Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bitcoin hits $10,000

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 389 posts

Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#271

Post by bezieio »

RexetBlell wrote: post #241
will_brown wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No one likes to talk about that though, they like to demonize bitcoin which actually does something gold could never do. Just playing devils advocate, but you can't replicate/duplicate gold. On the other hand I could create 21M cryptocoins on a blockchain (calling them Bitcoin2 or even just Bitcoin if it pleases). I can make them function identically, similarly or more efficiently than Bitcoin. I can create a new bl…

Why can't you replicate gold? What is gold? It's some elementary particles (like quarks) arranged in a certain way that we all agree are valuable. We could easily agree that some other arrangement is valuable (such as Aluminum).

Here's an interesting presentation by the Winklevoss twins that steps through the elements and narrows down which could be used as currency and why:

https://www.slideshare.net/winklevosscap/money-is-broken-its... (Slides 7-17)

Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#273

Post by deepsun »

cs702 wrote: post #254
wintom wrote: post #17

“Rosenstreich at online trading firm Swissquote said bitcoin’s surge harks to the surprises of the U.K. referendum on European Union membership and President Trump’s election. “We have underestimated the populist movements,” he said. “There is growing unease on how central banks and governments are managing fiat currencies. Ordinary people globally understand why a decentralized asset is the ultimate safe haven.”” Th…

Gold's market cap in US dollars is currently $7.1 trillion; Bitcoin's is under $0.2 trillion: Current market capitalization in US dollars Global money supply (broad) over $90.0 trillion [a] US dollar money supply (M2) $13.8 trillion [b] Euro money supply (M2) $13.2 trillion [c] All coins and banknotes in circulation $7.6 trillion [d] All gold ever mined $7.1 trillion [e] Bitcoin under $0.2 trillion [f] Sources: [a] h…

However, if you try to liquidate those assets, they fall in price. But some more than others.

E.g. there's no even $100 billion in Bitcoin invested. If someone tries to sell, say, $1 billion worth (1%) of Bitcoin, the price falls down rapidly and they never going to get anything close to the billion $.

Not so with gold. The price will fall down too, but not so much. One can easily sell 1% of the world gold reserves, for price close (lower, but close) to it's market value.

Maybe one day Bitcoin will behave like gold, but certainly not today.

Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#274

Post by wallace_f »

zjaffee wrote: post #238
wallace_f wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our government is closer to a plutocracy than a democracy, and look at what happened to other people that kicked out central banks (Gadaffi, Sadam, Hitler). The Fed swelled their balance sheet to 4.5trillion to bail out the banks. They can just electronically create money out of thin air. Everyone has a price, and when you have ultimate power you're in denial of 95%++ of people's human nature if you don't believe tha…

It's total bullshit when people say that all the countries without central banks were the ones being attacked by the US military, north korea has a central bank, Libya has had a central bank continuously since the 1950s. The fact that this type of fake news is so heavily proliferated and believed damages the ability of working institutions to keep their legitimacy.

I made a mistake, but this is the problem with online comments -- brevity leads to necessary oversimplification. Gadaffi was trying to oust the type of central bank they had been forced to have in Libya. I will explain.

Admittedly this is pretty far out in the realm of Wrongthink. Just look at Investopedia or an econ text book, and what they say about the question: does the Fed print money. They say no[1].

This is utterly, undeniably false. After the 2008 financial crisis the Fed's balance sheet ballooned to 4.5 trillion. How did they get that money? I can assure you that they did not (1) take out loans, or (2) produce goods or services at a profit. They electronically debit an account with money, and then go to Wall St and buy what no one else wanted to buy.

What did Gadaffi do? He tried to kick out their central bank that was imposed on them by the UN, by creating a gold standard.[2]

Most elite politicians are not nice people. They don't care about unjust wars, constitutional abuse or torture. They laugh like maniacs at Gadaffi's torture and death[3].

Fake News is just a useful term to disparage Wrongthink.

Every government in the history of this planet has a natural tendency towards cronyism and tyranny. If you take the headlines at face value and don't take the time to actually investigate the legitimacy of the facts then you are no different than any other subject of any other government in history, willingly subjugated to their ideas of what is right and wrong.

