Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future • Hacker News Board

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

#401

Post by bronak1 » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

EtienneK wrote: post #380

I love the idea of Bitcoin. But, as someone who's been working in banking for more than a decade - what problem does Bitcoin solve? Serious question; 'cause I'm failing to come up with a good answer. Edit: The closest I've come to answering this: To me Bitcoin is more a decentralized international payment protocol (such as SWIFT); not a store of value / currency. But I rarely see it being pitched in that way.

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

#402

Post by neilwilson » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #371

rzodkiew wrote: post #338

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…

“The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.” -Satoshi Nakamoto Feb. 2009 If this isn’t resonating with you after the past year, I don’t know. I was forced to watch my government bungle a pandemic in the worst possible way and then asked t…

" Bitcoin is a way for me to step outside that debt I did not want or deserve"

Try paying your taxes in Bitcoin. Then you'll find that it has nothing to do with trust and everything to do with avoiding having your assets stripped by the IRS.

You want to live in a jurisdiction, then you pony up the tokens that jurisdiction demands. Or you lose your liberty and everything you own.

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

#403

Post by p0nce » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

fasteddie31003 wrote: post #88

I don't understand all the Crypto hate on this site. Since when have hackers become the luddites to new ways of finance?

I'm tired of always hearing from Crypto. It's just money, and it doesn't solve any problem. It's beyond boring honestly.

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

#404

Post by patricius » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

EtienneK wrote: post #380

I love the idea of Bitcoin. But, as someone who's been working in banking for more than a decade - what problem does Bitcoin solve? Serious question; 'cause I'm failing to come up with a good answer. Edit: The closest I've come to answering this: To me Bitcoin is more a decentralized international payment protocol (such as SWIFT); not a store of value / currency. But I rarely see it being pitched in that way.

It is what people values it to be. We cannot define it to be a particular thing.

Some people see it as digital gold. Other people sees it as a type of money.

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

#405

Post by quesera » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

nly wrote: post #242

Waterluvian wrote: post #30

I bought $100 of BTC a while ago for fun. I watched it go up and down and mostly up. I got bored, and sold it for cash to donate... literally an hour before the big spike just earlier. I know about the fallacies of predicting the market. I understand 20/20 hindsight. But to actually experience it is such a strong lesson. To be flooded with, "ohhh I'm such an idiot!" and then think about how there's just no way I coul…

The thing I've learned investing so far: never sell anything . It really only ever makes sense to sell if doing so will positively change your lifestyle, or you have no alternative. Examples of when selling might be a good idea are buying a house, retiring, going through hard times, loss of a job etc. Rebalancing is fine too, but I'd personally only bother to do that if your portfolio is massively distorted (like it…

> The thing I've learned investing so far: never sell anything.

I once believed this to be a truth that I had learned.

Then time moved forward, and I learned that it was not a truth. :)

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

#406

Post by sixQuarks » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

Closi wrote: post #192

fasteddie31003 wrote: post #88

I don't understand all the Crypto hate on this site. Since when have hackers become the luddites to new ways of finance?

> I don't understand all the Crypto hate on this site. Since when have hackers become the luddites to new ways of finance? For me, it's because nobody can explain what the value offering of Bitcoin is - mainly the question 'what can I actualy do with a bitcoin?' . It's a bad currency because it is slow to exchange and costs lots of money to exchange - I can't use it to buy my coffee in the morning. It's a bad non-spe…

Let me explain bitcoin in a way that hackers will understand.

Bitcoin is javascript.

Hackers don't like javascript. It's got a lot of terrible quirks. There are so many languages better than javascript. But that doesn't matter. Javascript is ubiquitous, and you can't avoid it. Bitcoin is the same.

Either you accept it as the way things are and profit from it, or you keep pounding your head against the wall.

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

#407

Post by nly » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

bertjk wrote: post #384

tekkk wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noo, you should not hodl something forever just because you bought it and it's precious to you. The thing about investing and stock market in general is, that people are constantly seeking the _best_ returns. If you have invested in something and it goes up by 10% in a year while a similar asset goes up 50%, you should probably re-evaluate your investment. I have noticed that companies and investments do roughly divi…

I've noticed the same, and I find it kind of amusing because it is basically the opposite of the common advice of periodically "rebalancing" your portfolio

Normally people talk about rebalancing in terms of asset classes, not individual stocks.

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

#408

Post by hfsp » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

sireat wrote: post #323

fasteddie31003 wrote: post #88

I don't understand all the Crypto hate on this site. Since when have hackers become the luddites to new ways of finance?

Many of us have been around crypto for a long time (meaning since 2010-2011) and have not seen any progress in positive terms. Most of crypto growth has been pure speculation/ crypto2crytpo related services/morally questionable uses. Positives * ... Sort of positive/sort of negative: Evading capital controls Being your own bank.. Big Negatives: * POW energy use - huge one * POS stakeholder issue * Hard to use for Joe…

Defi is a scam.

Have you calculated the energy costs of the current system, when yelling "huge" energy use?

Have you considered the wasted energy of a government halving a fiat currency holder's purchasing power in a year or less?

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

#409

Post by RhodoGSA » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

lottin wrote: post #322

This is very worrying. Don't they have financial advisors at Tesla? An automaker should focus on making cars. This is what they specialise in and what they are good at. They should not be speculating with financial assets. Tesla shareholders can do that themselves, if they wish to.

Tesla is not an automaker and i don't know why people keep calling it that. It is a technology company.

It's designed chips, software, Cars, trucks, manufacturing lines, battery's, solar panels - And oh my god, if you saw the random products the engineering team designed in Keto Factory outside Fremont, you'd think very differently about Tesla as a company.

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

#410

Post by pelliphant » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

sixQuarks wrote: post #385

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ll notice that even if they accept Bitcoin as payment, they’ll never price anything in Bitcoin. Nobody does that. They always price it in dollars and accept Bitcoin at the market rate. When people start pricing things I’m Bitcoin without doing some daily calculation, that’s when you know it’s serious.

Do people price things in gold? So, is gold not a serious thing?

It is uncommon for sure.

But then again, now days, most people don't consider gold as a serious currency.