expanding blockchain tech in the most interesting
ways are only investable via coins/tokens. in this way, your statement
contradicts itself.

------
arbol
The benefits of blockchain outweigh the initial costs involved in kickstarting
the ecosystem. The same initial flurry of investment happened when the
internet was created. Look how that turned out.

~~~
tonyjstark
Which benefits exactly? I've yet to see a problem where Blockchain is the best
solution except doing ICOs which is not a problem. Also comparing the internet
(having utility form the start) to blockchain (since 10 years nothing but
gambling) does not make any sense...

~~~
kirillseva
not trying to assume any position here, just want to point out that you're
looking at the world through the gucci glasses of someone who lives in a 1st
world country with functional financial and legal systems.

There are plenty of people in the world who live in countries where the legal
system doesn't work, the do not have access to banks, their fiat currency gets
manipulated by the corrupt government. And these people now have smartphones
and Internet.

------
unixhero
I don't understand the high horse.

Accept the offer, rake in the cash, move on.

Whether or not the company eventually becomes a success does not affect the
money you have raked in.

Be greedy, the investors are. If you're an engineer, you're the needed fuel
they need for their fire.

~~~
Asdfbla
Of course, if you go through the world without ethical concerns, then your
plan sounds pretty good.

~~~
unixhero
It is sound. Yes. Thanks!

I am advocating it [this strategy] in this instance. It's not like this is
weapons/defence, private prisons, tracking or mining.

It's a blockchain startup.

------
jraines
He's probably trying to not offend the company by not being more specific, but
given the information offered -- why even apply/interview for a blockchain job
if these are his objections (too much hype, PoW is bad)?

~~~
pavel_lishin
He didn't mention applying or interviewing; this could have been an offer
more-or-less out of the blue. There usually isn't much harm in at least
talking to someone who tries to pay you money for your work.

------
adreamingsoul
This is refreshing to read. I share similar opinions as the author and also do
not have any investments in cryptocurrencies. However, the technology itself
and the original intent is still very interesting to me.

------
debt
It does suck because blockchain technology does seem intriguing and cool, but
there's so much dirty money floating around the ecosystem right now I wouldn't
touch it with a ten foot pole.

~~~
arbol
Presumably you use cash occasionally? The worldwide criminal cash markets
dwarf anything related to blockchain (although they do also utilise
blockchain).

------
danellis
What I'm curious about is how someone without any blockchain experience gets
offered a blockchain job out of the blue.

~~~
michaelt
1\. Integrate donations using a blockchain-based payments API

2\. Mention on your CV that you've integrated with blockchain-based payments
APIs.

3\. Recruiter searches for CVs with the word 'blockchain' and finds yours.

------
meri_dian
Like this author and many here I've been dismissive of the blockchain
ecosystem as it stands. Especially Bitcoin, for while I appreciate the
potential of Ethereum as a platform in itself, Bitcoin seems much less
flexible.

However my thinking has begun to change since reading over the technical specs
of the Bitcoin Lightning Network.

The basic idea is that open payment channels of liquidity will be part of a
payments routing scheme, directed from me to whatever address I want to
deposit funds into. You can read about it here [1].

This system is still being developed but if it works it could reinvigorate
Bitcoin.

[1]: [https://lightning.network](https://lightning.network)

------
endorphone
It is interesting how grievance posts have such an easy time on HN, and how
willing the audience is to put aside basic cynicism (AMP is another easy
target for these sorts of posts).

I am going to be a little more suspicious and say that the OP never had a job
offer for a "blockchain implementation", but instead posted the standard,
rather empty cynical fare with the job offer justification. Lumping in all
blockchain implementations and then trying to hang every possible downside is
as absurd as decrying a hypothetical video handling job because pornography
exploitation exists. It doesn't follow, and makes the argument asinine.

~~~
dpc_pw
> say that the OP never had a job offer for a "blockchain implementation"

