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Bitcoin ‘More Than Just a Fad,’ Morgan Stanley CEO Says

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Re: Bitcoin ‘More Than Just a Fad,’ Morgan Stanley CEO Says

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99% of Bitcoins are being held by people expecting to sell it to someone else for more than they bought it for. That doesn't seem to be changing. You just have to do a calculation involving the number of people on the planet to figure out when the supply of new suckers runs dry and the price crashes.

If more vendors would take BTC, I would gladly buy things using said BTC. I would rather do that than convert to cash and then buy.

If BTC has a good chance of doubling in value over the next few months, then how is it remotely rational to spend it?

Re: Bitcoin ‘More Than Just a Fad,’ Morgan Stanley CEO Says

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but it’s also naive to think that banks aren’t trying to fuck you over.

Sure but it's also naive to think that exchanges, the bitcoin central bank of tethers, blockstream, market manipulators, dev teams with premined supplies, and early adopters who spent $100 to own 26% of total supply aren't trying to fuck you over.

No, no, no, you misunderstand. That’s the free market regulating itself! Working as intended. Big difference from what those evil banks are doing in a regulated, capitalist economy which incentivizes them to do exactly what they’re doing in order to prop up a global economic system that enables many people to buy computers, become engineers, and build cryptocurrencies instead of jogging through the savannah with a spear looking for dinner. Cryptocurrency is pure.

Remember, it’s not money laundering, it’s tumbling. Big difference. It’s not wealth inequality, it’s early adoption. Big, big difference. Entirely different concepts.

Re: Bitcoin ‘More Than Just a Fad,’ Morgan Stanley CEO Says

#113
I hope Bitcoin is more than just a fad because it would provide a really convenient way of harnessing solar energy in space without having to beam it all back to Earth. But this can only happen if Moore's Law slows way down (which is happening) and if mining ASICs hit an efficiency plateau lasting for years (is this happening?).

Currently, it costs about 9MWh per BTC, or about $1000 in electricity per bitcoin to mine on a pretty efficient S9 antminer. S9s currently go for about $2/Watt and require about 100 J/TH and weigh, I don't know, maybe 1kg per kilowatt (or 1000W/kg).

Solar modules are about 30 cents per watt on the spot market, produce about 100W/kg (if weight optimized, i.e. not such a thick aluminum frame). Since all the heat must be dumped into space at the ASIC's operating temperature, radiators are about 100W/kg and probably cost as much as solar modules ($0.30/W) if mass produced.

So 1000W of mining capacity would weigh 21 kg and cost $2000+$300+$300= $2600. To launch 21kg at $100/kg to GSO (this is an incredibly low cost, but could be achieved with SpaceX's or Blue Origin's long-term ITS/BFR or New Armstrong rockets) would cost about $2100. So a total of about $4.7/W.

Assuming the lifetime of that whole thing is about 12 years (a reasonable time for a risk-free doubling of an investment), that's about 12 BTC, or about $47,000 at today's prices, or a factor of 10 return.

(Today's BTC returns ~40 cents per kWh invested, this scheme would break-even at about 4 cents per kWh generated.)

...but: 1) There's a whole bunch of glue, like a network link and spacecraft subsystems that must be included as well as spacecraft processing.

2) Moore's Law in the strict sense is over, but progress still continues.

3) ASIC improvement is possible.

4) We don't have Musk's or Bezos' huge reusable rockets quite yet.

5) If return was this well-proven, you'd likely have a bunch of competition from even cheaper sources of energy.

6) I still think Bitcoin is far too volatile and speculative to justify this kind of investment. Given the reduction in mining rate, if you knew Bitcoin would be able to justify this kind of investment over decades, then you'd probably be better off just buying a bunch of BTC right now and holding it.

But maybe the future of cryptocurrency will eventually enable a less volatile and more proven return, making stuff like this worth investing in. I hope so.

Re: Bitcoin ‘More Than Just a Fad,’ Morgan Stanley CEO Says

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shh, half the fun of cryptocurrency threads is watching its proponents re-learn every single harsh lesson banking and financial industries have learned over the past couple hundred years! It turns out a lot of regulations and whatnot involved with Fiat™ don't just exist for arbitrary reasons.

Sure but it’s also naive to think that banks aren’t trying to fuck you over.

It's also naive to think they won't continue to do so simply by adding a new asset class into the mix.

Re: Bitcoin ‘More Than Just a Fad,’ Morgan Stanley CEO Says

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your product simply isn't valuable if the world wouldn't miss it if it disappeared over night. Outside of keeping money away from legislation what value does crypto currencies have that would be missed?