1 -

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/082515/who-decides-... 2 - https://www.globalresearch.ca/hillary-emails-reveal-nato-kil...

3 - https://youtu.be/Fgcd1ghag5Y

Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#276

Post by mrhappyunhappy »

0xCMP wrote: post #221
shitgoose wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Bitfinex has injected millions of dollars of fake money into the ecosystem" please, explain what money is "fake" and what "injected" and "ecosystem" mean.

I'm not clear on the the details, but if you wanted to look in to it a lot stems from their "Tether" crypto currency which is supposedly backed by real US Dollars, but many suspect that they created new unbacked "tethers" to buy and bid-up BTC. In a sense people are worried that they're literally making up money on the promise they have US Dollars so they can buy up BTC and sell it to maybe regain the missing USD? Un…

While bitcoin stores value in fiat, eventually that may not be the case and bitcoin will just be worth bitcoin. I know that day is likely very far off but if enough economies collapse, price stabilized and people adopt bitcoin as a currency, we may stop caring what a bitcoin is worth in USD, Yen, AUD, what have you.

Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#277

Post by bb88 »

ErikAugust wrote: post #251
will_brown wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No one likes to talk about that though, they like to demonize bitcoin which actually does something gold could never do. Just playing devils advocate, but you can't replicate/duplicate gold. On the other hand I could create 21M cryptocoins on a blockchain (calling them Bitcoin2 or even just Bitcoin if it pleases). I can make them function identically, similarly or more efficiently than Bitcoin. I can create a new bl…

You say 21M "cryptocoins" but you couldn't, however, create 21M BTC arbitrarily. As long as that number stays the same (it isn't completely immutable) then BTC has real scarcity - making it a store of value, like gold. Throw in some additional properties that BTC has that gold does not, and an argument can be made that BTC is at least a decent value store. Even at $100,000/BTC, Bitcoin would still have a ~1/5th of th…

What exactly is a BTC? BTC is man made, and depends upon computers and software. And the people who control the software can change their minds, if they so choose. So what a BTC is now, may not be what it is later, including its scarcity. See also the ETH and BTC forks.

Gold on the other hand exists naturally in nature, and doesn't change based upon someone else's whim.

So no, BTC is not like gold.

Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#278

Post by quickthrower2 »

programmarchy wrote: post #143
modeless wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They ban exchanging Bitcoin for fiat currencies, which completely disconnects Bitcoin from the traditional financial system. Underground and in-person exchanges would continue but at much lower volumes with higher friction and fees, and the value of Bitcoin would crash. This is diffrerent from file sharing because file sharing does not need a connection to the traditional financial system to be useful for most people…

Why would the value crash? Typically, artificially restricting supply raises prices, like with drugs and other contraband.

This is restricting demand, not restricting supply.

Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#279

Post by hw »

wintom wrote: post #17

“Rosenstreich at online trading firm Swissquote said bitcoin’s surge harks to the surprises of the U.K. referendum on European Union membership and President Trump’s election. “We have underestimated the populist movements,” he said. “There is growing unease on how central banks and governments are managing fiat currencies. Ordinary people globally understand why a decentralized asset is the ultimate safe haven.”” Th…

The thing is, bitcoin in its current state isn't exactly decentralized - a small amount of miners control a fairly large % of bitcoin's hashrate. Not to mention most of those miners are located in China, which is also where most of the ASICs (mining equipment) are produced. These miners could easily support an alternate fork of bitcoin by moving their hashrate over, thus crippling the bitcoin chain. This was the whole drama with Segwit2x

Re: Bitcoin hits $10,000

#280

Post by mrhappyunhappy »

3pt14159 wrote: post #127
freedomben wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced this is true anymore. My only information source is anecdotal, but I've been amazed at how many non technical people I've talked to lately that know about Bitcoin. Many are even buying little bits on coinbase. Their knowledge doesn't run deep, but it certainly exceeds levels of "never heard of it."

Are you in a major city in North America, Japan, South Korea, China, or Europe? If so, I don't think you have a truly representative sample. On the other hand, I still think governments are going to ban it once they understand it. But for now: :D

Governments are ran by special interests. When special interests are invested in bitcoin, governments won’t touch it.
Post reply on HN