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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

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, Bitcoin as designed is technically incapable of being in widespread use for payment, due to a severe lack of network capacity, and a complete lack of interest in ever changing this. Instead, all effort is going into a building a flawed second layer that is theoretically unsound and a usability nightmare.

Eh, there's Stellar, Nano, whatever. There are solutions, the important thing is that cryptocurrencies start having uses other than speculation. It doesn't matter which one is useful as long as one is, and I'd rather use Bitcoin now than use Visa because of a theoretical fear that Bitcoin might not scale to millions of people.

And they are all an absolute shitshow. Nano especially is complete and utter garbage that barely holds together under the minimal usage of its tiny user base.

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

#353

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...

For Lightning to work at scale, we need solutions for problems that nobody on earth has solved yet, nor have any idea how to solve.

Sure, it kind of sort of works for small network sizes. It will die a fiery death the second it attempts to become popular with no known way out of the mess.

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

#354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

The only reason it works at all is that it is small and barely used by anyone at all.

Scaling Lightning is an unsolved problem. It relies on finding solution to problems people have tried to solve for decades with no success.

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

#355

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.

https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2018/04/05/debunking-bu...

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

#356
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are companies offering completely useless software 'solutions' that don't even do their useless task well and many of them have stock prices that have grown 100% + since the bailouts, even if they haven't updated their technology since before then. How is the value of BTC more fake than that?

The difference is that if management of the average publicly traded stock shopped it around, they could probably find a buyer for 50% or more of current market cap. Maybe not for the biggest companies like Amazon and Apple. If a substantial fraction of BTC owners tried to exit, they'd have more trouble getting close to nominal value.

That is understating the situation quite a bit. Volume is so non-existent that basically any attempt at exiting at all would crater the price.

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

#357
post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fully aware of that. What I would like to know is the mechanism that links Dai in any way to USD. So far, I've been told the onus on me is to research it, and then that my conclusions from that research are wrong.

If you spent as much time reading and internalizing the whitepaper as you did arguing about it online you'd be there already. I know I'm being snarky, but you're coming of as trollier and trollier. This is not Reddit.

I read the materials, and I still can't figure it out. You have also done your research, and apparently do know why Dai is stable to the USD. I'm just curious what that mechanism is, and why you can't explain it. I did read your very long answer elsewhere, but that's an overview of the entire Maker system, and at no point does it explain which part does the "stabilizing", apart from a vague reference to "incentives". What are they?

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

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, there's Stellar, Nano, whatever. There are solutions, the important thing is that cryptocurrencies start having uses other than speculation. It doesn't matter which one is useful as long as one is, and I'd rather use Bitcoin now than use Visa because of a theoretical fear that Bitcoin might not scale to millions of people.

And they are all an absolute shitshow. Nano especially is complete and utter garbage that barely holds together under the minimal usage of its tiny user base.

In what way?

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

#359
post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you spent as much time reading and internalizing the whitepaper as you did arguing about it online you'd be there already. I know I'm being snarky, but you're coming of as trollier and trollier. This is not Reddit.

I read the materials, and I still can't figure it out. You have also done your research, and apparently do know why Dai is stable to the USD. I'm just curious what that mechanism is, and why you can't explain it. I did read your very long answer elsewhere, but that's an overview of the entire Maker system, and at no point does it explain which part does the "stabilizing", apart from a vague reference to "incentives".…

Oversimplifying a bit here at the price of accuracy and completeness, but mainly arbitrage. Ceiling is easy; if the market price is > 1$, it is free money to create new CDPs and sell the DAI off for ETH on the market.

If the ETH/USD price goes down, so does the capitalization ratio of CDPs. If a CDP goes low enough, users have to either repay their DAI debt (removing DAI supply from market) or rebalance by depositing additional ETH collateral. Otherwise, their position will be liquidated (which means the CDP owner loses their collateral) and their ETH collateral is put up for public sale for DAI on-chain. The DAI used to pay at these sales is destroyed. This creates an incentive for people to burn DAI to acquire ETH below market price (thus creating demand for DAI).

Also in general I advise you to ask clarifying questions rather than post scoffy dismissals if you know that your understanding might be incomplete.

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

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not in a modern tax regime, not really. If it's a store of value, like say bonds, then it's property. You have to report gold transactions, too, after all.

If you wanted to know how it's taxed, you could've asked that directly. I didn't see anything in your question about how it was taxed. Short answer specific to the US (IANAL): capital gains on every transaction, counting transactions between different cryptocurrencies as if you'd sold your original currency for USD and then bought the other cryptocurrency using USD. These are just arbitrary laws though, they have not…

the comment I was replying to was specifically about tax (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21443141)
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