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

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

#111

Post by mrlala »

hahaxdxd123 wrote: post #63
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.

Like what? What economic value do cryptocurrencies provide over our traditional banking system? - being deflationary is not a feature, it's a bug. An inflationary currency incentivises you to invest it, otherwise you lose real purchasing power. With a deflationary currency, you can just stuff it anywhere and see gains. You steal from tomorrow. As the material wealth of the world increases, our money supply should inc…

>An inflationary currency incentivises you to invest it

Still not convinced that is a good thing. It perpetuates a cycle that rewards people who already have excess income to "invest" and keep making more money. Meanwhile those without any significant income to invest are left even further in the dust.

I'm not arguing for crypto at all here- just commenting specifically on that inflationary point.

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

#112

Post by arcticbull »

brian_cloutier wrote: post #106
CJefferson wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin costs about 6$ per transaction (based on block reward). That is more than many transactions I make. Also, if you are using electricity to heat a house, heat pumps are about 4x more effective than bitcoin mining. This "mine for heat" meme has no real basis in fact.

I admit $6 is very expensive when compared to credit card fees, but Bitcoin is the only way I know of sending someone in a different country $10k for just a $6 fee. It would still be $6 if you sent $1M.

There’s plenty of ways. Consider TransferWise. They generally charge 0.8% for USD-CAD and 0% for USD-INR. Pretty cheap. InteractiveBrokers allows you to exchange at market rates on the multi trillion dollar forex market for 2/10ths of a basis point ($20 per million).

You’re also leaving out two steps in your calculus that really tilt the scales. You’re not paid in Bitcoin and your recipient cannot spent Bitcoin, therefore you need to pay a 1-2% fee at origin, $6 for a BTC TX, $90 in electricity socialized across the block reward and a 1-2% fee at destination.

Moving $10,000 USD to CAD on the blockchain is roughly $399 not $6.

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

#114

Post by milkytron »

disown wrote: post #40

Seems like everything is hitting all-time highs. Housing prices, stock market, bitcoin. If you have a lot of assets, it's honestly the best time. Especially if you owned a lot of tech stocks the past decade. If covid and the worldwide economic disruption can't put a dent in asset prices, then what will happen when the pandemic passes and the economy recovers in the next few years? I used to laugh when people said bez…

> If covid and the worldwide economic disruption can't put a dent in asset prices, then what will happen when the pandemic passes and the economy recovers in the next few years?

Pure speculation, and I am not an economist, but I'd imagine that those with wealth will acquire more wealth. And those without wealth will encounter more difficult means to acquiring wealth.

The last time the housing market crashed, investors bought a lot of the single family homes to use as wealth storage and rent them out. If housing prices go down or stabilize (we'll see what happens after forbearance periods), this will most certainly happen again, consolidating more wealth to the top while market rates for rent steadily climb. Housing shortages are high, and growing in the US. Other assets like stocks will likely increase as they have done, but entering into this market will be more difficult as consumers are spending more of their income on necessities (shelter, cars in the US, etc). All of which are becoming more expensive, and funnily enough, these assets aren't included in the Consumer Price Index, which is meant to measure inflation.

Basically, I just see this as expediting wealth consolidation. Times will be more difficult for a lot of people for a long time. Strong cultural shifts and policy changes will likely be needed to avoid furthering the divide of the wealth gap. Neither of which is easy.

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

#115

Post by sjwalter »

arcticbull wrote: post #55
nostrademons wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably more reflective of inflation and the dollar losing value, which is the natural consequence of dropping interest rates to zero and pumping $6T more into the economy. TSLA has gone from $191 to $576 since June, GOOG from $1394->$1761, AMZN $2478->$3143, ZM $262->$466. Where I'm at restaurant meals have gone from about $13/plate to $20/plate, and houses have gone from ~$1.6M -> $2.1M. BTC's rise isn't all…

Inflation has a specific definition with reference to the cost of a set basket of goods and rent. An increase in the price of assets and assets alone as a result of an increase in money supply is not inflation.

You are talking specifically about consumer price inflation, which is as you state a well-specified concept based on a (hilariously disconnected from reality) weighted basket of goods and how the basket's price changes over time.

Inflation as a concept itself is much broader than this.

