Hollywood Hitmaker Plans to Fund Next Blockbuster with Crypto

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-17/hollywood-hitmaker-plans-to-fund-next-blockbuster-with-crypto

by petethomas • 9 years ago

45 50 9 years ago

junk_f00d• 9 years ago

I think something similar but for musical artist could be very fun. Betting on the next 'big band' sounds like a good time.

datamoshr2• 9 years ago

Seriously Bloomberg, automatically playing a video? I just woke up my wife by accident thanks to your poor UX.

I like the idea of more democratic film-making but am apprehensive about this as it seems just like crypto is hitting fever pitch and people are trying to make it fit in every paradigm they can think of

jaryd• 9 years ago

Anyone know of any extensions that automatically (and reliably) quash auto-play videos or automatically mute them?

pcmaffey• 9 years ago

I thought I saw this was built into Safari with the new High Sierra update. Haven't dl'ed yet.

mintplant• 9 years ago

This one automatically mutes new tabs until you explicitly unmute them: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-mute/

blhack• 9 years ago

I've been using a combination of automute (chrome) and scriptblock (also chrome) to make browsing the web tolerable again.

The first takes care of anything autoplaying on a whitelisted domain, and the second allows me to whitelist the javascript that plays the videos.

QAPereo• 9 years ago

uMatrix can just let you block it all by default and set your own permissions.

combatentropy• 9 years ago

I just don't let JavaScript run by default. In Chrome I just went into preferences and flipped the switch. Now I have to turn it on site by site, which is a little annoying. But once it's on for a domain, it's on forever, unless I turn it off again.

JavaScript not only runs things, it's what most sites use to bulk themselves up. That is to say, if a site chooses to embed advertising, it doesn't embed all the CSS, JavaScript, images, videos, iframes, and so on. Instead it just adds a script tag or two. Then that script tag, once it runs, goes out and fetches more JavaScript, stylesheets, images and videos.

In other words, turning off JavaScript not only squashes pop-ups and autoplaying videos, it reduces the size of the page by 90%.

Fnoord• 9 years ago

1) NoScript

2) Put sound off (F10 on MBP)

I go for option 2. Option 1 leads to an annoying browsing experience (if you go for option 1, all the power to you). Option 2 just means you only have sound on when you need it to.

Bonus points: gf can't troll me with Spotify.

LightsTech• 9 years ago

We are working on a similar project to democratize original film making. If interested, please see an introduction at https://www.lights.tech.

schmookeeg• 9 years ago

I use a Chrome plugin called "HTML5 Content Blocker" which allows me to selectively block JS, CSS, Images, Objects, or Media.

I generally run with only the "Media" switch on, and I haven't seen autoplayed videos in an age. They annoy me mightily.

aibara• 9 years ago

If media.autoplay.enabled is set to false (is that the default these days?), it does not automatically play with Firefox.

martinko• 9 years ago

Wow, thanks for this one

datamoshr2• 9 years ago

I had no idea. Thanks so much for showing me this.

anitil• 9 years ago

Thanks! I have no idea why this would ever default to true.

murukesh_s• 9 years ago

This is so annoying I always have volume set to 0 or a headphone plugged in..

lithos2• 9 years ago

Well in case of DRM and inventory tracking it's a good implementation.

I was not even remotely disappointed when that's not what they were using it for. And instead just making another tulip bulbs fiat currency.

klipt• 9 years ago

And then thanks to "Hollywood Accounting", the film makes no profit and the investors get nothing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

jedberg3• 9 years ago

Every ICO I hear about just sounds like a scam. Maybe I don't understand it, but I have yet to see a case where as an investor I thought "that sounds like a good investment!".

Can someone describe a scenario where an ICO is a win for the investor?

For example, at least with stocks, I get a share of ownership in return for my money. So as the value of the company goes up, the value of my share goes it. It's based on tangible ownership of a real thing. But with a crypto coin, what is the value tied to? Is it really just the perceived value of the underlying asset? And what happens when the company shuts down? They sell all the assets, the real shareholders take all the money, but what happens to all the coin holders?

bfuller3• 9 years ago

they probably are all scams but people still make money on them and thats why they are popular

mrschwabe5• 9 years ago

You fail to understand the big picture so let me help you (and perhaps @jedberg) out a bit.

Many yes, but not all, are scams and in fact the concept of an ICO is just as significant as cryptocurrency itself (though cryptocurrency a required predecessor).

ICOs (tokens) are to IPOs (stocks) what cryptocurrency is to fiat currency.

Just as banks will fight and make a fuss about cryptocurrency, stock exchanges (and banks again) will make a fuss about ICOs.

Why? It's because ICOs, like cryptocurrency - are decentralized & blockchain powered and as such require no regulation or centralized authority to give them legitimacy. The blockchain, an immutable append-only log of transactions gives them legitimacy.

In other words, crypto currency and ICOs 'cut out the middlemen' - and the middlemen don't like it (hence they will try to give ICOs negative press; but of course the pyramid schemers and scam artists don't help the matter either).

Yet banks and exchanges are perhaps the lesser of worries; it is at the end of the day big brother who is most concerned because this entire crypto/blockchain movement has the potential to render their system of control - which is based on controlling and imposing rules on capital (something very difficult to do with the aforementioned crypto tech) - totally ineffective in the future.

So yes, just as in the early days of the internet there were those who used it to share & publish scams or porn - there are some ICOs or users of cryptocurrency engaged in scams or questionable activity. But just because you can share porn on the internet does not mean it isn't going to be a critical business technology one day in the near future.

