Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#281

Post by Cyberdog » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 4:13 PM UTC

dwild wrote: post #272

aviv wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His life was most definitely in danger.

There seems to be missing something in your story to show danger. They just asked for his cash, nothing show any sign in danger in that. Would you pull out a gun because someone asked you for food too? Was there a threat? Which kind of threat? Did it look like these guys had the means to carry that threat and did it look like they actually were going to carry that threat? I wouldn't kill a guy in hope to get a few th…

> They just asked for his cash, nothing show any sign in danger in that.

Yeah, that's all they said. I'm sure there was no threat in their words or mannerisms at all. Certainly, if the victim had merely given these gentlemen a firm "no," they would have just shrugged their shoulders and walked away.

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#282

Post by jcranmer » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 4:13 PM UTC

hanbura wrote: post #274

jcranmer wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: what value would gold have in a post-apocalyptic world? If I'm selling something, why should I take gold in exchange for it, instead of something useful, like ammunition or food or water?

All the alternatives are perishable. Food and Water last a few days before going bad, making them unusable for trading caravans or well-off settlements (those you will likely buy from). Ammunition is better, but for something that can be stored indefinitely without great care, it's hard to beat gold.

> Food and Water last a few days before going bad

Not if you take the time to prepare them. Grains will last basically until pests eat them, and water will last forever if you keep it in a sealed container and sanitize it first. Hell, even meat can keep for years if you salt it enough.

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#283

Post by fragmede » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 4:14 PM UTC

bsaul wrote: post #172

55555 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it has no utility People buy drugs with it. People evade tax with it. People evade currency controls with it. When will people stop making this crazy false claim?

Yes, illegal activities, you're right. But betting on something as famous and easily accessible keeping evading law for a long time is a risky bet. As for "Evading currency control" it doesn't mean anything for individual, i'm sorry (unless you're an autonomous region trying to get rid of central bank policy, but i don't think any has adopted bitcoin yet)

It's risky and I wouldn't recommend betting on it, but file sharing and drugs haven't gone away, despite the government fighting them for many years. The exact mechanism for trading bits over the Internet that other people don't want you to has evolved since the days of Napster, but music and video for free over the Internet are more accessible than ever. The other example is the War on Drugs, and we're right in the middle of an opiate epidemic, so you tell me how well that's going.

Bitcoin is backed - by the opposite of the government - the DEA keeps cannabis, cocaine, and heroin illegal, which means that Bitcoin is actually useful for moving money around for drug dealers and terrorists; anyone who can't use the mainstream banking system due to prohibition by the US government. (North Korea is another example of who's not allowed to bank.)

However, this does not let us calculate how much a Bitcoin should be worth, it only allows us to say that there is actually a use for Bitcoin, and it's not purely speculation.

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#284

Post by tehlike » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 4:14 PM UTC

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #134

There's essentially nothing driving the price increase in 2017. Payment processing, remittance, asset-backing, digital identities, micropayments, bitcoin ATMs, VC-backed bitcoin startups, none of these things took off at all in 2017, in fact if anything the exciting years regarding these usecases/infrastructure ventures were 2013-2015. I bet if you ask 100 people why they bought and if they use bitcoin for anything i…

https://mobile.twitter.com/Bitfinexed

This guy claims the increase in price is due to fake money being injected into market.

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#285

Post by cabaalis » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 4:15 PM UTC

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #83

As someone who owns and believes in cryptocurrency, I'm actually glad this happened. I was getting sick of all the get rich quick people who've been driving the price lately, even for the coins that shouldn't be pumping. It was almost as if the entire cryptocurrency space had turned into a huge unregulated casino. I was at a couple of Bitcoin meetups recently and was surprised to find that most attendees were proudly…

It may be an unpopular statement, but I believe that even enthusiasts and long-time supporters such as yourself know just about as much regarding the actual value of bitcoin as people who are caught up in the hype.

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#286

Post by Sir_Cmpwn » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 4:15 PM UTC

dwild wrote: post #272

aviv wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His life was most definitely in danger.

There seems to be missing something in your story to show danger. They just asked for his cash, nothing show any sign in danger in that. Would you pull out a gun because someone asked you for food too? Was there a threat? Which kind of threat? Did it look like these guys had the means to carry that threat and did it look like they actually were going to carry that threat? I wouldn't kill a guy in hope to get a few th…

Two guys demanding money from you doesn't sound like a dangerous situation to you? You're nuts. Even if his life wasn't in danger he was gonna get roughed up, and that's worth pulling your weapon for.

