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Bitcoin breaks above $20k

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Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#301

Post by Siira »

cj wrote: post #149
arithma wrote: post #87

Just a question, isn't all criticism against bitcoin applicable to gold? Money/Currency/Value in general can't be reduced or derived from first principles. You always have to take into account human nature, economic activity, and most unfortunately: psychology. So all criticism about how bitcoin inherently being pointless, sounds like off-tune. I want good reasons to/NOT-to buy in. First-world country citizens kind o…

Gold is something that exists IRL. It has value even in the absence of a market to buy/sell it. It can be melted down and formed into jewelry, as a simple example. The reason I won't buy into crypto is it's impossible to make informed investment decisions because, as an investment, the price is driven too highly by unknown market forces (at least unknown to me...). Perhaps it's a good investment if you truly feel you…

Jewelry is even more useless than ledgers.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#302

Post by cwkoss »

alex_young wrote: post #169

I see lots of comments suggesting that BTC is a constant store of value and that it is rising in USD terms because of ‘money printing’. If that was the case, wouldn’t we see inflation in USD prices for a basket of goods? Isn’t inflation very close to zero? Others say they are sick of talking about BTC price and would rather focus on its utility. This makes sense, but for the same reason above it cannot happen since o…

CPI has become more of a tool for political posturing than an accurate measure of the cost of living. Real cost of living is growing significantly faster than CPI.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#303

Post by staplers »

webinvest wrote: post #296
arithma wrote: post #87

Just a question, isn't all criticism against bitcoin applicable to gold? Money/Currency/Value in general can't be reduced or derived from first principles. You always have to take into account human nature, economic activity, and most unfortunately: psychology. So all criticism about how bitcoin inherently being pointless, sounds like off-tune. I want good reasons to/NOT-to buy in. First-world country citizens kind o…

Gold doesn’t become more expensive to transport as the price goes up.

Yes it does. Security always comes at a cost.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#304

Post by ARandumGuy »

three_seagrass wrote: post #272
quattrofan wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they "control it" exactly?

By design, any changes to update the Bitcoin protocol need to be accepted by the miners with the majority of computing power - a.k.a. a hard fork. For many reasons, such as stealing electricity and having access to chip manufacturers, there are a handful of miners in China who have the majority of the computing power for Bitcoin. They can mine bitcoins at a cost that is less than for everyone else. This creates probl…

This is one of my big issues with Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies. It's not a democratic system, it's controlled by whoever has the most investment in the currency (either through mining power, or amount of currency).

This means that the people who get the most decision making power are incentivized to only make changes that help their investment. Any change that would help a majority of users, but harm these top users, is basically a non-starter.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#305

Post by albntomat0 »

jackmodern wrote: post #25
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.

Ignore the tether fud, old news. Lots of stable coins out there now that are fully regulated and partnering with US government (USDC).

I'm not looking for a different stablecoin. I think the more accurate way to phrase my concern is this "If I own some Bitcoin, what happens to it if the rumors regarding Tether are true?"

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#306

Post by Taek »

tboyd47 wrote: post #156
_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…

If you're looking for more substantive discussion among Bitcoiners, touching on its relation to economics, politics, and society, YouTube and Reddit are not the spots. I'd try Twitter. Start with @saifedean and go from there.

Twitter is an odd suggestion. I think the highest signal-to-noise ratio is probably podcasts. I'd start with 'On the Brink' and 'Uncommon Core'.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#307

Post by xur17 »

carleverett wrote: post #252
xur17 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Neat! Would you mind sharing the company you work for?

https://foldapp.com

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#308

Post by keymone »

three_seagrass wrote: post #123
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.

A decade latter and it's still a hobby currency. Price is not a sole indicator of faith in a currency.

Is decade a lot? How long did it take gold to settle as universal currency?

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#309

Post by Taek »

mmastrac wrote: post #117
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.

In fairness, it's 10 years later and sentiment still swings back and forth.

There is no question though that a lot of people have put their faith in Bitcoin. Misplaced or not, that original comment is wrong :)

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#310

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

hiq wrote: post #202
three_seagrass wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A decade latter and it's still a hobby currency. Price is not a sole indicator of faith in a currency.

How do you distinguish a proper currency from a hobby currency? I can think of these criteria on the top of my head: * trading volume * number of shops where it's accepted * whether you can pay taxes with it Did you have something like that in mind? Or something else? What would lead you to say "this is not just a hobby currency anymore"?

I'd say non-financial usage is the appropriate measure. My dollars are a good currency because I pay my mortgage in them, I buy groceries in them, I get my paycheck in them, I pay my friends for my share of dinner in it. The usage towards "stuff" that the economy is made of (activities, goods, etc) should be the measure. I have yet to see bitcoin make a dent there. It seems like bitcoin has actually gotten harder to use there than when I first encountered it.

Until then a bitcoin is like a call option or financial derivatives or really exotic instruments. Financially very relevant, heavily used, but so niche that it's of no relevance to basically everybody.

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