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S&P Dow Jones Indices to launch cryptocurrency indexes in 2021

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Re: S&P Dow Jones Indices to launch cryptocurrency indexes in 2021

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SWIFT gpi can't compete with Ripple on a number of important issues. Ripple transfers don't pass through multiple banks and the actual value of the XRP is transferred, not just the data (of the SWIFT ledger). > Banks can and do move billions instantly We're not just talking about banks, and if I open my own bank tomorrow I can't use SWIFT the same day (the way I can with Ripple), I have no relationships with correspo…

I think what the grandparent post is trying to make clear is that there is no technical impediment to moving money instantly as some others have claimed here. It isn't that the amazing technology of blockchain has allowed us to achieve this for the first time. The reality is that this completely unregulated space is allowing people to sidestep a bunch of regulation and thus move money faster. If crypto becomes an iss…

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Re: S&P Dow Jones Indices to launch cryptocurrency indexes in 2021

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that the scarcity can be trivially changed if certain people decide that it should, which isn't true for things that exist in the real world like gold. Norms shift over time and your suggestion that it's unlikely to change is your opinion based on cultural analysis, not something that can be proven to be true even in principle. > It would be much, much more difficult to change than e.g. the supply of dol…

You can't "prove" that Earth's gold supply won't increase with asteroid mining either. We can disagree on the relative difficulty of asteroid mining vs. changing Bitcoin's consensus rules, but you must at least concede that they are both possible.

Right... No matter how many people wish it to be so, the amount of gold on the planet cannot be arbitrarily increased, instead, you'd have to go to extremes likes mining astroids in space, a feat of engineering that is only possible in theory.

Re: S&P Dow Jones Indices to launch cryptocurrency indexes in 2021

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's analogous to investing money in USD or GBP before those countries were given a license to print as many USD and GBP as they wanted. Before then (1931 for the pound and 1933 for the dollar, though they maintained de-facto parity with gold until 1971), dollars and pounds were considered good investments. That's why we had bank runs: people thought their money would be safer under their mattress, and preferred to o…

It is fixed at 21M but technically, this can be changed through an Economic Majority [0][1]. [0] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Economic_majority [1] https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/3945/how-could-t...

21M is the basis of bitcoin for most hodlers.

Any fork or decision by anyone to change this 21M number means that for me (and most hardcore bitcoiners I know) the chain which sticks to Satoshi's 21M becomes the REAL bitcoin chain.

21M is non negotiable. If it doesn't have 21M, it simply isn't BTC.

Re: S&P Dow Jones Indices to launch cryptocurrency indexes in 2021

#324
post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's possible to destroy or transmute gold, but as you already stated, it's prohibitively expensive thus with respect to scarcity it might as well be impossible. Yes, that might change in the future but there is no reason to believe that it will.

You just explained to yourself why Bitcoins supply is fixed and can't feasibly be changed. It was a well made argument, good job.

No. Your belief that the bitcoin community will never choose to alter the supply of bitcoins is not the same thing as the properties of physics which constrain the practical transmutation of gold.

Re: S&P Dow Jones Indices to launch cryptocurrency indexes in 2021

#325

I’m enjoying sitting on the sidelines and watching people “invest” in a digital “currency” that you cannot spend, does not produce cash flow, and whose values are determined by other shmucks buying it from previous shmucks. What a time to be alive. No wonder the S&P 500 CAPE ratio is beyond the 1929 high. No one has any idea of what the intrinsic value is of anything. Investing in companies that don’t make a profit,…

>You’d literally make more money today taking your cash and starting a business than dumping it in some of these worthless pursuits.

You refuted yourself in the second paragraph. I suspect that crazy cash and financial instruments are crowding out the value of business investment.

Re: S&P Dow Jones Indices to launch cryptocurrency indexes in 2021

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although digital asset prices are not a good proxy for their utility, there are plenty of utility for enough people and that expands and the addressable market expands. Crypto businesses are very lucrative so don’t be too busy asking why when you should be asking how

I’m not asking why, because anyone can find instances of mania in history such as this. Beanie babies. Tulips. The law of large numbers, in this case—the speculative experiment of seeking returns from assets that do not produce value, will iron this out. History does not repeat, but it rhymes often enough for those who know the tune to sing along.

The idea that tulips are similar to the tech behind ethereum is ridiculous. And that’s sort of the implication.

Re: S&P Dow Jones Indices to launch cryptocurrency indexes in 2021

#327
post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that the scarcity can be trivially changed if certain people decide that it should, which isn't true for things that exist in the real world like gold. Norms shift over time and your suggestion that it's unlikely to change is your opinion based on cultural analysis, not something that can be proven to be true even in principle. > It would be much, much more difficult to change than e.g. the supply of dol…

> can be trivially changed if certain people decide that it should This is simply not the case - see 2017 bitcoin cash fork or Segwit2X push. At the end of the day money is a human invention, meant to facilitate value exchange between humans. So it requires consensus between the users of the money, if some fraction want to change the rules they are free to. We went for something we found in nature with properties tha…

It can be trivially changed in the sense that it's a computer program that simulates money. No amount of consensus can increase the gold supply.

Re: S&P Dow Jones Indices to launch cryptocurrency indexes in 2021

#328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not asking why, because anyone can find instances of mania in history such as this. Beanie babies. Tulips. The law of large numbers, in this case—the speculative experiment of seeking returns from assets that do not produce value, will iron this out. History does not repeat, but it rhymes often enough for those who know the tune to sing along.

The tulip derivative bubble lasted for a few months; beanie babies were a year or two at most. Bitcoin is over ten years old. Do you have any examples of a bubble which - lasted more than 5 years - recovered from previous drops in value of more than 50 %? What kind of evidence would convince you that bitcoin were different from these past bubbles?

The dot-com bubble played out over a decade. Bitcoin’s price history has only been significant for 3 years. It otherwise looked like any other penny asset.

Re: S&P Dow Jones Indices to launch cryptocurrency indexes in 2021

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to believe it's an investment myself, but haven't been able to-- and by sitting it out we've of course lost a lot of money in forgone gains. Where I get stuck, and maybe someone could help me here-- generally, you don't have to try to hard to imagine a future with cryptocurrency being more useful then it is today. That is, it is more valuable. BUT, why should that mean that its price should be higher? It's lik…

the value of something like bitcoin is generally going to be related to the value of the network. if you can envision it being more useful in the future, consider what the function is, and what it means for the value of the network as a whole. some examples to explain what i'm saying, not necessarily what i think will happen per se bitcoin replaces, or at least augments, gold as a "store of value inflation hedge" - i…

Is Bitcoin not infinitely divisible though? So it would just be inflated by dividing infinitely. It's the same as having infinite amount the other way.

Re: S&P Dow Jones Indices to launch cryptocurrency indexes in 2021

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Not so with Bitcoin: the total supply is fixed at 21M, forever, and there's no central authority with the power to change that. But as TFA indicates, there are over 500 other crypto coins. When anyone can create a new one they become irrelevant.

Anyone can create a Craigslist clone, but somehow they still make 100s of millions of dollars per year.

Yep, this is what people are not understanding. Too many engineers and not enough business owners on HN. The hardest part of starting a business is getting the network effects on your side, it isn't the tech.
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