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#287

Post by ac29 » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 4:16 PM UTC

edem wrote: post #130

mutteraloo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't know what they were buying; bits in a database. A very poorly implemented database that was - not scalable - not rare - didn't have any government backing or big institutional backing in case the price dropped from 19,000 to 11,000 - easily hackable (tether, fake trades, scam exchanges, etc) - too expensive to do a single transaction this applies to most crytocurrency

What is the problem with Tether? Do you refer to USDT?

Read some of the posts here: https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#288

Post by Klathmon » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 4:16 PM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #258

Klathmon wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I could make thousands of kinds of physical coins next month, it doesn't mean physical money is worth less... I feel like I'm crazy here, how is the ability to make a new "thing" make something else less valuable? A toyota isn't worth less because I can make a new car company next week, Facebook isn't worth less because I could make a clone of it tomorrow, A company stock shouldn't be consitered "worthless" just…

There are two kinds of rarity. There is rarity of the thing itself and rarity of things like the thing. Consider an extremely rare thing used for some industrial application. It is very expensive because there is little supply. But if there is another thing that functions just as well then the price of the first thing drops, even though the supply of that thing is fixed. The only differences between bitcoin and bitco…

I agree to some point. You can't forget the network effect, which in many cases is the most important factor (it's easy to make a clone of twitter, but good luck getting everyone to switch). Because Bitcoin is basically just a way to ensure that a group of people are doing math with a given set of rules, if you get a copy with slightly different rules, you need that group to agree to them to give it value. It doesn't really have many analogies in the physical world that I can think of, the closest is actual physical currencies.

Just because I can make a "Flollar" doesn't mean that it's going to take a bite out of USD. I have nothing to backup my flollar, no users, no army, nothing. It's the same way with cryptocurrencies. Just because you can fork bitcoin doesn't mean you'll take a chunk of it's value. You still need to provide all of the other things that make bitcoin valuable that's not in the codebase (decentralization, userbase, vendors/exchanges, software that works with it, time with real usage to show that it's secure (or at least that your changes are secure), and just trust that it will stand the test of time). And even if you do that, bitcoin can and will evolve over time. If you start to eat bitcoin's lunch, there is no reason why they can't just fold your changes into bitcoin proper. If it's in everyone's best interest to have the feature, then consensus will be easy to achieve and the network can be upgraded. In a way, it's similar to forks of an open source project. In the vast majority of cases, a fork of a codebase doesn't reduce the number of users of a project. In some cases it does, but it normally doesn't happen overnight, and takes years and years to have people transition over (take openoffice vs libreoffice for example).

All that being said, I do think that bitcoin is in a bad place right now, and they are dangerously close to allowing another currency to jump up as the main contender, but I don't believe that any of the top 10 or so have actually solved the scaling problem that bitcoin currently has without getting rid of the biggest benefits of a cryptocurrency.

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#289

Post by pbhjpbhj » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 4:17 PM UTC

johnwheeler wrote: post #181

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #83

As someone who owns and believes in cryptocurrency, I'm actually glad this happened. I was getting sick of all the get rich quick people who've been driving the price lately, even for the coins that shouldn't be pumping. It was almost as if the entire cryptocurrency space had turned into a huge unregulated casino. I was at a couple of Bitcoin meetups recently and was surprised to find that most attendees were proudly…

I would argue that by holding cryptocurrency you’re de facto playing a game with rules you don’t understand (investing).

Rules? Isn't one of the founding principles that it's unregulated.

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#290

Post by paulgb » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 4:18 PM UTC

sowbug wrote: post #237

aviv wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. People use Facebook. People simply don't use Bitcoin for payments or any other use that benefits from its "network effect".

Speak for yourself. We do. It took a while for 28.8K modems to catch up with bandwidth needs, and that's part of the reason people thought the internet sucked and was a joke compared to all its promises. I think even today people snort about pets.com as the poster child of the dot-com boom. Then their Amazon Pantry order arrives, which they consume without irony.

If your analogy is that Bitcoin is a 28.8k modem, then it seems to follow that something analogous to a 56k modem will come along and replace it?