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Ending Bitcoin Support

stripe.com

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Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#261

Post by nerfhammer »

CPLX wrote: post #159
marshray wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very little though. If the demand for gold were merely industrial it would not need to be mined in such quantities as it has throughout history. I would put jewelry in the 'sentimental' category as well. Not only is Bitcoin purely sentimental, it represents has huge costs in the form of raw energy. Bitcoin's only claim to value is that it is an artifact of an act of ritual sacrifice. One might imagine a precedent in…

Gold has "real" demand though in jewelry. It's distributed and longstanding and it has utility. People wear it and use it in real life and value it and wish to keep it in order to look at it and possess it. That's as tangible as anything else. Nobody would say that there's no demand for musical instruments, or baseballs, because they are optional parts of life that aren't food or shelter. Gold has intrinsic value in…

the modifier "intrinsic" doesn't add anything though. "people intrinsically like" --> "people like"; "gold is intrinsically valued" --> "gold is valued".

"intrinsic" seems to imply an innate persistence despite not being able to justify such innateness, just empirical persistence. It just implies things that are arguably not justifiable needlessly. gold has been persistently valuable. The universe doesn't give it an innate value.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#262

Post by jokermatt999 »

sonoffett wrote: post #186
emodendroket wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, people could also stop thinking gold is worth much. Maybe a modern-day alchemist finally figures out the formula. I don't know. Probably far less likely than the Bitcoin scenarios though.

Or asteroid mining

Asteroid mining would disrupt the market for many rare elements, but I think it could be less chaotic than people think. It's not going to be like the Gold Rush where a deposit was found and prospectors flocked to it. It'll be a massive undertaking, almost certainly with multiple nations working together to achieve. The time between the project becoming public and the resulting mined resources being delivered would give markets time to settle on a price.

That said, yes, asteroids mining could certainly affect the price of gold, but not necessarily destroy all its value. There's a price floor set by the industrial applications for it.

With BitCoin, there is no floor. If no one wants to buy your BitCoins, you can't do anything else with them. They are just data representing proof of work, but no outside value.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#263

Post by nwah1 »

koheripbal wrote: post #49
vec wrote: post #18

For what it's worth, we just spent two weeks trying and failing to get Stripe's Bitcoin integration working on our site. The short version is that Stripe guaranteed a USD BTC exchange rate for an hour, after which they would automatically cancel the transaction. Given that most transactions now take well over an hour to be verified on the blockchain, that means basically every transaction fails.

I honestly don't know what use-case remains for Bitcoin. If you have large value transactions you'd probably choose something with privacy like Monero, and if you want something cheap and fast, maybe Bitcoin Cash. In both use-cases, you have a few competing alternatives. In no circumstance is Bitcoin preferable to one of the mature alternatives. ...and if no one is using it as a transaction medium, then acting as a s…

Your comment amounts to "I don't know why anyone would use X when they can use these other two things that are fundamentally the same."

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#264

Post by garmaine »

koheripbal wrote: post #49
vec wrote: post #18

For what it's worth, we just spent two weeks trying and failing to get Stripe's Bitcoin integration working on our site. The short version is that Stripe guaranteed a USD BTC exchange rate for an hour, after which they would automatically cancel the transaction. Given that most transactions now take well over an hour to be verified on the blockchain, that means basically every transaction fails.

I honestly don't know what use-case remains for Bitcoin. If you have large value transactions you'd probably choose something with privacy like Monero, and if you want something cheap and fast, maybe Bitcoin Cash. In both use-cases, you have a few competing alternatives. In no circumstance is Bitcoin preferable to one of the mature alternatives. ...and if no one is using it as a transaction medium, then acting as a s…

Use bitcoin with lightning.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#265

Post by JumpCrisscross »

joshuaduffy wrote: post #234
egeozcan wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you think the story would end for gold, if it became unpopular and the exchanges closed? You can sell your gold bar, and you can sell your private key. I see them as the same and no, I don't own Bitcoins.

Just look at the gold price over the past 100 years, even the last 10-15 years have seen an modest increase. It will only go up & it is highly unlikely that it won't ever be perceived as the asset compared to other precious metals.

> Just look at the gold price over the past 100 years

Or 2,000 years:

"the researchers look at pay for a Roman legionary, in the era of Emperor Augustus (27 B.C.-14 A.D.), who was paid a salary equivalent to 2.31 ounces of gold. A centurion was paid a salary equivalent to 38.58 ounces of gold.

Compared to modern US Army salaries, a private is making 20% more than the legionary, and a captain is making 30% less than the centurion" [1].

A counterpoint can be found in silver, where unexpected Spanish silver production in the New World prompted inflation around the world [2][3].

TL; DR For historical reasons, gold is grandfathered into our collective consciousness.

[1] http://www.mining.com/what-a-roman-centurions-pay-says-about...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/mar/21/story-of-citi...

[3] http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/chinawh/web/s5/s5_4.html

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#266

Post by Goladus »

moduspol wrote: post #251
Goladus wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, but nearly anything can function as a store of value by that standard. While it's true Bitcoin has name recognition and that is an advantage, it's not exactly a big advantage.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#267

Post by notahacker »

Goladus wrote: post #211
pembrook wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...And gold is a physical commodity with both industrial and consumer product applications.

... and stocks are a legal claim to some percentage of the assets of a corporation. The only things that I can think of that are somewhat similar to cryptocurrency as a "store of value" are things like baseball cards.

...and even collectibles have some appreciable aesthetic qualities and enthusiast interest which exists independently of and generally strictly prior to speculators getting involved.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#268

Post by vit05 »

This is great news and opportunity for OmiseGO, Ethereum and Stellar. Solid projects with respectful and well know developers team that do not directly compete against Bitcoin.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#269

Post by ricardobeat »

CPLX wrote: post #159
marshray wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very little though. If the demand for gold were merely industrial it would not need to be mined in such quantities as it has throughout history. I would put jewelry in the 'sentimental' category as well. Not only is Bitcoin purely sentimental, it represents has huge costs in the form of raw energy. Bitcoin's only claim to value is that it is an artifact of an act of ritual sacrifice. One might imagine a precedent in…

Gold has "real" demand though in jewelry. It's distributed and longstanding and it has utility. People wear it and use it in real life and value it and wish to keep it in order to look at it and possess it. That's as tangible as anything else. Nobody would say that there's no demand for musical instruments, or baseballs, because they are optional parts of life that aren't food or shelter. Gold has intrinsic value in…

Being valued by people 'liking it' is exactly the opposite of _intrinsic value_.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#270

Post by PeterisP »

Klathmon wrote: post #214
Meekro wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lightning network will not work. Yes, you can run a node and connect to ACINQ's lightning hub (called endurance), and you can even buy coffee at https://starblocks.acinq.co , their lightning demo site, but that demo was designed to be misleading. The only reason it works is because the endurance hub has locked up its own funds in a channel with Starblocks -- and it's no surprise that it did, since both are owned…

>I could certainly connect my own lightning node to the endurance lightning hub, but no one could pay me through that hub because the hub would first have to commit its own funds to its side of a payment channel with me. It won't do that... "hubs" are incentivized to open channels, because they can charge fees for any transactions that go "through" them. Locking up some BTC for a short amount of time (roughly 3 days…

Can you elaborate on how locking works ? Mainly, does it require a BTC transaction (+fee) or not?
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