Try transferring $1 million (or hell, even simply more than $10K) of legitimate cash to another country. With USD you have to jump through hoops. With BTC, it's less than an hour to clear and the transaction fee is peanuts. BTC has properties of physical cash and credit/debit cards. That's valuable.

I don't know about the US, but that would be illegal in a lot of countries.

Re: Bitcoin ‘More Than Just a Fad,’ Morgan Stanley CEO Says

#116
post #101
post #81

This seems like a decent place to ask: What is the most legit and safe method for creating a wallet and just buying a bit of Bitcoin? I wouldn't mind being able to drop a couple hundred on it and seeing where it goes, but it's hard to trust websites/subreddits that look like posts were written by nerdy 15 year olds.

Coinbase is the only answer here, and it makes me frustrated to still see the "buy a hardware wallet" recommendations. I recently had my hardware wallet (a trezor, which is the nicest one) fail during a firmware update. Now, obviously I have a backup of my seed, but for those few minutes that backup became a VERY expensive little widget. When I travel, I have to worry about where my backups are stored. Storing them i…

>If I have a hardware wallet, I'm essentially betting that I am better at opsec than coinbase, a >$1billion company who devotes a non-trivial amount of resources to opsec.

I'm sure people who were using Mt Gox felt the same way. Part of the equation is you're betting you place your own interests at a higher priority than the people who run Coinbase. Which is almost certainly true.

Re: Bitcoin ‘More Than Just a Fad,’ Morgan Stanley CEO Says

#117
post #102
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0. Purchase a hardware wallet Pro-tip: Go for a Ledger Nano S ( https://www.ledgerwallet.com/products/12-ledger-nano-s ), it is (IMO) the best hardware wallet available. Had a terrific experience using it, it is a genuinely great product. 1. Pick a high-profile exchange Pro-tip: I had an absolutely terrible experience with Coinbase. And a far better one with GEMINI (Although I have issues that are +30 days old still…

Absolutely do not do this unless you are buying a very small amount of coins as an exploratory thing into bitcoin, and won't worry about losing them if you mess up your opsec.

I think you would make a stronger case if you actually provided any arguments. There's literally nothing complicated about using a hardware wallet. It is a well documented, well thought out procedure that shields people from 99% of the reasons people lose their money (lost keys, theft, exchange bankruptcy, hack etc.).

I'm really curious to hear what's the rationale behind your post. Please elaborate.

Re: Bitcoin ‘More Than Just a Fad,’ Morgan Stanley CEO Says

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but it’s also naive to think that banks aren’t trying to fuck you over.

And surely, nobody in the basically unregulated cryptocurrency world has ever done that, right? Bad actors are bad actors, and it’s disingenuous to point at some and ignore others.

One of the largest cryptobank (exchange) is ran by someone who openly praised one of the major ponzi scams, even after it shut down and was known to be a scam. [1]

Said cryptobank is now allegedly using fake orders to buy up significant amounts of BTC (recently a 50,000 BTC order [2]) during market crashes.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6xpddt/as_20m_more_tet...

[2] https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed/status/908718464671641602

Re: Bitcoin ‘More Than Just a Fad,’ Morgan Stanley CEO Says

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the very definition of a pyramid scheme, it can't be one. Who's behind the sceme? And if you say Satoshi, you should think about what stocks are.

Stocks have underlying value even if they could no longer be traded, in other words, non-zero use value, in the form of dividends. What is bitcoin's use value? It doesn't even have commodity applications like gold.

Why isn't gold a pyramid scheme then? It's because people believe it isn't.

1000 years ago it was cotton instead of gold

Re: Bitcoin ‘More Than Just a Fad,’ Morgan Stanley CEO Says

#120
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coinbase is the only answer here, and it makes me frustrated to still see the "buy a hardware wallet" recommendations. I recently had my hardware wallet (a trezor, which is the nicest one) fail during a firmware update. Now, obviously I have a backup of my seed, but for those few minutes that backup became a VERY expensive little widget. When I travel, I have to worry about where my backups are stored. Storing them i…

>If I have a hardware wallet, I'm essentially betting that I am better at opsec than coinbase, a >$1billion company who devotes a non-trivial amount of resources to opsec. I'm sure people who were using Mt Gox felt the same way. Part of the equation is you're betting you place your own interests at a higher priority than the people who run Coinbase. Which is almost certainly true.

Coinbase is U.S. based, insured and licensed. Very different from Mt. Gox, which started as a trading depot for Magic: The Gathering cards.

https://support.coinbase.com/customer/en/portal/topics/79436...

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