Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 263 posts

Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

#71

Post by safog »

dustingetz wrote: post #35
jayd16 wrote: post #22

Can someone explain why BTC going from 13k to 20k in a month isn't the yearly pump and dump?

Patio11's take: (2019) "Credit bubble? Yes, there can no longer be serious doubt about this: people bought Bitcoin with money that didn’t exist, pushing up the price of Bitcoin. A lot of people currently think they are richer than they are." https://www.kalzumeus.com/2019/10/28/tether-and-bitfinex/ I'd be interested in reading a counter-take, most bitcoiners I know just look away.

Yes, free money inflates risky assets, but it's also just supply and demand. Mining rewards got halved, so miners can't sell as many BTC as used to do after mining a block, so the supply of BTC just went down significantly.

The more macro stuff like worries about inflation due to the Fed printing $$$, easy money (0% interest rates), and yes, some FOMO speculation is increasing demand.

As far as I'm concerned this is working as intended. This is not the first boom / bust and this won't be the last.

Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

#72

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st »

centimeter wrote: post #53
str33t_punk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would love Eth 2.0 then! The idea of proof of stake is to remove waste from the equation

Proof of stake does not have the same security properties as proof of work. The arguments are too complicated for me to usefully communicate them in a short HN post, but as a heuristic just keep in mind that most cryptocurrencies haven't adopted PoS despite it facially seeming better/"less wasteful".

Given that ETH is the second biggest cryptocurrency it will be a great stress test of the security properties of proof of stake.

Honestly if it runs successfully for multiple staking periods I don't think there will be much of an argument for PoW cryptocurrencies that aren't the dominate coin in their respective type of work. Essentially all coins that share a proof of work with a larger coin are constantly at risk of a 51% attack. We've seen it before with bitcoin forks.

Proof of work's security properties are broken for everything that isn't BTC, ETH (although this will change soon) and whatever the dominate CPU coin is (Monero?)

Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

#74

Post by lawn »

arcticbull wrote: post #19
lawn wrote: post #15

While the market is likely driven by fomo and manipulation, cryptocurrencies do have valuable use-cases. See this book[0] for a list of some and an explanation of how Bitcoin works. [0]: https://whycryptocurrencies.com/

There is not a single use case better solved by cryptocurrencies or blockchain than by a classical solution. Name one, I’ll wait. When there is I’ll eat my, err, hat.

The link has many such examples...

Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

#75

Post by crispyambulance »

arcticbull wrote: post #20
anotheraccount9 wrote: post #13

Cryptocurrency is still a misunderstood concept for many ppl in the financial world. As use and integration increases, btc will likely stabilise. Meanwhile, we get interesting volatility.

Volatility is its principal feature in the financial world.

Yeah, but does that necessarily HAVE TO apply to "currency"?

Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

#76

Post by ISL »

arcticbull wrote: post #64
ISL wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The resources consumed by Bitcoin should be compared with those consumed by other transaction-clearing and store-of-value methods. Credit-card companies consume a few percent of revenue for a large chunk of consumer transactions. Gold mining is an environmental catastrophe [1]. Bitcoin is far from perfect, but it is important to place it in context with other systems that achieve the same ends. As bitcoin-mining tech…

Energy consumption in the classical model is substantially lower because if you scaled up Bitcoin to the size of Visa alone it would exceed the amount of energy generated on earth a few times over and the amount of ewaste generated on earth too. This is a classic pro Bitcoin argument that’s trivially falsifiable. The fact folks here think their transactions in the online economy should heat their homes is so bananas…

It depends upon the scaling algorithm -- as volume goes up, there may be efficiencies that allow the (competing!) miners to reduce their transaction fees.

In theory, since there is no notion of a Bitcoin chargeback and no need to extend credit to any party in the transaction, the intrinsic cost of a bitcoin transaction should be lower.

Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

#77

Post by rvense »

1-6 wrote: post #25

I remember a guy who boasted putting his entire life savings into Bitcoin during a crypto meetup. I wonder how he's doing.

It's always fun when you meet new techy people and you get comfortable enough to share your "I didn't get rich" Bitcoin stories: "I sold at $600 because it seemed like a lot at the time", "I bought a pizza with the ones I CPU mined", or "I had one but I forgot to get the key off the hard drive when I recycled my desktop" and everyone tries to laugh it off and stare into their drinks.

Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

#80

Post by lambdadmitry »

dustingetz wrote: post #35
jayd16 wrote: post #22

Can someone explain why BTC going from 13k to 20k in a month isn't the yearly pump and dump?

Patio11's take: (2019) "Credit bubble? Yes, there can no longer be serious doubt about this: people bought Bitcoin with money that didn’t exist, pushing up the price of Bitcoin. A lot of people currently think they are richer than they are." https://www.kalzumeus.com/2019/10/28/tether-and-bitfinex/ I'd be interested in reading a counter-take, most bitcoiners I know just look away.

Tony Arcieri's take is pretty good, too, and extremely succinct https://twitter.com/bascule/status/1329580017446047748
Post reply on HN