[bwfan123]

Circular financing is a dead horse - dont beat it. Instead, what is more interesting could be: Is there a path to these builds becoming economically profitable ? Towards this, some metrics to watch are: 1) ROI per token per dollar 2) Enterprise token budgets. And at what point there is an overbuild relative to the token roi. Alternatively, pressure on token costs due to the open weights models etc.

[wmf]

These questions can't really be answered now because things are moving too fast. That may explain why people are latching on to things they can prove like circular financing even if those arguments are pretty weak.

[484994949595]

if the money moves in circles the consequences of new money stopping when predicted profitability falls become a lot more dramatic

[brookst]

all money moves in circles, it's just a question of number of stops.

think about stuff like pork barrel funding for aerospace, which props up jobs, which generates funding for political campaigns that perpetuate pork barrel funding.

[dgellow]

But how do you even measure the ROI of tokens? I don’t think it’s possible, tokens aren’t fungible. You can spend millions on tokens that don’t contribute one bit to the company revenue, then spend $10 that will actually result in useful things

[snovv_crash]

Tokens are like bandwidth. The more I see the more I get echos of the dotcom bubble.

[0xbadcafebee]

Tokens are more like oil. There's a million different uses for them. The problem is finding enough them, in good quality, and getting them cheap enough that you don't spend more than they're worth. But they're definitely valuable and useful.

But really it's all more like the railroad panic of the 19th century. Investing too much, too soon, in something that does have promise, but not if you can't pay for it.

[dgellow]

It’s not like oil, because it’s not fungible

[Night_Thastus]

IMO, it can be profitable - but only at the business level. A business with many software devs can pay the steep price for access.

For almost everything else, the answer is no. No one else would pay the real costs to run them.

It'll require the whole industry to shrink down massively compared to what we're seeing now - down to a profitable (and much smaller) core.

[bwfan123]

> For almost everything else, the answer is no. No one else would pay the real costs to run them. It'll require the whole industry to shrink down massively compared to what we're seeing now - down to a profitable (and much smaller) core.

If there is any data to support this, please share.