In the meantime, expect big brother and its friends in media to be-little and all out attack the tech and the people who use it (via more laws & regulation, censorship and ultimately intimidation & force) until it inevitably becomes apart of everyday business.

hackinthebochs3• 9 years ago

The best use-case for a crypto coin is as a share of an underlying economy. Take ethereum for example, their underlying asset ETH is used to power computation on the network. So when the network first launches you get to purchase a share of the ethereum economy for relatively cheap since the risk of failure is high. Your expectation is that once the network of apps and users is built up, that economy will grow and so will the value of your share of it. The value proposition in an ICO is that the potential upside of your investment can reasonably be 100x.

I don't recall exactly but I think ether tokens sold for around 30 cents per coin which is about a 1000x return at current prices. So for the extra risk of having zero leverage in determining how the company operates, and no ability to recover assets if things fail, you hope for a much greater return than you get through traditional investments.

The problem with the recent ICO wave is that the value proposition has gone completely out of whack. Instead of the underlying economy starting off at a $2M market cap and thus having huge room to grow, they're starting off at $20M or even $200+M with very little room to grow outside of the increase due to massive bubble valuations.

jedberg3• 9 years ago

So for the extra risk of having zero leverage in determining how the company operates, and no ability to recover assets if things fail, you hope for a much greater return than you get through traditional investments.

This was the best explanation yet, thank you!

It almost sounds like gambling, in that I have no control in the outcome nor any way to recoup assets, expect that I can't even calculate the odds of my return on an ICO. :)

I guess my question is, what is the end game? Doesn't someone end up at the bottom of the pyramid so to speak, stuck holding the bag with the whole thing goes spiraling down?

alexasmyths4• 9 years ago

"The best use-case for a crypto coin is as a share of an underlying economy"

There is no such thing as a 'share' of that economy.

"So when the network first launches you get to purchase a share of the ethereum economy for relatively cheap"

No - you're not purchasing anything but a number.

"The problem with the recent ICO wave is that the value proposition "

There is no fundamental value proposition with coins - that's the problem. There is absolutely no way to value them. They are just worth what some folks in the crowd think and that is the beginning and end of it.

"very little room to grow outside of the increase due to massive bubble valuations."

?? What is a 'bubble valuation' - there would have to be a 'normal valuation' to compare it to. There is no normal valuation for any crypto. They are just 'numbers that you buy'. It's digital monopoly money with no face value. Why not $1 Billion USD for a BTC? Why not $10 dollars? There's no rhyme or reason for the prices to be what they are at any given time. Currently it's just a function of how many people are finding out about it, i.e. correlated with Google Trends.

zodiac• 9 years ago

with a crypto coin, what is the value tied to?

In the specific case of ethereum ERC20 tokens [1], it depends on how the mechanism design uses the token, there's no general answer. I can give 3 specific examples.

MKR stablecoin (https://github.com/makerdao/docs/blob/master/Dai.md): users of the collateralized debt positions system pay fees for using the service (because they want to take margin long positions, or because they want to issue some stablecoins), those fees go to MKR holders (the mechanism for this has changed over time, but it could be through dividends, or buy-and-burn). In return MKR holders provide a service by having MKR be one "line of defence" in undercollatiralization scenarios (new MKR is minted and auctioned).

REP (http://blog.augur.net/for-reporters-a-guide-to-rep-tokens/) - users of Augur's prediction markets pay fees to REP holders, who in return participate as reporters in the prediction market.

Decentralized exchanges (0x and Kyber Network are some that have recently ICO'd) - generally users of the exchanges (who consumer services like liquidity, order routing and matching) pay fees to the token holders, somehow. I'm less familiar with these.

The fact that users pay fees is enforced by smart contracts. There is also some thoughts on a general framework for valuing these tokens here http://vitalik.ca/general/2017/10/17/moe.html.

And what happens when the company shuts down

In a "proper" decentralized application there's no centralized company that can unilaterally decide to "shut things down". All the projects I mentioned above aim to in the long run behave like this.

Notes

[1] of course, not all ICOs are of ethereum ERC20 tokens, eg recent ones are EOS, Tezos, arguably Polkadot. But I am much less able to talk about how the token economics of those tokens.

zby• 9 years ago

There are some speculations about ICOs founding things that are needed but are not founded now - like Open Protocols and Open Source software working with them. It might not be a good mechanism for extracting the value - but the others are also not very efficient.

https://medium.com/@zby/the-case-for-icos-bee2c223ec71

usrusr• 9 years ago

In other words, the kickstarter donation model, with kickstarter the company removed from the equation. Makes sense, for certain use cases, but those use cases are not investments, in exactly the same way as kickstarter donations are not investments.

clarkmoody• 9 years ago

It would probably be more profitable to make a good film about the crypto space and fund it with dollars.

valsoltow• 9 years ago

It's already happening in music with several different cryptos http://vectorspace.ai/recommend/app/crypto_discover?query=mu...

dreamdu5t• 9 years ago

It is fraud and a blatant lie for Christopher Woodrow to claim “Investors will benefit as the tokens, which can be traded in the secondary market, would appreciate based on the success of the films”

That is a straight up lie. Token value is not a share of the film’s revenue or profits.

dillondoyle• 9 years ago

Sounds like just buying a tiny piece of equity in a seed round. I don't get what a blockchain value adds here except probably easier SEC regs - maybe I'm missing something.

jondubois• 9 years ago

It would only work if they advertise the coin inside the movies that are produced. They have to keep driving attention towards the coin with every movie released.

loup-vaillant• 9 years ago

Dammit, they say "cryptocurrencies" in the first sentence of the article, why don't they use that term in the title as well?

For a second it looked like the blockbuster itself was about AES something.

Hollywood Hitmaker Plans to Fund Next Blockbuster with Crypto

Related Stories