The comment you're replying to is referring to asset price inflation, which has been happening hardcore.

You seem to be saying since the Fed's stupid basket hasn't shot up in price (based on what they're saying), that inflation hasn't happened?

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

#116

Post by brian_cloutier »

arcticbull wrote: post #104
brian_cloutier wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making two mistakes. The first is that scaling Bitcoin up to the size of visa is not particularly possible. You might be able to match visa's throughput by greatly increasing the block interval (e.x. one block every week) but the protocol cannot reasonably scale past a couple hundred transactions per second without taking a massive hit to transaction latency. So, in this sense the question of how much energy B…

> The first is that scaling Bitcoin up to the size of visa is not particularly possible. That’s no mistake, folks are suggesting that on a per transaction basis - today - Bitcoin is cheaper or more efficient if you take into account hand wavey externalities not captured in the classical transaction cost model of a payment processor like visa. What I’ve done is invalidate that argument not by scaling visa down to a si…

You haven't shown that it's physically impossible though. Scaling doesn't work that way, not even in the physical world does it work that way. As the side length of a cube increases the surface area increases with the square of the side length, and volume increases with the cube of the side length. When considering the effects of scaling a system it makes no sense to just multiply all numbers by some constant. The question of how much energy Bitcoin would consume if you scaled it up cannot be solved, even in approximation, by blindly multipling it's current energy usage by a constant.

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

#117

Post by jakupovic »

lambdadmitry wrote: post #102
X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More on ramps and institutional investors buying in seems to be a big part of it.

This "institutional investors" meme is a bit like God: no one can prove it, but it gives its believers all the hope. There is no evidence of that happening on massive scale and no reason for them to do so.

https://www.microstrategy.com/en/bitcoin or https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-29/guggenhei... it's everywhere :(

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

#118

Post by mdoms »

seibelj wrote: post #48
crumbshot wrote: post #29

Bitcoin and other compute-intensive cryptocurrencies should be banned or taxed so heavily that it's financially infeasible to use them. The amount of energy being wasted (reportedly more than seven nuclear power plants worth) on what is essentially an unproductive project is quite absurd. In a world where we should all be increasingly concerned about the looming climate catastrophe, it's wholly irresponsible for Bitc…

If I build a geothermal plant in a place where no one needs power, and use it only to mine bitcoin, then only renewable energy is used, nothing is added to the climate. See https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/13/how-iceland-be... Using excess hydro power (china) or renewables like geothermal doesn't hurt the planet. Most bitcoin is mined using marginal energy that would be wasted otherwise. It has to be, as mi…

Geothermal is neither renewable nor zero-carbon.

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

#119

Post by arcticbull »

brian_cloutier wrote: post #116
arcticbull wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first is that scaling Bitcoin up to the size of visa is not particularly possible. That’s no mistake, folks are suggesting that on a per transaction basis - today - Bitcoin is cheaper or more efficient if you take into account hand wavey externalities not captured in the classical transaction cost model of a payment processor like visa. What I’ve done is invalidate that argument not by scaling visa down to a si…

You haven't shown that it's physically impossible though. Scaling doesn't work that way, not even in the physical world does it work that way. As the side length of a cube increases the surface area increases with the square of the side length, and volume increases with the cube of the side length. When considering the effects of scaling a system it makes no sense to just multiply all numbers by some constant. The qu…

You misunderstand. I’m not saying it’s physically impossible for Bitcoin to scale (which I do believe, separately), but that it’s physically impossible for Bitcoin to be more efficient on a per transaction basis as specced today even if you take into account all externalities.

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

#120

Post by m-i-l »

seibelj wrote: post #73

I love crypto post on HN - never seen more grayed out comments in my life!

Would be interesting to see how the comments change colour over time. A while back, when I used to read and reply to a few comments on the topic, I reckoned there was a bit of a pattern to voting - non-believer comments would turn light gray almost instantly, but then get well into the black over time, like there was a small but very quick and fanatical group on the believer side trying to eliminate any dissent, but a much larger and slower group of non-believers who reign out in the long term. That was a while ago, so I don't know if it is the same now. These days I treat blockchain and cryptocurrencies like politics and religion - best not talk about them in polite company.
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