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Bitcoin breaks above $20k

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Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#181

Post by louwrentius »

Aaronstotle wrote: post #45
marta_morena_91 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are you aware that USD is the currency most frequently used for both fraud and crime?

At least it's actually useful and beneficial.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#182

Post by louwrentius »

zepolen wrote: post #44
marta_morena_91 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 1. There is no use case for crypto currencies, except fraud and crime. Pornhub seems to disagree.

Paying for questionable smut, yes, excellent.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#183

Post by jariel »

SI_Rob wrote: post #58
tectonic wrote: post #2

What's the carbon footprint of BTC like these days? Has any progress been made on mitigating this fundamental design issue?

The entire point of Bitcoin is that you irreversibly give up something you value in exchange for creating a Bitcoin in return. The Bitcoin now stands for that lost value, and there is now a corresponding psychological motive to replace the valuable thing that was lost (electricity, and all that goes with it including environmental impact) by mentally investing that loss in the Bitcoin token. So you protect it, you su…

"There is no "environmental mitigation" for Bitcoin's energy use, this behavior ... is an essential property of cryptocurrency, without which it would cease to exist."

This is based on the false premise that energy, or anything else needs to be given up in exchange for crypto, or any other form of currency.

We could create a zillion cryptos out of thin air and just hand them out. That's one way to do it.

Central banks do it another way.

The 'energy' thing is just nonsense, it's just something that happens to be baked into this specific form of BTC generation.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#184

Post by itsdsmurrell »

nwah1 wrote: post #68
johnpaulkiser wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

With bitcoin you can send funds peer to peer. No trusted intermediaries. Routing through a network of exchanges is more like routing through SWIFT or ACH.

For a large fee and with a lot of uncertainty on if it will make it into a block. Try the fork of Bitcoin that still operates like Bitcoin used to up until 2016: Bitcoin Cash.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#185

Post by ogogmad »

I remember reading that the Lightning network can be attacked by people spamming it with withdrawal requests, resulting in funds being stolen from users. Furthermore, I remember reading that this attack is to some extent not solvable. I need to find a link. [EDIT: I think this might be it: https://decrypt.co/33917/bitcoin-stolen-lightning-network-at....]

I'm pro-Bitcoin, and I own some, but what worries me is whether the scalability problem will ever be satisfactorily solved. It's been 5 years since Lightning was first suggested and it's still only at Alpha stage.

And if the scalability problems are never overcome, will Bitcoin still maintain whatever value it has now?

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#186

Post by drcross »

Entwickler wrote: post #111
_sm6n wrote: post #94

It's kinda sad that the pricing or market capitalization is the only thing that is being talked about in the "cryptocurrency community", instead of focussing on how the technology can be useful for society. Like for example if you look at /r/Bitcoin, there's a sidebar with "Submit text/link NOT about price", yet virtually every post is about price, even if just indirectly (Paypal joins the cryptocurrency bandwagon an…

I'd suggest following ethereum and it's founder Vitalik. He's explicitly said things like, "If all that we accomplish is lambo memes and immature puns about "sharting", then I WILL leave. Though I still have a lot of hope that the community can steer in the right direction." He has worked with the UN world food program, and posts a lot of material on voting, economic fairness, and social aspects of blockchain in gene…

DAO rollback made them untrustable for me. You do you but a key required feature of my cryptocurrency should be sovereignty.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#187

Post by mxskelly »

joshuakelly wrote: post #105

Let's pay tribute to the very first Hacker News thread about Bitcoin back in May, 2009 with this classic comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852 > Well this is an exceptionally cute idea, but there is absolutely no way that anyone is going to have any faith in this currency.

Not a single reasonable person I talk to has faith in the currency so I'd say they're right.

I don't give a shit about lambos, nobody gives a shit about bitcoin as a currency and they never will.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#188

Post by JxLS-cpgbe0 »

iforgottherest wrote: post #164
tempsy wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can say the same thing about gold - it’s just a shiny rock. it’s an inflation protected asset, perhaps even more so than gold since there’s a known quantity of it that will never change.

When the price of gold crashes, at least you have a piece of gold. When bitcoin crashes, what do you have?

You store all the gold you're using for a long-term store of value at your house?

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#189

Post by xur17 »

carleverett wrote: post #155
albntomat0 wrote: post #3

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.

This chart shows the amount of BTC that's locked into the Lightning Network over time, one measure of adoption: https://embed.theblockcrypto.com/data/on-chain-metrics/bitco... It hasn't grown much in the last year and a half. Personally I don't see Lightning Network winning the battle for high-bandwidth, low-cost transactions against all the other protocols.

A few notes on that:

* This only shows public channels. Most wallet apps that people install on their phone, etc open private channels

* This shows capacity, it doesn't show throughput. I work at a company that accepts payments over lightning, and our volume has grown a lot over the past year, but our channel capacity really hasn't had to grow all that much (since we withdraw funds to layer 1 regularly)

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#190

Post by itsdsmurrell »

tempsy wrote: post #120
mrlala wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh. I 100% understand what you are saying but I also 100% disagree with it. This is all greed with no substance. Wealthy people and those who desire to be wealthy are doing everything they can to arbitrarily prop up something which does not really have value. And they seem to be winning- which is everything that is wrong with the world right now.

you can say the same thing about gold - it’s just a shiny rock. it’s an inflation protected asset, perhaps even more so than gold since there’s a known quantity of it that will never change.

You can't actually. Gold holds a unique spot on the periodic table. Another element isn't going to come into existence and compete with it here. Bitcoin on the other hand is in the fight for its life with the rest of the cryptocurrencies. I think that the one that's most useful will win out in the end... not the one that was most popular first (think myspace).
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