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Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

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Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptos are purely a speculation vessel, they don't fix many of the problems they claim to fix and add tons of problems over other currencies I'm fine with cryptos as long as they're not pitched as something they're not

Look at polkadot. You can exchange any arbitrary data across parachains. How is that not the internet but better?

I have no idea. What does it even mean and why would I want to do it?

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#392
post #365
post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unrest in every country, legal systems non existent or not robust enough to solve national or international disputes but local warlords still need to trade and cooperate. Then obviously Bitcoin would be extremely valuable and useful.

Just the opposite. Bitcoin seems to depend upon a stable computing network and legal authorities who can punish those who hack bitcoin. If such networks collapsed how could most people keep bitcoin secure? Or run the computing power to power the network? With gold, money and other valuables you can carry them with you and hide them.

No one can hack bitcoin, it's created through robust mathematical models.

What can be hacked are exchanges and wallets. You can keep your coins out if these as long as you want and carry them as gold or cash and do in place transactions whenever the network is available. You can even use physical coins, which are simply piece of paper with the key written on it. The receiver would need to have a connection to verify that the funds are still there though.

No jurisdiction has any power over who owns what coins. The best they can do is to physically extract the fund from person like extracting any secret(torture, punishment if they don't comply etc.). If the person of interest dies with his secret, the coins are gone forever because the premise of BTC is that it is kept in a distributed database that can only be changed(and the only possible change is addin new records) with cryptographic validation and governments don't have a power over mathematics.

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#394

Bitcoin is a mystery to me. Somehow it's hailed as revolutionising the economy, by replacing currency with a worse kind of currency. It feels like this is where all the "how to get rich quick" book writers and other hustle bros went and created one giant financial pyramid, which works in quite simple way: - buy bitcoin - tell everyone around how revolutionary it is, so they buy it and what you holding increases in va…

> You know what would be revolutionary? Getting rid of currency altogether.

I would like to see your plans for this ;)

Jokes aside, I think that Bitcoin attracting greedy people was inevitable. Bitcoin _was_ revolutionary in that it was a new financial instrument. Couple that with its explosion in value, and the 'hustle bros' will definitely come flocking trying to take advantage. However, if you were a part of it before it became popular, you would definitely know that it started as an oddity, a hobby for cryptographic enthusiasts. The hustle bros didn't write the protocol or sit around scheming about how to design this thing so they can scam people. It doesn't necessarily mean that Bitcoin is inherently bad, but its nature (decentralized, anonymous payments, complex, end users mostly don't understand the details) makes it ripe for the scams you mentioned.

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#395

Bitcoin is a mystery to me. Somehow it's hailed as revolutionising the economy, by replacing currency with a worse kind of currency. It feels like this is where all the "how to get rich quick" book writers and other hustle bros went and created one giant financial pyramid, which works in quite simple way: - buy bitcoin - tell everyone around how revolutionary it is, so they buy it and what you holding increases in va…

Society has had multiple stores of value, as none is perfectly secure. Gold, oil, dollars, real estate, (some) bonds & equities. Crypto is the first that’s decentralized and digital and on a open network not governed by any centralized entity which is powerful bc the world needs a international reserve currency

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#396
post #328

Dec 2020 - Raises $5bn from investors Jan 2021 - Spends 30% of raised money to buy Bitcoin What value are Tesla adding here? Those investors could have just put 70% in to Tesla and 30% in to Bitcoin directly. Arguably, the only positive here (for BTC and TSLA holders) is short term, and it's that Tesla are associating their brand with Bitcoin to whip up froth.

Michael Saylor raised $900m in debt to buy bitcoin. It's like a free option call on bitcoin and is rather ingenious. If bitcoin spikes, you convert you debt into stock. If bitcoin falls, you still got your debt.

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#397
post #77

2020 has completely changed my perception of Tesla and Musk. I had this image of a benevolent genius who is sometimes misunderstood ("funding secured", "pedo guy", "Autopilot"). Came across Teslacharts' podcast [1] (now the Chartcast) and oh boy was I wrong. This is only the latest in a long series of red flags around Tesla/Musk and however it ends, it will not end well. [1] https://thechartcast.com/

"pedo guy" was the thing that broke the camel's back for me. When you have millions of followers and billions of airtime on you, it's absolutely inexcusable to call a random guy a pedo. When he did that my view of him went from a "fake it till you make it" type, to a dishonest and malicious person.

Agreed, it was inexcusable.

However, we all have our moments where we do dumb things. If you expect anyone to be perfect, you're in for a rude surprise. One has to look at the whole picture, and that incident was an anomaly.

I've noticed a tendency for people to jump on one thing someone says or does and try to ruin them over it and de-platform them, as if that one mistake defines their whole life. I think it's uncharitable, and hypocritical. I don't like that trend.

Let him who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone. I'm not religious, but you have to admit, there's some wisdom in that. To be clear I'm not saying you can't criticize someone, especially a public figure, who does something wrong. I'm saying don't stone them to death over it - there's some proportionality missing in the response of the twitter mob.

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#398
post #77

2020 has completely changed my perception of Tesla and Musk. I had this image of a benevolent genius who is sometimes misunderstood ("funding secured", "pedo guy", "Autopilot"). Came across Teslacharts' podcast [1] (now the Chartcast) and oh boy was I wrong. This is only the latest in a long series of red flags around Tesla/Musk and however it ends, it will not end well. [1] https://thechartcast.com/

Please do not leave comments like this without _some_ elaboration. Linking to a one hour long podcast is not sufficient, especially without so much as a timestamp.

Apologies, I elaborated further in another comment [1].

Here is a good overview in written form [1] but as long as you don't verify the credibility of the writer, it won't say much.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26065075

[2] https://www.plainsite.org/realitycheck/tsla.pdf

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#399

Bitcoin is a mystery to me. Somehow it's hailed as revolutionising the economy, by replacing currency with a worse kind of currency. It feels like this is where all the "how to get rich quick" book writers and other hustle bros went and created one giant financial pyramid, which works in quite simple way: - buy bitcoin - tell everyone around how revolutionary it is, so they buy it and what you holding increases in va…

I don't understand such kind of comments. Let's talk again after you experienced a bank cancelling your business account for no reason with seemingly having landed on a shared hidden blacklist that makes it impossible to get a new bank account.

Has bitcoin actually solved that problem though?

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#400
I really don't get why bitcoin is worth so much.Bitcoin is called a store of value like gold, but gold has inherent uses. If the price of gold went to zero then you could still use it to make jewellery or use it for electrical conductivity. If the price of bitcoin goes to zero then it's worthless. It's also not environmentally friendly and bitcoin mining uses up 0.21% of the world's power supply. And all of this energy is used to calculate billions of hashes per second out of which all but one will be discarded. There is also increased regulatory focus from governments who see it as a threat , with India even going so far as to suggest they would ban it.
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