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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

#331

Post by indubitable »

cloudhead wrote: post #276
mcv wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With Bitcoin you only have trust in value of Bitcoin. More specifically, you have trust in the continued trust that others have in it. It's a self-fulfilling prophesy: as long as people continue to trust it, it continues to be valuable, but as soon as people start to doubt that others will continue to trust it, it's instantly worthless. There's no real value backing it up. This makes it very vulnerable to hype and…

What currency doesn't operate this way?

The USD, in effect, does not. It's a reason I'm somewhat bearish on it.

In the 70s we made a number of agreements with a variety of Mideastern nations. We gave them what seemed like the world and asked that simply require payments of oil to be transacted on the dollar, and that they invest their excess revenues into US securities. In fewer words, the petro dollar.

And those agreements, for the most part, persist to this very day. A US dollar guarantees you access to oil. And so long as oil is the most in demand commodity in the world, the US dollar will remain the most in demand currency in the world - guaranteeing access to the goods and services of any country.

This is why the US dollar is the world reserve currency, or the money most countries keep under their bed in case of a rainy day. However, if this changes (renewables, Saudi Arabia deciding to switch allegiance to Russia/China, etc) what happens? We've a lot of debt that's only increasing and it's unclear to me how tall the USD would stand without its crutch.

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

#332

Post by jondubois »

nikcub wrote: post #155
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…

> boasting much faster and cheaper transactions and real anonymity Cost me over $4 to send Monero transactions last month. Cost me about $3 to send a Bitcoin transaction this morning. The average and median transaction fees between the two networks have been pretty close for a while I like Monero but it has some way to go - it needs a light client, multisig completed, and hasn't really had to confront any scaling iss…

Monero is Proof of Work, so it's not much better than Bitcoin.

Proof of Stake is far superior and Delegated Proof of Stake is another step up from that.

Delegated proof of stake is more resistant to forks since it's easier for delegates to reach consensus on decisions.

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

#333

Post by lr4444lr »

tudorconstantin wrote: post #201
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…

Bitcoin's value is given by the trust people put in it. Just like with the fiat currencies as a matter of fact, because I don't know of any of them to be backed by anything else than trust. Of course, the US dollar has the whole US economy and the biggest army in the world as its plus, but it also has its minuses: the US treasury can and does print as many as it wants, in the detriment of ALL USD holders. Bitcoin's p…

And let's not understate the value of the dollar that goes beyond economic fluctuations and military might: it's legal tender for paying your taxes if you're a US citizen. That's not to say I suggest investing in treasuries, but strictly as a comparison with Bitcoin.

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

#334

Post by lr4444lr »

phamilton wrote: post #328
baddox wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s a bit of a stretch to attribute much of USD’s value to business deals with the US government. That must be a tiny effect. I’d say most of the value comes from the fact that US workers have to pay taxes in USD even if they earned income in some other currency or asset.

> pay taxes in USD basically, citizens dealing with the US government. I think it's the same category.

No, not "dealing" with the US government: actually compelled by force of law to render a portion of your assets. I don't mean this to sound as ominous as it does, but rather as stabilizing a force as Bitcoin can never be.

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

#335

Post by kharms »

bpicolo wrote: post #271
russelldc wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If any government wanted to take down a CPU or GPU based cryptocurrency, they could accomplish a 51% attack in no time. Gathering or manufacturing ASICs would be a longer, harder, more obvious process.

I'm not convinced that's true. The government can get ASICs produced more easily than they can produce quality GPUs. GPU procurement at the scale necessary seems like it would be very hard.

A government would need to produce ASICs, but would only need to commandeer GPUs. There are massive GPU farms used by various industries, including ones available for rent (aws, etc.)

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

#336

Post by splintercell »

xvilka wrote: post #182
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…

I think from relatively new currencies NEO [1] looks one of the most interesting, fixed many problems of Bitcoin and Ethereum [1] https://neo.org/

Please mention the 'many problems' in some technical capacity, otherwise you're just spamming.

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

#337

Post by 110011 »

RoboTeddy wrote: post #305
110011 wrote: post #229

It's scary to see so much faith in bitcoin given it's horrendously wasteful proof-of-work scheme to avoid double spending. There are better alternatives that minimize latency nearly a hundred-fold and avoid proof-of-work altogether. Example: Algorand ( https://people.csail.mit.edu/nickolai/papers/gilad-algorand-... ) Even if this new cryptocurrency is "just" a proof of concept there are many others like it that are m…

Wasteful by what standard? Right now each day it consumes ~$1m worth of electricity in order to protect ~$1.5 billion of new payments. Economically, this "electricity safety fee" works out to less than a tenth of a percent.

Wasteful as in we can do better. Did you see the link in my comment? One of the authors of that paper is actually a Turing award winner.

Ultimately we've reached a point where there are more efficient alternatives to having hundreds of people computing billions of hashes to reach consensus. To put this in perspective imagine a group of people sorting by randomly permuting and checking if it works, while stubbornly refusing to adopt near linear algorithms.

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

#338

Post by nullbyte »

RoboTeddy wrote: post #305
110011 wrote: post #229

It's scary to see so much faith in bitcoin given it's horrendously wasteful proof-of-work scheme to avoid double spending. There are better alternatives that minimize latency nearly a hundred-fold and avoid proof-of-work altogether. Example: Algorand ( https://people.csail.mit.edu/nickolai/papers/gilad-algorand-... ) Even if this new cryptocurrency is "just" a proof of concept there are many others like it that are m…

Wasteful by what standard? Right now each day it consumes ~$1m worth of electricity in order to protect ~$1.5 billion of new payments. Economically, this "electricity safety fee" works out to less than a tenth of a percent.

Well said.

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

#339

Post by dleslie »

gburt wrote: post #322
dleslie wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, the demand for bitcoin is driven primarily by its value; anyone acquiring it with the intent to use it in transactions is being foolish. Almost certainly they would be better off holding the BTC and processing the transaction with another currency.

Without making any judgement on whether it is a useful transactional "currency," I hear this sort of thing a lot, but I don't understand it. Surely either BTC is a good transaction mechanism or it isn't and the rampant increase in value is largely irrelevant. You could convert USD to BTC and buy something while maintaining exactly the same held balance, no?

You're holding two currencies, one loses about 2.5% of its value a year, the other gains about 1500% (some huge factor) of its value in that same period.

Which one do you purchase the coffee with? The one that's losing value as you hold it, or the one that's going gangbusters?

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

#340

Post by googletazer »

oldboyFX wrote: post #212
Andrenid wrote: post #2

I consider myself pretty tech-savvy, but I'm still completely lost as to whether Bitcoin is basically a pyramid scheme set to crash massively, or something huge that will continue climbing. I probably should've taken the time to mine some back when my friends were doing it and tried convincing me too. Ah well. (Queue heated comments from both sides. Discussing bitcoin is like bringing up religion AND politics at the…

It's a pyramid scheme in a sense that you depend on others to keep buying the bitcoin. If everyone suddenly lost trust in bitcoin you would lose everything, because technically, it has zero real value. That's why all the "bitcoin enthusiasts" keep hyping it up. They know that once the mania stops, people who didn't cash out will be left holding the bag. Currently, it's nothing more than a speculative asset. You might…

Another "blockchain without bitcoin" post. You can't have one without the other.
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