Bitcoin breaks above $20k • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#361

Post by BlargMcLarg » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 7:32 PM UTC

agent008t wrote: post #299

nostrademons wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is representative of a bigger problem within the developed world: the top problem on many people's mind is "Other people have money and I don't." This manifests in a lot of other areas as well: stock market speculation, people asking for government handouts, folks looking for get-rich-quick startup ideas, glorification of the "side hustle", etc. And I think the root cause of that is that productivity gro…

This makes me wonder. What is the optimal size of the population for a given country/territory/planet? That is, the size of the population at which the welfare/wealth of the median individual is maximized. Given that, as you say, prime land, prime housing, prime infrastructure, prime tourist destinations don't easily scale, yet more people enable better technologies/more efficient production of other consumer goods a…

Also depends on how you split it. I'd wager a lot of metropolitan areas are over already. Smaller cities are close to the maximum, but most people in the middle class or lower will feel it is way over already simply due to the cost of things.

There are quite a few fields you could at least slash in half overnight too. Bureaucracy is one: here (small European country) we have way too many managers and people that are only there to move boxes around and cause communication overhead to explode, offering practically no benefit whatsoever.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#362

Post by webinvest » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 7:32 PM UTC

flyGuyOnTheSly wrote: post #208

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…

The price of Eggs is up 50% in my neck of the woods over the past 6 months. House prices are up 20-30% over the same time frame. The stock market is up close to 50% over the same time frame... This is not happening because the economy is booming. It is happening because the limits on printing money have been completely erased. >In light of the shift to an ample reserves regime, the Board has reduced reserve requireme…

Yes I agree with everything you said. I have a few questions for you if you don’t mind.

A) In an environment where banks can lend every penny they have, is there a way to see how much of the money outstanding is loan money and vs how much is hard money? With a 10% reserve ratio, the theoretical max was $10 of loan money for every $1 of hard money. Therefore the ratio could be as high as 10:1.

2) What would happen if some banks wound up having -10% assets in reserve after a few defaults?

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#363

Post by zadler » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 7:41 PM UTC

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…

The point is that it’s not going away. Many times it has been pronounced dead but it has maintained enough utility to keep growing. This gives people confidence in it over time.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#364

Post by ljf » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 7:44 PM UTC

Taek wrote: post #309

mmastrac wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

I wonder what number of people actively use or hold bitcoin in any given month? Is there a dashboard for this and also transaction per month?

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#365

Post by koonsolo » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 7:45 PM UTC

_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…

Nano solved this on reddit by splitting off a nano_trading. That way the main channel is free of all the price bullshit.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#366

Post by three_seagrass » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 7:49 PM UTC

nwah1 wrote: post #30

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.

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.

Spot on. Lightning, while it scales with transactions, doesn't scale with users.

This means transactions have to go unverified and that you have to trust the person you transact with by design.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#367

Post by koonsolo » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 7:51 PM UTC

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.

Go compare the market cap of bitcoin with the money supply of some countries. Is it still a hobby currency then?

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#368

Post by three_seagrass » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 7:54 PM UTC

slewis wrote: post #135

nwah1 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"you can already have fast and scalable transactions through normal banking." I see this repeated a lot. I think you're saying bitcoin is no better than normal banking for moving value. Do you really believe this? Yes, in the US I can immediately wire money somewhere as long as: 1) I do it within east coast business hours. Weekend? Sorry, wait til Monday 2) I have the correct information for the receiving institution…

If the number of people tried who try to transfer money between banks tried to do it on the bitcoin network, you would be waiting months for the same transaction that is taking you a couple business days with banks.

On top of that, you'd also have all the additional risk and liability of dealing with potential fraud and uninsured institutions.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#369

Post by zadler » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 7:54 PM UTC

jpsalm wrote: post #204

rodiger wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much energy do you think the current financial system consumes? Eg paying for a pack of gum with your Mastercard Edit: This wasn't intended to be a hypothetical- I agree BTC uses significantly more per transaction, but I'm curious how it compares to the entirety of a system like Mastercard divided by number of transactions (including all employee/office space/commute/etc energy consumption). There are clearer/few…

Significantly less energy per transaction, which is the only metric that matters.

Lightning network will also scale to millions of transactions per second and consume much less than each Bitcoin transaction.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#370

Post by Torwald » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 7:59 PM UTC

NoOneNew wrote: post #281

pdpi wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just saying "this will help the poor because they have nothing" over and over with no real plan, let alone action, doesn't make it true. I used to work at a bitcoin company, and we had large user communities in countries where the local currency was subject to very high inflation, and access to stabler currencies (like dollars or euros) was severely limited. We were actually helping proper deal with real problems,…

Okay... how does bitcoin differ from an unstable traditional currency? Both are subject to high and low swings to inflation and deflation. The one thing bitcoin has not been in its history is stable. This still ends up to being the equivalent to "there are 14 standards, let's make a standard to unify them... there are now 15 standards". Plus, all you described was a currency exchange with an extra step. You could rep…

In the discussed scenario, Bitcoin is more secure than a traditional currency.

The local regime cannot take your Bitcoins away from you, which it could by hyperinflation, reform etc with the traditional currency. In other words, the trust in the owner of the currency is in fact higher.

Local gangsters as well, cannot take your Bitcoins away from you as easily. You have a higher chance at keeping your stash.