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Pineapple Fund: Donating $86M of Bitcoins to Charity

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Re: Pineapple Fund: Donating $86M of Bitcoins to Charity

#171

Post by mpfundstein »

IanCal wrote: post #161
mpfundstein wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do all of these things already. In Europe at least. I have a TenX debit card that I can use everywhere VISA is accepted! Bought iphone and car with it

That's not spending BTC on something, that's selling BTC then buying things in your local currency. Until prices are regularly set (and stable) in BTC, holding 80+M in BTC is a huge risk.

But I don't have to go through coinbase or whatever in order to buy it. I can hold Bitcoin, and if I feel like I want to buy something I can do so.

If I order something with my CC in the US, prices are also denoted in dollars. But it withdraws from my Euro account with respect to a specific conversion rate.

Re: Pineapple Fund: Donating $86M of Bitcoins to Charity

#173

Post by ravingraven »

imbeel wrote: post #162
ravingraven wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) Bitoin is not a stock, it's a currency. It'ss value lies in its utility. B) There are (a lot of) stocks that do not pay dividends and never will. There are a lot of stocks that were issued by companies that never made a profit. Both of those categories are traded with a value above zero, how do you explain that?

B) It's straightforward - those companies are very often bought by other companies (because they have intrinsic value). The buyer purchases all of the shares from the shareholders (usually in cash), which realizes the value of the company.

You can say all those things about currency as well.

Someone buys it at a certain price (because it has intrinsic value), which realizes the value of the currency.

Re: Pineapple Fund: Donating $86M of Bitcoins to Charity

#174

Post by IanCal »

mpfundstein wrote: post #171
IanCal wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not spending BTC on something, that's selling BTC then buying things in your local currency. Until prices are regularly set (and stable) in BTC, holding 80+M in BTC is a huge risk.

But I don't have to go through coinbase or whatever in order to buy it. I can hold Bitcoin, and if I feel like I want to buy something I can do so. If I order something with my CC in the US, prices are also denoted in dollars. But it withdraws from my Euro account with respect to a specific conversion rate.

You're holding BTC, then selling to get dollars and buying in dollars, effectively.

> If I order something with my CC in the US, prices are also denoted in dollars. But it withdraws from my Euro account with respect to a specific conversion rate.

Yes, and here you're holding Euros and selling them to buy dollars to buy items.

Similarly, if you were mostly doing business in the US, picking a different fiat currency to hold your money in would be a risk and that risk would increase the more volatile the exchange rate is.

The key point here is that until the prices you're paying are stable values in BTC, there's significant risk in holding a currency different to what your contracts are in. If I have $10,000 dollars and have a contract that requires me to pay out $5,000 dollars next year I know I have enough. If I have 0.5 BTC and the same contract then I do not know if I have enough.

Re: Pineapple Fund: Donating $86M of Bitcoins to Charity

#175

Post by Cakez0r »

paxy wrote: post #155
ravingraven wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) Bitoin is not a stock, it's a currency. It'ss value lies in its utility. B) There are (a lot of) stocks that do not pay dividends and never will. There are a lot of stocks that were issued by companies that never made a profit. Both of those categories are traded with a value above zero, how do you explain that?

It doesn't matter if a company isn't making a profit. It still has assets - whether physical, intellectual, goodwill, brand, or anything else. If you own stocks in a company you literally own a part of all of these.

A company may also have debts that outweigh the value of their assets.

Re: Pineapple Fund: Donating $86M of Bitcoins to Charity

#176

Post by pmorici »

glastra wrote: post #154
ravingraven wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) Bitoin is not a stock, it's a currency. It'ss value lies in its utility. B) There are (a lot of) stocks that do not pay dividends and never will. There are a lot of stocks that were issued by companies that never made a profit. Both of those categories are traded with a value above zero, how do you explain that?

Bitcoin has absolutely no utility as a currency. Look at the current mempool [0] to see why. People then switch to arguing that it's a great store of value. Given its volatility this makes no sense. [0]: https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#24h

Bitcoin Cash fixes that by following the original vision articulated by Satoshi.

Re: Pineapple Fund: Donating $86M of Bitcoins to Charity

#177

Post by Cthulhu_ »

Tepix wrote: post #159
mikepurvis wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While true, as someone with a number of friends just now "getting into" bitcoin, I find the zero sum aspect of it troubling. Assuming a crash/correction is coming, most of the wealth that accrued to the early adopters will be at the expense of these later, less-informed "investors" who bought in thinking it was a no fail quick buck.

"no fail quick buck"? If you listen to mass media for the last several years whenever they mention bitcoin they tell you it's an incredibly risky investment.

Yes, but at the same time you hear 30-100% gains in the span of one day and people going "I just bought a lamborghini" - survivorship bias and all that.

Re: Pineapple Fund: Donating $86M of Bitcoins to Charity

#178

Post by Cthulhu_ »

ravingraven wrote: post #157
glastra wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin has absolutely no utility as a currency. Look at the current mempool [0] to see why. People then switch to arguing that it's a great store of value. Given its volatility this makes no sense. [0]: https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#24h

To clarify: Bitcoin is deeply flawed, and I agree with you that Bitcoin is probably worth less than many people speculate it is worth (but not zero). Cryptocurrencies in general have a lot of utility and solve real problems.

And yet they introduce a lot of new problems too - problems that have been solved by traditional currencies a while ago. Problems like exchange security and protection to citizens. If my bank goes bankrupt for whatever reason, the government has an insurance for up to 100K for me. When mtgox went down, everyone lost their money.

Re: Pineapple Fund: Donating $86M of Bitcoins to Charity

#179

Post by Cthulhu_ »

mrweasel wrote: post #140

Apparently the Pineapple Fund has also donated $50.000 to the OpenBSD Foundation: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7jj0oa/im_donating...

I thought the Pineapple Fund donated bitcoin, not dollars?

Same criticism to the headline of this thing - it's an X amount of bitcoin, not a dollar amount which will be outdated within the hour.

Re: Pineapple Fund: Donating $86M of Bitcoins to Charity

#180

Post by Cthulhu_ »

dahdum wrote: post #93
londons_explore wrote: post #14

It's hard to sell large amounts of bitcoin. Most banks, when they see an incoming wire transfer for $10M marked "bitcoin" will run a mile and close down your account. Hopefully by 'donating' it to these charities, who will probably choose to sell slowly over time or hold it, that alleviates the problem.

I didn't sell a ton, but I got a call from my bank about the first deposit from Coinbase. They asked how I came about the funds, where my initial investment came from (employment) and that was it. Though my bank did invest in Coinbase so they are probably pretty ahead of the times.

Isn't that also mandatory for them to ask from the government / IRS point of view?
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