Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says • Hacker News Board

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#171

Post by mindslight » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 5:06 PM UTC

txru wrote: post #147

xur17 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using it to buy gift cards since the vendor gives a larger discount for using bitcoin. My exposure to price volatility is limited since I purchase the bitcoin a few seconds before buying the gift card.

That's just arbitrage, though. You're converting your liquid cash assets into another differently liquid type of cash using a less liquid form of currency, because you have special knowledge about the transfer process. Bitcoin in this is a material asset, like a house to flip in an underappreciated/subsidized market.

The seller of the gift cards likely gives a better price because payments cannot be reversed, which is a real benefit.

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#172

Post by pmoriarty » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 5:07 PM UTC

tyre wrote: post #55

kozak wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is fine until you want someone to be able to inherit your money.

Put the secret key in a safe deposit box and inherit the key

Safe Desposit Boxes Aren't Safe:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20545276

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#173

Post by gkfasdfasdf » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 5:09 PM UTC

Crazy use for Bitcoin: mine Bitcoin in satellites with giant solar arrays, at a capacity that makes it cheaper than terrestrial mining. Since terrestrial mining no longer economical, it ceases altogether resulting in reduction of energy consumption. I.e. space Bitcoin mining captures solar energy in space and sends it to earth in the form of coin, which is much safer than beaming the energy itself.

I'm sure there are many reasons this wouldn't work, but it's fun to think about.

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#174

Post by lawn » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 5:10 PM UTC

ISL wrote: post #97

_8j50 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like cash, i frankly don't care about value either but a form of payment that is not tied to me specifically where I can exchange the money for goods and services is crucial to me. Not much different from a cash giftcard i can use to pay for things online

Cryptocurrencies store everyone's transaction records in a public ledger. It is, in general, less anonymous than cash.

Monero doesn't have a public ledger though and is more anonymous than any other digital payment system.

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#175

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 5:11 PM UTC

gkfasdfasdf wrote: post #173

Crazy use for Bitcoin: mine Bitcoin in satellites with giant solar arrays, at a capacity that makes it cheaper than terrestrial mining. Since terrestrial mining no longer economical, it ceases altogether resulting in reduction of energy consumption. I.e. space Bitcoin mining captures solar energy in space and sends it to earth in the form of coin, which is much safer than beaming the energy itself. I'm sure there are…

[deleted]

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#176

Post by AceJohnny2 » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 5:12 PM UTC

gkfasdfasdf wrote: post #173

Crazy use for Bitcoin: mine Bitcoin in satellites with giant solar arrays, at a capacity that makes it cheaper than terrestrial mining. Since terrestrial mining no longer economical, it ceases altogether resulting in reduction of energy consumption. I.e. space Bitcoin mining captures solar energy in space and sends it to earth in the form of coin, which is much safer than beaming the energy itself. I'm sure there are…

I can think of a bunch of reasons this is a terrible idea, but frankly they're no worse than what Bitcoin is currently used for anyhow ;)

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#177

Post by anyfoo » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 5:15 PM UTC

askmike wrote: post #123

DagAgren wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't even scale to millions of users. And basically every project that tries to claim different is just ignoring the problem and trying to pump their own price. Everything in cryptocurrencies is a scam.

The internet didn't support millions of users after a decade either. Is the internet a scam? I'm not sure why you are saying all efforts go into a flawed second layer? a) Dozens of teams are working on other efforts. b) Many do not consider lightning flawed.

The Internet was always at capacity. Until we had the pervasive networking we have today, there were always more people wanting to have Internet access more persistently and with more performance than what was available. Almost everyone who had the opportunity to use the Internet, would. As a result, enormous advances in technology were made to implement today’s pervasive networking. New use cases manifested immediately all the time. Nobody ever said “we implemented this world wide network thing, now we are looking for use cases”, there were, and are, always more use cases to choose from than resources to implement them.

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#178

Post by paulmd » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 5:15 PM UTC

gkfasdfasdf wrote: post #173

Crazy use for Bitcoin: mine Bitcoin in satellites with giant solar arrays, at a capacity that makes it cheaper than terrestrial mining. Since terrestrial mining no longer economical, it ceases altogether resulting in reduction of energy consumption. I.e. space Bitcoin mining captures solar energy in space and sends it to earth in the form of coin, which is much safer than beaming the energy itself. I'm sure there are…

Digital Rai stones: why do you need the actual mining at all, as long as everyone agrees that it's happening up there in space? ;)

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#179

Post by overcast » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 5:16 PM UTC

cubano wrote: post #158

vbezhenar wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With current Bitcoin volatility it's crazy to store money with it. I really love tech which allows me to remember passphrase and having all money locked inside my brain, so I would certainly use it if it weren't so volatile.

Yes...except when you forget the password on your wallet after someone, as an incredible charity offering, sent you 0.75BTC, and that wallet turns out to be "ultra-secure and distributed", which means you can't recover the contents by sending an password change request email. Yes...I do currently have 0.75 BTC in a locked wallet where I forgot the password and it's totally frustrating.

With the prevalence of password managers, you really shouldn't ever have this problem.

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#180

Post by sek » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 5:19 PM UTC

Prediction: Bitcoin will crash together with a general financial crisis / recession.

People hold their bitcoin, because they don't know where else to put it right now. With low interest rates everybody is apparently doing well.

If the market crashes, some people are worried, or have some assets outside of bitcoin which they have to offset.

They will start to dump their bitcoin, but where is lower bound? There are no hard assets backing it like a stock.

Maybe it's a few "believers", "whales" and exchanges who value bitcoin no matter what. But what is their total buying power? If there is a strong devaluation, those people or companies would be the ones who were hit the hardest, so how much can they afford to put aside for preppin up Bitcoin?