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As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

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Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#141

Post by twblalock »

jMyles wrote: post #122
twblalock wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How have those so-called breakthroughs had an effect on the world outside the cryptocurrency bubble? Who has used them in industry?

Ahh, yes, in that sense you're right. But I'm not sure that it's a meaningful standard. We've seen "the bubble" being poked sharply from the inside with relative trivialities like cryptokitties. We've also seen the more blunt effect of undermining prohibition policies - access to a wide variety of (psychoactive and other) forbidden medicines has been difficult to achieve since the garden of eden; this seems like a br…

How much longer are you personally willing to wait for blockchain tech to succeed before you would give up on it?

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#142

Post by superkuh »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #110
plantain wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took me a long time to realise, but these people really do believe in bitcoin/blockchains.

The easiest person to fool is yourself.

If you haven't seen the need for an apolitical currency yet you probably never will. But maybe you're just all viewing this from the perspective of traditional speculators and haven't even considered it?

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#144

Post by dnautics »

DenisM wrote: post #73

The most remarkable thing about BTC is diffusion of responsibility. If it was issued and marketed by a single entity the participants would be in hot water by now for violating the Securities and Exchange laws. However here we had one non-affiliated group of bigger miners issuing the coins and another group of volunteer enthusiasts hyping them up. Since the second group was not hired by the first, the first group can…

> This is similar to the housing bubble, where the industry collectively hyped up the "investment" promising huge returns, yet no one was to blame when the music stopped.

Except with the housing bubble the hype was generated by the government, with Republicans touting an ownership culture party line and Democrats applauding expert control of the economy by genius planners.

Secondly, in the housing bubble asset prices were pumped by leveraged (debt-based) transactions. The Hallmark of this is a collapse that happens twice as fast as the run-up. While certainly some people made leveraged plays on crypto I doubt it was very many, which means that the damage is contained to the sector (less domino effect of defaulting entities causing their lenders to default), evidenced by how the crypto collapse is twice as slow than the run-up.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#145

Post by onion2k »

21 wrote: post #56
minimaxir wrote: post #6

At what price will the Bitcoin death spiral occur? (i.e. when it costs more to produce/handle Bitcoin than the revenue generated, so best move is to just exit the crypto industry).

There was a time when the Bitcoin price was zero, yet people spent computer time mining it. So the answer to your question is never, a Bitcoin death spiral can not occur.

You're right in the sense that there'll always be a few hundred interested people mining Bitcoin for fun, but that's not very useful information. "Actually dead" and "effectively dead" might as well be synonyms in this case.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#146

Post by mdpopescu »

superkuh wrote: post #142
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The easiest person to fool is yourself.

If you haven't seen the need for an apolitical currency yet you probably never will. But maybe you're just all viewing this from the perspective of traditional speculators and haven't even considered it?

It's fascinating how strongly we believe that now == how things should be. Humans have been using gold as a currency for thousands of years, and yet nowadays everyone seems to believe that nothing but state-backed paper can work as such - and anyone who wants (as you said) an apolitical currency is just weird.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#147

Post by [deleted] »

cobookman wrote: post #139
dustingetz wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is even involved in finding a buyer for $10mm btc in usd and then getting that usd into a legal/compliant bank account? Sounds non-trivial. It's my understanding from some work I did for a crypto startup that there is approximately zero usd/btc liquidity, the apparent "usd liquidity" and "usd price" last year was actually dominated by tether-btc and tether-eth liquidity. There was not actually a functional usd/b…

There's off exchange buyers and sellers of crypto who deal in orders of > 1M usd. It's fairly trivial to go from 10M BTC to 10M of a stable coin. Can't speak on how difficult it is to do 10M stable coin/btc to us bank

[deleted]

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#148

Post by gbear605 »

superkuh wrote: post #142
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The easiest person to fool is yourself.

If you haven't seen the need for an apolitical currency yet you probably never will. But maybe you're just all viewing this from the perspective of traditional speculators and haven't even considered it?

Regardless of their eventual use, bitcoin fluctuates a lot, so you shouldn't trust it if you need to have the same amount of money in a year.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#149

Post by duskwuff »

baby wrote: post #84
roguecoder wrote: post #52

At least this might provide pressure to reduce the environmental impact of mining, if only to reduce costs.

I see this arguments being thrown all the time, but I also like the argument that current infrastructures needed to run "previous-gen" currencies are actually burning way more[1]. While I wait for concrete research to estimate how much energy was wasted in the creation and maintenance process of these, I will abstain from spreading the FUD. [1]: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Myths#Bitcoin_mining_is_a_waste_o...

That argument looks like it was written 5 or 6 years ago, long before the modern cryptocurrency boom (and the associated rise in large-scale mining, e.g. in China). It hasn't aged well.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#150

Post by saati »

superkuh wrote: post #142
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The easiest person to fool is yourself.

If you haven't seen the need for an apolitical currency yet you probably never will. But maybe you're just all viewing this from the perspective of traditional speculators and haven't even considered it?

Libertarian silliness isn't apolitical.
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