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Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally

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Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally

#91

Post by weddpros »

EliRivers wrote: post #59
weddpros wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine you don't want a single person to control everything in your country (dictator), and you don't want a single person to control your currency. Against dictators, we have democracy. Against a centrally controlled currency, there's not much but crypto currencies. They're actually democratic, the majority wins. Also, I don't want to be the one who will handle security for the single server with a Postgres databas…

They're actually democratic, the majority wins. Majority of what? Not the demos, I bet; not so democratic. Majority of bitcoins? Majority of processing power?

Majority of participants in the network. I run a full node, I don't mine, but my voice counts. Of course I don't like the weight of huge mining farms, and I hope there will be viable alternatives to proof of work, to make BTC more democratic.

In the meantime, not a single country controls BTC, and even heavy weight miners can't decide unilaterally...

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally

#92

Post by weddpros »

romanovcode wrote: post #32
0bsidian wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most of the people putting larger checks into Bitcoin are betting that it will become a store of value asset. Going from memory, a recent Bloomberg article called Bitcoin: "Gold for millennials". Or, similarly, Peter Thiel said recently [1]: "it's like a reserve form of money, it's like gold, and it's just a store of value. You don't need to use it to make payments." [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/26/bitcoi…

All people who are owning Bitcoin are betting.

You're always betting when you're investing. At least the odds are better than in a casino.

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally

#93

Post by base698 »

madamelic wrote: post #54
agumonkey wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big banks are already looking seriously into cryptocurrencies. Like seriously.

I think you might be confusing cryptocurrency with blockchain. Cryptocurrency uses blockchain but blockchain isn't cryptocurrency. Blockchain technology is already incredibly useful for banks doing interbank currency trading iirc. I guess you could be talking about banks doing crypto trading, then I would guess that they are but a number are still stuck in the stone ages.

Banks are doing more than just blockchain now: https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/28/fidelity-ceo-abigail-johns...

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally

#94

Post by jesusthatsgreat »

nickjj wrote: post #35
d__k wrote: post #21

I think the behaviour of Bitcoin price (not the technology) reflects some social phenomenon rather than the real economy. And it is precisely why it is interesting.

Yeah, it's pretty much what happened 500 years ago when people were selling everything they owned (including houses) to buy tulip bulbs[0]. Maybe it's not that bad yet, but it's looking to get that way. Spoiler alert: It ended really badly, but the people who got out early enough did make a lot of money. Plot twist: I did invest in bitcoins back when they were hovering around 2k and sold them for a small profit (~10%…

Tulips aren't finite in number nor can they be transferred on a decentralised ledger.

Anyone can grow tulips and grow fake tulips that may look like tulips but are cheaper quicker to buy / make. You can't fake Bitcoin nor can you grow it indefinitely in your garden.

People who make the tulip comparison simply don't understand the revolutionary aspect of the technology. It's like calling the internet tulip mania back in the mid 90's. Blockchain technology will change the world. Bitcoin's value will boom and bust for many years to come. Where will it end up in USD terms? Nobody knows... but the technology itself will become as indispensable as the internet.

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally

#95

Post by dcdanko »

joefourier wrote: post #31

Notice how almost all news of Bitcoin now are about its price. Bitcoin used to be exciting in both technical and economical aspects, but has now become just a store of value entirely driven by speculation. Other technically superior cryptocurrencies (e.g. Monero, Ethereum) have replaced most of its usecases, boasting much faster and cheaper transactions and real anonymity in the case of Monero. Bitcoin takes more tha…

It's shopworn but good tech doesn't always win. Bitcoin has a big(ish) network of users and a proven codebase.

The decentralized nature of blockchains means that they're hard for individual corporations to control and profit from. That hampers adoption of new closed cryptocurrencies (not Monero or Ethereum though) but can serve as a powerful public utility.

