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> how does crypto replace banks?

Crypto can replace some banking functions, such as payments, electronic transfers, and lending/borrowing.

One could argue that crypto eliminates the need for traditional checking accounts since you have full control over your funds with private keys. However, this doesn’t account for the legal safeguards and protections that banks provide.

> Am I going to get a mortgage in BTC?

I don’t recall seeing mortgage services in crypto yet. However, there are borrowing platforms like AAVE, primarily used for leveraging crypto investments or speculation. These platforms are decentralized, with strict collateral requirements, typically limiting borrowing to 80% of your collateral.

> If narrow banking, why give them my btc at all instead of holding myself?

Not sure I fully understand your question, but typically, when you lend your crypto to a service, you’re seeking to earn a yield in exchange for the risk of lending your assets.

> Does that even work on blockchain?

Theoretically, yes. You could create a narrow bank using crypto, but you’d need a decentralized mechanism to verify the bank’s holdings. This could involve creating an oracle (ex: Chainlink) service to confirm asset reserves.

> How do you do fractional reserve lending with a deflationary and one of one asset?

Instead of using deflationary assets like BTC, fractional reserve lending could rely on stablecoins, which are better suited for such systems. That said, not all stablecoins are equally reliable.


If you have programming experience, you might find this interesting: back in 2019, when Google announced achieving quantum supremacy, I worked on a personal project to study the basics of quantum computing and share my learnings with others in my blog:

- https://thomasvilhena.com/2019/11/quantum-computing-for-prog...


Excellent thank you!


Networking - Connect with experienced professionals from other companies to share experiences and learn from each other. There are many ways to do this: reconnect with former college classmates, search for people in companies you admire on LinkedIn and send them a friendly invite, or join online groups or attend local events.

Mentoring - As you build your network, you'll naturally find opportunities for informal mentorship. This could be someone with a solid career who has already navigated the tough paths and can help you tackle challenges while also offering guidance for your journey.

There have been many times in my career when I felt stuck. By having regular conversations, listening to others, and sharing work experiences, I gained a broader perspective and have always been able to found ways to move forward.


I've seen that happen a lot. When you're the only real "tech person" in a non-tech company, especially if you're above-average talented, you become the go-to for anything tech-related. This often gives you plenty of visibility and earns you a lot of goodwill from the company’s management


> as it can simply print dollars. It will never be in formal default (...). The consequence for the US economy won't be pretty though.

Argentina tried doing that, resulting in 100% inflation per month.


That's because, in a blunt sense, no one cares about the Argentinian peso except for (some) Argentinians. Many more people (practically everyone) care about the USD. So long as the US commands dominant global influence (in many senses) then the USD retains a "standard" quality that can be very flexible. Sustained deflation and loss of purchase power is far more dangerous than inflation, so long as you don't slip into hyperinflation. Everyone in Argentina, for instance, just immediately converted their money to USD.


Except Argentine debt is largely in US dollars, so they didnt do that.

The US dollar bit is the problem.

From the perspective of anybody outside the US the US dollar is a bond - a zero percent bearer bond.

Therefore it is nothing more than a bond swap with a change in interest rate and term. The entity “owing” doesn’t change


>Except Argentine debt is largely in US dollars, so they didnt do that.

Exactly, just between a 20 and a 30 percent of our debt is in Argentine pesos. [0]

0: https://www.argentina.gob.ar/economia/finanzas/graficos-deud...


The US can keep printing money, as soon long as the services is offers is purely in USD. The demand cancels out the inflation from printing money by a small margin.


The last few times I used Skyscanner, I was disappointed because their "database" was outdated. When I clicked on a flight from the search results, it took me to the airline's website, which then showed a higher price. Often, there's no official fare from the airline, and Skyscanner lists prices from third-party providers I don't really trust.

I'm finding Google Flights more reliable these days.


Is Google Flights based on the ITA Software acquisition?


Yes, you can think of Google flights as a scaled front end on top of the ITA data.


Is this actually true? For example Ryanair flights will show up on Google Flights, but not on ITA Matrix.


I believe (and it's been ~4 years since I left Google) that ITA is one of the data sources, but there are now direct API connections with some providers.


A lot of the criticism here comes from people who had bad experiences with poor managers, leading them to reject the idea of work processes altogether.

The few defending Scrum are doing so based on positive experiences with great teams and strong leadership.

In my view, high-performance teams don’t just appear by "hiring good people and letting them do their thing." Good people naturally communicate, take initiative, prioritize, estimate, provide updates, and mentor less experienced team members. In other words, they often follow a pseudo-process or even suggest routines that resemble a formal process, if one is not already in place.

Alignment, communication, transparency, and prioritization are key to achieving results. Processes should be designed to support these, providing space for creativity and autonomy, including review and constant improvement of the process itself.


I think the issue with formal processes is that, while they are created to serve a goal, they very quickly become the goal.

When everybody in a room agrees that deviating from the process will improve the chances of success, but nobody in the room is empowered to approve the deviation, morale will drop quickly.


> hire the right people

That’s no easy feat and often oversimplifies the challenge of building competent teams. I think it’s achievable if you have a large budget to hire only senior/experienced devs and a mature hiring process/team. Plus, if your company has strong tech branding, it becomes easier to attract top talent too.

But if you’re at a startup with limited funding and possibly no branding at all, you’ll likely face this situation:

- Hire inexperienced but honest, motivated people with the potential to grow, and invest in mentoring them.


I do not disagree with anything you said at all! Though chances of success diminish here.

If you have to introduce some "process" - whatever that "process" is - because you do not have competent people and you feel like "process" will fix it, your chance of succeeding are a lot smaller IMO...


> why use Docker at all?

We have a simple cloud infrastructure. Last year, we moved all our legacy apps to a Docker-based deployment (we were already using Docker for newer stuff). Nothing fancy—just basic Dockerfile and docker-compose.yml.

Advantages:

- Easy to manage: we keep a repo of docker-compose.yml files for each environment.

- Simple commands: most of the time, it’s just "docker-compose pull" and "docker-compose up."

- Our CI pipeline builds images after each commit, runs automated tests, and deploys to staging for QA to run manual tests.

- Very stable: we deploy the same images that were tested in staging. Our deployment success rate and production uptime improved significantly after the switch—even though stability wasn’t a big issue before!

- Common knowledge: everyone on our team is familiar with Docker, and it speeds up onboarding for new hires.


Exactly. And if a book is in high demand in a library, you'd either have to wait your turn or purchase one yourself to avoid the lending queue.


The IA's controlled digital lending setup worked the same way.


No, the IA's CDL system required them to make multiple copies of books (one to digitize the book, and one for every reader of the book), which is not a legal problem a physical library runs into.


I agree, and apparently this distinction is legally relevant. However, it does not change my point that the CDL also has the property that:

"if a book is in high demand in a library, you'd either have to wait your turn or purchase one yourself to avoid the lending queue."


Right. I'd like a system where that distinction matters but it seems plain how the courts will arrive at a conclusion that it doesn't, because the law is about the mechanism more than it is about the intent. Still, we were all holding on to a fig leaf of an argument that the intent would control here, and IA has burnt that leaf up, at least in NY, CT, and VT.


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