Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 1001 posts

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

#421

Post by wp381640 »

graeme wrote: post #297
whitepaint wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why has gold prevailed over thousands of years while almost all fiat currencies went to 0?

Gold stores value but it hasn’t really appreciated. Whereas the claim for bitcoin is that it will soar in value. Why? Warren Buffett said it best on gold. It just sits there. Here’s one quote I found. In another he compared buying gold in 1900 vs us stocks. “ I will say this about gold. If you took all the gold in the world, it would roughly make a cube 67 feet on a side…Now for that same cube of gold, it would be wo…

> Whereas the claim for bitcoin is that it will soar in value. Why?

Not so much that it'll soar - but should retain it's value because of the cap and decayed mining

Further from that Buffett on his gold criticism - there is no hypothetical "bitcoin asteroid" that could hit earth and tank the value, or a new discovery

You don't have to be all-in on bitcoin, it's a hedge and a better version of the role metals play(ed). Personally my own preference is bitcoin sits somewhere between stocks and cash - that's exactly what Tesla are doing with their own cash management

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

#422

Post by gnrlst »

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #381

Oh noes, if this starts a trend, becomes widespread, and businesses start hoarding crypto tokens instead of investing in building stuff, it could cause a great depression pretty much the same way gold hoarding caused the economy to collapse in 1929. When people, businesses and banks start hording tokens instead of investing in building and maintaining the production capacity of consumables, the ratio of value of toke…

I agree. What's also absurd is that Tesla raised $5B and now is parking 30% of that in Bitcoin, which we all know has a unique history of volatility. This is not going to end well.

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

#423

Post by pelliphant »

xiphias2 wrote: post #228
asenna wrote: post #26

People paying attention to Elon's tweets [1] [2] saw this coming from a mile away. It'll be interesting to see if and when other big companies follow suit. In my opinion it's inevitable companies will start diversifying by a bit of exposure to Bitcoin but let's see how soon that will be. [1] - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-cryptocurrency/tesl... [2] - https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/29/bitcoin-spikes-20percen…

Actually in the SEC filing they state that they already changed their financial policy to be able to buy alternative assets. It's interesting that the media didn't pick it up, as MSTR did the same.thing first.

Not an expert, but as an anecdote: every company that I have worked for have had their stated purpose as "Doing X and Y, and also investing in stocks/bonds/whatever".

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

#424

Post by thehappypm »

I am embarrassed by the industry.

How many of our generation's best and brightest minds are doing crypto and day trading?

Imagine if these minds were focused on societal problems -- energy, health, food.

I know multiple Harvard CS graduates who went right into the crypto space.

What a waste.

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

#425

Post by gibbonsrcool »

afavour wrote: post #413
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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…

> I was forced to watch my government bungle a pandemic in the worst possible way and then asked to pay for it for decades. No I don’t think I will. That has very little to do with currency and everything to do with you not wanting to pay taxes. You may think that COVID response has been a catastrophic waste of money but if you'd lost your job would you have claimed the increased unemployment benefits? I suspect the…

Why should one want to pay taxes on debt that was a result of stupidity?

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

#426

Post by dmantis »

phreeza wrote: post #45
pearjuice wrote: post #4

I have been bearish on BTC for a long time, but when I realized a few years ago that the fiat system we have in place is unsustainable, I see it as a safe hedge against it and the inevitable hyper inflation which will happen in our lifetime. I know HN is highly skeptical of anything crypto and I agree that blockchain as a technology doesn't have any notable usages. But right now, Bitcoin is the safest deflationary as…

Why not buy something useful like real estate?

Not really liquid and can't be moved with you around the world in the pocket?

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

#427

Post by vntok »

robjan wrote: post #399
I_am_tiberius wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes it has, anyone in the world can open their own "current account"/"deposit account" for free, right now. Barring hacking you, no government or authority can access it without your consent. None can prevent you from receiving money in it from someone else, or from transferring money out of it to someone else.

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

#428

Post by tryonenow »

jcranmer wrote: post #210
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?

In recent times, it seems that the reaction to cryptocurrencies here has mostly settled into either greatest-thing-since-sliced-bread or this-is-pure-snake-oil camps, with no one really adopting a neutral view, and it's hard for me to say which view is heavily dominant on Hacker News. Speaking as someone who tends towards the latter camp, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies feel to me a lot more like a solution in sea…

I don't think those with neutral perspectives have much incentive to comment.

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

#429

Post by sygma »

neilwilson wrote: post #402
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

> At the city level, [Miami mayor] Suarez’s ambitions are equally ambitious. He’s “looking at” ways to pay municipal employees a percentage of their salary in bitcoin and allow residents to use bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for “payments and fees,” including taxes.

https://www.coindesk.com/miami-mayor-previews-favorable-cryp...

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

#430

Post by ddtaylor »

protoman3000 wrote: post #101
DennisP wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mixers are not that effective these days.

How not? Can you point some research in this direction?

There are companies, such as Chainalysis that specialize in analyzing the graph created by mixers/tumblers. If you want a coin that truly cannot have it's origins traced, use Monero, since it's a completely different structure with a public/private "view" key. It's actually a very interesting system.
Post reply on HN