Ending Bitcoin Support • Hacker News Board

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#251

Post by moduspol » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 8:24 PM UTC

Goladus wrote: post #224

moduspol wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin absolutely can still be exchanged, and (in many cases) far more easily and cheaper than gold. It can also be stored and secured much cheaper, and even large amounts can be easily taken across borders. That is real value, even if transaction fees are high, and even if you don't directly buy things with it.

Yes, gold is a very special case. Gold also has a very, very long history of being used as a global currency, which lends far more confidence in it than is probably warranted. Bitcoin has not even 10 years of history as a currency, and most of that time the system was propped up by an inflation mechanism that will soon cease to exist (and is already mostly ineffective), and the rest has been fueled by speculative man…

I'm not arguing it will. I'm arguing it can function as a store of value despite not being used to buy things, or having a secondary material usage.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#252

Post by PeterisP » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 8:24 PM UTC

serg_chernata wrote: post #90

0xcafecafe wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold as a metal has an inherent value though. If not only for jewelry, it also has important uses in electronics. The value associated with bitcoin seems purely sentimental.

While true, a gold bar to me has no inherent use. I am not going to smelt it and make jewelry. It is simply a store of value. I think the gold comparison is quite close.

It's like saying a barrel of oil or a truckload of grain have no inherent use, because I'm not personally going to do anything with it.

A gold bar has inherent use because there are (and, more importantly, will be) people who will buy it to smelt it and make jewelry.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#253

Post by notatoad » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 8:24 PM UTC

nxsynonym wrote: post #168

notatoad wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the value backing AMZN shares is the value of the utility that amazon, inc provides to society.

Exactly. The value of the shares are tied directly to the output and monetary value of the company they are backing - and not hype and word-of-mouth.

there's definitely some hype and word of mouth involved in corporate valuations. but it's at least somewhat based in reality.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#254

Post by sowbug » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 8:24 PM UTC

Klathmon wrote: post #182

underwires wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But (correct me if I'm wrong) payment channels are connected to particular sets of recipients, but not necessarily any and all recipients. Your money is locked into that channel until you close it. You might need to open a different channel to reach your actual recipient.

No, you are missing the "network" part of "Lightning Network" it uses an onion-routing-like protocol to allow you to pay "through" other people. So if I have a channel with you, and you have one with coinbase, I can buy bitcoin from coinbase through you without ever opening another channel, entirely counterparty-risk-free. And in that scenario if you "refuse" to relay my transaction, or you try to do something sneeky…

If you're in the US, you might have heard of Starker exchanges (a.k.a. 1031 or like-kind). It's a method to defer realization of capital gains, usually on real estate. There are outfits that will help you form a multi-party exchange to match impedances between people who want to buy/sell properties, but some want to trade and some want to exchange for money.

Similar with organ donations. I might not match my wife's blood type, but I can donate a kidney to some other random person if there's a network that matches someone with my wife' blood type to her.

These are all the same idea.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#255

Post by oculusthrift » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 8:25 PM UTC

aaroninsf wrote: post #212

The difference between gold and cryptocurrencies is that gold is something that doesn't go away when you stop believing in it. Simulated gold is not actual gold, in other words. They are under current conventions interchangeable, but the context that allows that is contingent.

actually if people started not viewing gold as a store of value but just as a raw material like aluminum it’s price would tank.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#256

Post by swanson » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 8:25 PM UTC

Related to the Coinbase/insider trading noise around BCH a few weeks ago, it seems strange for Stripe to plug other alt-coins (OMG, Stellar, etc) in the post as things they view as "promising" and "imagine enabling support for". I don't think it's illegal nor unethical personally, but it is such a dicey topic that I'm surprised to see someone writing without a mountain of disclaimers on an official Stripe communication channel.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#257

Post by masklinn » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 8:26 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #229

masklinn wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be fair, people could also stop thinking gold is worth much. They've already noted that: > people's perception of its value will change But as they say, a gold bar will remain a gold bar, until and unless it is actively destroyed. Not so for bitcoins, which only remain so as long as they're actively maintained (not just individual coins but the mining networks which allows the creation of new transactions)

I’m not entirely convinced, although I’m partway there. When you “have” a Bitcoin, that means you have the private key to a wallet which the blockchain says has such-and-such amount in it. You can have that even if the miners all disappear. You can still use it to sign transactions, although they won’t get confirmed. You can even confirm them by mining a new block yourself with your transactions in it. (If all the mi…

> If all the miners are gone, the difficulty has hopefully dropped precipitously

AFAIK there is no mechanism for the difficulty of new blocks to fall. And if the only use is creating transactions between yourself and yourself, well you can also collect gravel.

> This doesn’t sound super useful, but it sounds about as useful as a bar of gold in a world where nobody considers gold to be valuable.

Even in a sub-industrial context and ignoring pretty much all of human history and assuming your gold has lost all of its extrinsic worth, your bar of gold could be molded or cast into plenty of useful things (light reflectors, heat shields, baubles, weights). Bitcoins, not so much.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#258

Post by ujal » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 8:26 PM UTC

asdasdas23123 wrote: post #128

ujal wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Countries and their economies collapsing now and then are not that rare.

Crypto's value collapsing now and then isn't rare either

At the minimum you can't fake its value.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#259

Post by philwelch » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 8:27 PM UTC

gizmo385 wrote: post #92

bactrian wrote: post #72

Stripe’s entire business is built on credit card transactions. They added half assed bitcoin support and then killed it. This makes sense for a company that has every incentive to prolong a move away from credit cards. As soon as we switch to a decentralized “currency” stripes business will begin its decline.

> As soon as we switch to a decentralized “currency” stripes business will begin its decline. You say this as if a large-scale, mainstream switch to a decentralized currency is right around the corner. With how volatile the market has been, what makes you think a switch like this is even remotely near-term?

It's so obvious, I'm just going to use a decentralized cryptocurrency to hail my self-driving electric car in like five years, so why bother supporting legacy technologies? /s

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#260

Post by richardw » Tue, Jan 23, 2018, 8:27 PM UTC

0xcafecafe wrote: post #60

nulagrithom wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What future does an asset have if people don't actually buy stuff with it? I look at it (maybe naively) like a solid gold bar. You're not going to walk in to a convenience store and pay with a bar of solid gold; you might flee the country with one though. Beyond that, I totally agree with your read on the post. Linking the pull request[0] was especially backhanded. It feels like there's some underlying frustration…

Gold as a metal has an inherent value though. If not only for jewelry, it also has important uses in electronics. The value associated with bitcoin seems purely sentimental.

Gold is a greater-fool asset, just like Bitcoin. We buy it hoping a greater fool will pay us more for it later.

Most of the value is what we ascribe to it. Close on 80% is used in jewelry. It doesn't actually make you money, there's no universal law that makes it more valuable over time. It's just stuff we like, same as art or classic cars or Bitcoin. We've just liked it for longer than those things, so we trust it more. but that isn't guaranteed.

You can use non-greater fool assets to make money. A stock is a piece of a business that earned you money over time. A truck can be used to make money. Gold can be fashioned into more-valuable stuff but the real assets are the craftsmanship and tools. Gold is the commodity.