61–70 of 473 posts
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How long does the "game of musical chairs" have to go on before you consider the possibility that this isn't one? It has been a decade since BTC was launched.
Bernie Madoff operated his "game of musical chairs" for over twice that period of time. If age is the only argument you have to justify Bitcoin's value, we still have a while to go.
But why...? > When this [rally to near $20,000] happened in 2017, there was a real lack of products for the new converts to experience, whereas today there are endless uses, protocols, services across farming, lending, standard trading, etc Is this really true though? My first instinct isn’t at all to go to blockchain/cryptocurrency for farming.
What's the current thoughts on Tether, and how its speculated potential collapse will affect the rest of the ecosystem? Also, what's the latest on scaling? The last time I looked into it, Lightening was a thing, but I don't follow it closely.
What's the carbon footprint of BTC like these days? Has any progress been made on mitigating this fundamental design issue?
Bitcoin is a pure computer-science phenomenon. Regardless of whether you personally feel this is a good or bad investment, I think the magnitude of this success over such a short time frame, the impact on the world, and the interest it and the wider crypto ecosystem receives from the non-tech world, is absolutely stunning. HN should accept that Bitcoin is an achievement of massive proportions.
But it's really not. Bitcoin isn't anything special. If there were any real-world use cases for it (which there don't seem to be), this would have been done long ago or would have been done organically. As it stands, interest in bitcoin was largely null, until people realized that it's a great investment opportunity where everybody can get rich (tulips, anyone?)... The rest is history. Now alt coins were popping up l…
I agree. Currently it's being treated as an investment vehicle more than a currency. I wonder if the house of cards will ever crumble.
The appreciation and depreciation of Bitcoin is one of the things I don’t really understand. I get currency, capital flow, and asset to capital conversions. But for Bitcoin, where exactly is the value? Why is holding one Bitcoin appreciating so much faster compared to the USD? Is it because us as a society is perceiving the value of Bitcoin to appreciate (even though it’s illogical IMO to think so)?
But there's no going back. Cryptocurrencies have their place, and they're here to stay.
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The Paris agreement was not enforceable, and the US is one of the countries that has actually done most to reduce carbon output. But hey, at least the rest of world leaders are virtue signaling about their greenness, that’ll help the planet!
US leadership was actively pushing for rolling back energy standards (that California was fighting for quite strongly). US has achieved a lot (especially Tesla) _despite_ the leadership working against it for a long time.
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Tether is still a scam, and the music is still playing. Don't be the last guy. As for lightning, it adds a layer of trust into a system whose reason for existence is trustlessness. If you don't care about trustlessness, you can already have fast and scalable transactions through normal banking.
What do you mean by layer of trust? Bitcoin is definitely not "trustless" its trust minimized for sure. Lightning also minimizes trust in a very similar way. As a user you don't have to make any more assumptions when using lightning than you do already using the bitcoin base layer.
The appreciation and depreciation of Bitcoin is one of the things I don’t really understand. I get currency, capital flow, and asset to capital conversions. But for Bitcoin, where exactly is the value? Why is holding one Bitcoin appreciating so much faster compared to the USD? Is it because us as a society is perceiving the value of Bitcoin to appreciate (even though it’s illogical IMO to think so)?
Same reason why asset (stocks, housing) prices have skyrocketed even though there's a pandemic going on: money printing.
What's the carbon footprint of BTC like these days? Has any progress been made on mitigating this fundamental design issue?