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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

#311

Post by girvo »

mamon wrote: post #302
xorcist wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the argument here that Lightning, or Bitcoin, is useless because everyone on earth can not use it at the same time? Isn't that moving the goalposts, even a little? Even if only a couple of thousand people could use it, as long as it is useful to them it has a niche. It might not be enough to justify insane valuations, of course, but that's another discussion entirely.

Traditional banking serves pretty much everyone on earth, without running into performance issues, so if Bitcoin is going to replace those banks then yes, it must do the same. And it was Bitcoin fanboys who declared that Bitcoin is here to replace fiat money, so you set that goalpost yourself.

I think you'd be surprised by how large a proportion of the human population doesn't use traditional banking

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

#312

Post by Animats »

ur-whale wrote: post #287
Animats wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tether is starting to look like a Madoff-scale Ponzi scam. What maintains the $1 price of Tether is a continual net inflow of cash. Tether is known not to be backed with sufficient real assets.[1] If there's a period of net outflow from Tether, the whole house of cards comes crashing down. [1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/tether-reverses-claim-of-1...

> Tether is known not to be backed with sufficient real assets. You just gave a definition of fractional reserve banking.

No, fractional reserve banking does not work that way, despite what the cryptocurrency community thinks. Most of a bank's assets are in the form of loans to others, usually with real assets, like houses or cars, behind them. The risks are loans going bad, and owning long term loans while taking short term deposits.

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

#313

Post by alwillis »

mamon wrote: post #302
xorcist wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the argument here that Lightning, or Bitcoin, is useless because everyone on earth can not use it at the same time? Isn't that moving the goalposts, even a little? Even if only a couple of thousand people could use it, as long as it is useful to them it has a niche. It might not be enough to justify insane valuations, of course, but that's another discussion entirely.

Traditional banking serves pretty much everyone on earth, without running into performance issues, so if Bitcoin is going to replace those banks then yes, it must do the same. And it was Bitcoin fanboys who declared that Bitcoin is here to replace fiat money, so you set that goalpost yourself.

No. Traditional banking doesn’t even serve everyone in the United States, with 55 million people unbanked or underbanked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbanked

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

#314

Post by alwillis »

jcranmer wrote: post #124
icelancer wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absurd hyperbole. There are people working on legitimate answers to your concerns, such as the Lightning Network and other initiatives.

Is Lightning usable yet? I recall hearing it's been "imminent" since at least 2017...

Yes; I use LN more than standard Bitcoin.

There are many apps already and things are just now getting started: https://www.lapps.co/

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

#315

Post by alwillis »

ppf wrote: post #220
askmike wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's subjective. It's a lot cheaper and fast to send money.

What's the most I could send without network liquidity issues?

Most LN apps recommend sending no more than $50 USD over the Lightning Network right now. That will increase over time.

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

#316

Post by alwillis »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #163
cft wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not an issue at all, for large transactions. The real issue is each payment being a taxable event, due to IRS treating it as property, rather than currency. You literally have to report each payment on schedule D and calculate its cost basis! This burden kills any legal US adoption.

I thought the Bitcoin community were publicly stating that Bitcoin is optimised as a "Store of value" rather than a currency to be used for transactions? Which is it?

According to the Austrian School of economics, a thing has to be valuable or seen as a store of value before it can be used as a medium of exchange. This podcast has a great explanation of this: https://stephanlivera.com/episode/76/.

Why would you spend bitcoin if you didn't have to if you believed it’s going to be a lot more valuable 5 or 10 years from now?

Famously, a guy spent 10,000 BTC to buy two pizzas during the early days; that’s over $94 million USD at today's prices.

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

#317

Post by alwillis »

arcticbull wrote: post #257
icelancer wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absurd hyperbole. There are people working on legitimate answers to your concerns, such as the Lightning Network and other initiatives.

Lightning is worthless because it requires an on-chain transaction to open and close, so it inherits all the same scaling issues as Bitcoin.

This is false.

Once a channel is funded, it can stay open for as long as it needs to. I can have a payment channel open with my local coffeeshop and we can transact dozens of times; only the final bill has to be broadcast to the bitcoin blockchain.

Well connected LN nodes can be connected to hundreds of other nodes and route transactions accordingly.

In the short time LN has been available, there are over 10,000 nodes and growing; the network capacity is almost $8 million USD: https://1ml.com/statistics

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

#318

Post by [deleted] »

alwillis wrote: post #313
mamon wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traditional banking serves pretty much everyone on earth, without running into performance issues, so if Bitcoin is going to replace those banks then yes, it must do the same. And it was Bitcoin fanboys who declared that Bitcoin is here to replace fiat money, so you set that goalpost yourself.

No. Traditional banking doesn’t even serve everyone in the United States, with 55 million people unbanked or underbanked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbanked

[deleted]

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

#319

Post by arcticbull »

alwillis wrote: post #317
arcticbull wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lightning is worthless because it requires an on-chain transaction to open and close, so it inherits all the same scaling issues as Bitcoin.

This is false. Once a channel is funded, it can stay open for as long as it needs to. I can have a payment channel open with my local coffeeshop and we can transact dozens of times; only the final bill has to be broadcast to the bitcoin blockchain. Well connected LN nodes can be connected to hundreds of other nodes and route transactions accordingly. In the short time LN has been available, there are over 10,000 node…

So only 35 years?

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

#320

Post by arcticbull »

alwillis wrote: post #313
mamon wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traditional banking serves pretty much everyone on earth, without running into performance issues, so if Bitcoin is going to replace those banks then yes, it must do the same. And it was Bitcoin fanboys who declared that Bitcoin is here to replace fiat money, so you set that goalpost yourself.

No. Traditional banking doesn’t even serve everyone in the United States, with 55 million people unbanked or underbanked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbanked

This is the biggest misconception in the space (and that's saying a lot). They're un-banked and under-banked because they don't have money, not because the services don't exist. You want to solve this problem, solve wealth inequality and income inequality, don't pretend magic beans that cost $1-3 to transact will solve the problem for you. That's more than it costs you to use an Amex Bluebird or even a Green Dot card at an ATM, let alone a T-Mobile prepaid visa. And it's dropped half its value in the last two years (generously). Those are the people you want to disadvantage with a massively fluctuating currency?

Not to mention the low-income folks are most likely to have smartphones and therefore access to online banking with Ally or Schwab, which require $0 minimum balances and refund all ATM fees. You need a phone to use BTC, which means those same people can access Ally or Schwab and be objectively better off.

This is again a social problem in need of a social solution.

Postal banking is a great way to solve the access problem where it exists, too, like is done in the UK, and was in the US until the 1970s.

Sorry, this talking point is debunked, unless there's something I'm missing here.

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