I get at least two blockchain related job messages a week on LinkedIn right
now. Started around a month or two ago. Looks to me like a gold-rush, and I
totally believe anyone with remotely relevant experience could have got an
offer.

~~~
endorphone
He has no relevant experience, and claims that everything about the job was
dreamy ("significantly higher salary", remote, etc), but they rejected it for
some absurdly vague, hand-wavy, message-board type rhetoric that sounds like
the standard sort of from-the-sidelines, self-validating fiction. It is
absolutely transparent, and if there weren't so many on HN looking to feel
less threatened by the whole blockchain thing, or less jealous about this idea
that a bunch of people are getting rich (and quick! This is facetious,
obviously), this would be sitting in the basement of HN, but instead it's
validated as if it has the slightest wiff of truth. It clearly doesn't.

I'm not trying to be overly cynical, but when posts like this top HN I worry
that it's less a "hacker" site, and more about a group trying to conjure a
reality.

------
ciocan42
Bitcoin and proof of work consensus is just the tip of the iceberg. Since
then, lots of advancement happened in the field. You can easily choose from
different implementations of prof stake or DAG systems.

You can have a bird's eye view of most common platforms on this infographic:

[https://medium.com/world-of-blockchains/the-history-of-
block...](https://medium.com/world-of-blockchains/the-history-of-blockchain-
infographic-900e940ee6ec)

------
hartator
The issue is people like him who is right won't be rewarded. Hype and luck
sometimes matter more than being right.

------
TomK32
Misleading title, blockchains and coins are closely related, but you can do
blockchain without any coins and PoW.

------
maxsaltonstall
Hi, I'm Max. I gave the talk that this article mentions, and have helped
publish papers about BeyondCorp over the last few years. At Google I work in
the Cloud CTO Office. I'm eager to get your feedback on what we can explain
better, and answer your questions.

------
petteralexander
PoW is not the only algorithm option in blockchain technology.. you have PoS,
PoC/PoA, ...

------
eplanit
As "generous" is subjective, I'm curious what the specifics of the offer were.

------
primus202
I have a friend running a cryptocurrency company and wants me to come work for
him. I'd be more attracted if it weren't so far away but either way it's still
just so sketchy to me.

------
kristianp
I thought there might be more depth into why this person decided to turn down
the job offer. The reader can only try to infer the reason from the author's
take on the space.

------
thr0000waay
lol another job posting. I like these posts. HN is now LinkedIn.

------
outworlder
Who is this guy, and why do we care about his life choices?

------
pascalxus
He turned down a much higher salary AND "REMOTE WORK!" just because he didn't
want to be "associated" with the current state of bitcoin. Remote work
possibilities are extremely rare, especially high paying ones.

My advice would be, take the job and enjoy it while it lasts.

He didn't say much about the company. But, just watch out for scams. If it's
not a real company, they might just be trying to get your bank account
information or something in which case you definately want to stear clear

~~~
tonyjstark
Or maybe listen to your conscience and stay away if it does not feel right.
Working in tech is not completely detached from the rest of the world, so when
some people decide not to work for a company with connections to military,
maybe you could also stay away from Blockchain jobs if you see more harm than
benefit for the world in it.

Blockchain right now is a mix out of super hot and interesting and absolutely
shady, so maybe it's not that bad to be cautious about being associated with
it.

------
LAMike
Bitcoin mining will spur competition for the cheapest energy in the world once
there is parity with mining chips (12-18 months away). We're hitting the upper
limit on what is possible in the ASIC chips.

Every 10 minutes, a $200,000 bounty is given to the Bitcoin miner with the
cheapest electricity + computing power. So once everyone has the same chips,
what's the advantage miners can use? Cheap electricity.

Bitcoin miners will do more for renewable energy than many governments around
the world.

~~~
Marazan
Orrrrrrrrr they'll find power without externalities priced in.

------
45h34jh53k4j
99% it was just some marketing drone wanting to find any developers to cut a
ECR20 for their scamtoken. You are right to avoid this. BTW if any engineers
read this, treat 99% of unsolicited 'blockchain jobs' as the scam that they
are.

Cutting and pasting solidity smartcontracts doesn't make you a blockchain
developer :-)

------
wenbin
I'm always curious how blockchain developers make money except for holding
coins or doing the one-time ICO...

I started a new thread for this
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16206218](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16206218)

------
madmaniak
OK great. So can you link the offer?

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sabujp
what if i told you there are blockchain companies backed by y? e.g. qsp coin

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binaryanomaly
Respect!

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janmon18
If working for SAP helps with keeping your integrity, you should stick with
them forever.

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scandox
Everyone has the right to make their own determinations about the moral
quality of different choices. Just because you believe that his decision to
work with SAP represents some kind of moral failure (I'd be fascinated to hear
your reasoning) it doesn't preclude him from both disagreeing with you and at
the same time taking a moral stance on another issue.

The factors at play in such choices are extremely complex for every
individual, but we can't just say "Hey you hypocrite you work for a major
multinational so you can never ever take a moral position on anything ever
again". That's not sensible.