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally

#96

Post by eksemplar »

ForHackernews wrote: post #15
vazamb wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(i am somewhat familiar with the tech but don't follow the business side of bitcoin) what I find weird is the forks. A major selling point of bitcoin is that there will ever be only 21 Mio coins. You know, unless there is a hard fork and now there are suddenly twice as many coins. Presumably one of the resulting coins' value will drop but you are still creating value out of thin air, something that the crypto people…

> I am sure blockchain tech will be hugely successful in the banking and government sector Are you? Why? So far, no bitcoin/blockchain advocates have been able to explain to me a single non-illegal use case that isn't better served by a traditional, centralized database. A single large Postgres instance could handle all the global transaction volume of bitcoin, and it would be faster and orders of magnitude more ener…

Maersk uses it to fight corruption in container ownership claims. It used to be a piece of paper, that cost more than the actual container to transport because whoever held it could pick the container up at the port.

These days it's run on block chain making it virtually impossible to claim a container that isn't yours.

A similar use case could be used for almost any sort of ownership record in the public sector, like landownership.

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally

#97

Post by tom_mellior »

ForHackernews wrote: post #15
vazamb wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(i am somewhat familiar with the tech but don't follow the business side of bitcoin) what I find weird is the forks. A major selling point of bitcoin is that there will ever be only 21 Mio coins. You know, unless there is a hard fork and now there are suddenly twice as many coins. Presumably one of the resulting coins' value will drop but you are still creating value out of thin air, something that the crypto people…

> I am sure blockchain tech will be hugely successful in the banking and government sector Are you? Why? So far, no bitcoin/blockchain advocates have been able to explain to me a single non-illegal use case that isn't better served by a traditional, centralized database. A single large Postgres instance could handle all the global transaction volume of bitcoin, and it would be faster and orders of magnitude more ener…

> a single non-illegal use case that isn't better served by a traditional, centralized database

You know how PayPal blocked payments to Wikileaks? (Back when it wasn't yet obviously evil.) That's what traditional, centralized databases can do for you. Note that donations to Wikileaks weren't illegal, governments were just efficient in pressuring PayPal into enforcing rules that didn't even exist officially.

Also, traditional, centralized banks simply do not currently offer me the possibility of near-instantaneous money transfers. (This varies depending on where you live.) Bitcoin does.

There are a lot of things wrong with Bitcoin, the fees are much too high, and yes, its proof-of-work scheme is terribly wasteful. But the view that it doesn't offer anything useful is a bit one-dimensional.

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally

#98

Post by wallace_f »

nickjj wrote: post #35
d__k wrote: post #21

I think the behaviour of Bitcoin price (not the technology) reflects some social phenomenon rather than the real economy. And it is precisely why it is interesting.

Yeah, it's pretty much what happened 500 years ago when people were selling everything they owned (including houses) to buy tulip bulbs[0]. Maybe it's not that bad yet, but it's looking to get that way. Spoiler alert: It ended really badly, but the people who got out early enough did make a lot of money. Plot twist: I did invest in bitcoins back when they were hovering around 2k and sold them for a small profit (~10%…

The comparison between bitcoin and tulips is pretty common, JPM CEO, Jamie Dimon, said "bitcoin is a fraud worse than tulips," then his bank apparently bought bitcoin [???], or at least did on behalf of clients.

There have been a number of threads on HN though about the comparison. The tulip bubble is apparently not as interesting as its reputation leads us to believe

>"the tulip price crashed, not because it was irrationally high, but because of an external shock." [1]

https://stratechery.com/2017/tulips-myths-and-cryptocurrenci...

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally

#99

Post by ddorian43 »

romanovcode wrote: post #34
napolux wrote: post #22

What scares me is the amount of people investing all their life savings in this. Somebody will get hurt, sooner or later.

Still not as stupid as buying fidget spinners in bulk.

Was there a HN post for this ? Only saw it on reddit.

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally

#100

Post by ihsw2 »

davidmanescu wrote: post #88

To me an asset that moves 15% in a day, and which no-one knows what it's truly worth, isn't great as a store of value. I'm not going to speculate about where bitcoin will be trading when it becomes a stable, useful asset, but in order to justify a market cap anywhere near this high it will eventually need to generate actual utility for its users. Can someone explain where that will come from? Cheap currency conversio…

It may be some time until $100M of daily churn doesn't result in a 15% price swing. The market capitalization of BTC would need to increase considerably to accommodate such a scenario.

And it looks like we are quickly approaching such a scenario.

The rich (and super-rich) have a lot of resources to move markets and BTC is currently especially susceptible to this.

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