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Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

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

#181

Post by bdcravens »

StavrosK wrote: post #164
bdcravens wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were one of Stripe’s early Bitcoin integration users. I even got a free T-shirt for finding bugs in their documentation. In the years that it was enabled (until Stripe ended support) we never received a single payment in Bitcoin. There’s a large portion of the population who have no compelling reason to use Bitcoin.

I integrated Stripe early on too, and did get some payments in Bitcoin (out of a few per month total). Eternum.io has had a Bitcoin integration for two weeks and already got two payments in Bitcoin. I think it depends a lot on the audience.

Of course. There's a subset of the population that is eager for Bitcoin payments, and if you have a service that either targets those users, or is a service they'd already use, you'll see usage. (Even that's a challenge, with the "hodl" mentality that's prevalent)

I think we're still a long way away from general purpose adoption however.

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

#182

Post by papreclip »

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…

Installing a solar array in space has a larger carbon footprint than mining those coins with coal on earth. Proof-of-work will be seen as a crime against humanity in retrospect

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

#183

Post by [deleted] »

throwawayhhakdl wrote: post #5
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.

I always get downvoted for asking this but... doesn’t that seem like a really bad idea that makes you far far more vulnerable to physical crime? If a guy mugs you at an atm, the bank is going to flag something as suspicious. If a guy mugs you for your private key, you have no recourse for all of your holdings- and the getaway is a lot easier. Physical crypto crime feels like it would be very prevalent if it became “m…

[deleted]

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

#184

Post by papreclip »

auiya wrote: post #51

Cryptocurrency is just penny stocks (before regulation). Same pump-and-dump manipulation occurs. Why is this surprising?

Unlike penny stocks, bitcoin won't perform a 100:1 reverse-split and print new coins. Many penny stock gamblers have been burned this way, which is why they're moving into crypto

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

#185

Post by DennisP »

throwawayhhakdl wrote: post #5
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.

I always get downvoted for asking this but... doesn’t that seem like a really bad idea that makes you far far more vulnerable to physical crime? If a guy mugs you at an atm, the bank is going to flag something as suspicious. If a guy mugs you for your private key, you have no recourse for all of your holdings- and the getaway is a lot easier. Physical crypto crime feels like it would be very prevalent if it became “m…

So if you have a lot, don't keep your main stash where it's easily accessible to you.

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

#186

Post by lostmsu »

neiman wrote: post #157

It's impossible to have a discussion based on news reports, so here's a link for the original paper. I copied the title and abstract below. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3195066 I browsed through the paper. Their main result, if I understood correctly, is that they found "considerable evidence that Tether is used to purchase Bitcoin following Tether authorization and a drop in Bitcoin price, and…

> Rather than demand from cash investors

Can't find how did they determine, that Tether was not bought with cash, so this statement is basically baseless.

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

#187

Post by robocat »

ppf wrote: post #135
zionic wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DAI is a complex series of loans, borrowing, and interest that creates incentive to sell your DAI if it goes over $1 and incentive to buy if it goes below $1. DAI has basically maintained $1 for years even as ETH prices have been all over the place. It's battle tested. If you can't be bothered to do a few minutes of research on a complicated topic I don't know what you're doing here.

So you're basically telling me "it's complicated"? These "incentives" you mention require general faith on the part of traders that Dai really is worth $1, and given the incredibly low liquidity of USD/Dai trading, you can stay in fantasy land for a long time. >If you can't be bothered to do a few minutes of research.. I'm not on HN to "learn" crypto, and you forget you're not on some crappy crypto forum.

You appear to be very rude to me; you asked:

> And how is [DAI] pegged? Someone asked the various exchanges very nicely if they could only trade it for $1?

This is a forum and people have given you pointers to answers and you are expected to do the work to study on your own. This happens a lot in life.

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

#188

Post by tuesdayrain »

microtherion wrote: post #108
ppf wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Earning interest He's talking about "DeFi" ("distributed finance") - the current craze in the Ethereum world. Various groups are offering significant interest rates for loaning out your Eth. It's hard to see how it's not another speculation bubble waiting to burst.

I suppose calling this “Probabilistic Online-Zone Investment” aka “POnZI” would have been a bit on the nose.

Jeez, the quality of HN comments these days is not what it used to be.

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

#189

Post by strathmeyer »

iagovar wrote: post #2

The more I know about cryptos, the more I remain skeptical. The only people I know that uses cryptos seriously are acquaintancies from latin america, and none of them for storing value, with the exception of Venezuelans. Not even argentinians, that just buy as many dollars they can. IMO this is a thread worth reading on this topic: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/dj2jro/the_large...

Anyone who uses crypto seriously wonders how people can use banks. Your reddit link is some guy writing a couple of paragraphs about having customers too stupid to buy it themselves. Their entire job is based around keeping people too ignorant to control their money.

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

#190

Post by [deleted] »

wgerard wrote: post #81
wpietri wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking you will know the day and hour of your death is extremely bad estate planning. Any wealth is potentially inheritable, because you can die at any time. (And yes, that is a shortcoming of cash. Which is why we've invented other ways to store value, and approximately nobody stores their money in random holes on other people's property.)

Uh I mean, not that I'm a cryptocurrency enthusiast by any means, but wouldn't prudent estate planning include a prepared will or some sort of next-of-kin document that includes a mechanism for access to your accounts/passwords/passphrases?

[deleted]
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