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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

#531

Post by capableweb »

thehappypm wrote: post #424

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.

Says the "Product Manager at a mid size fortune 500 tech company", how much of your day consists on focusing 100% on societal problems really?

Besides shitting on other peoples choices, why don't you try to reach out to the graduates and ask them why they work in the cryptocurrency space?

Most of the people I know, including myself, have "improving the world" as the reason for working on cryptocurrencies. Even though you might not agree with that, you have to understand people see things differently in the world, and what you see as "the most important issues" is not often the same as what other people see as important.

What's even more important is to not shit on what others chose to spend their time on. Instead, be quiet and work on your stuff that is sooooo important and will solve everything with humanity.

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

#532

Post by azatris »

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.

Yes, a decentralized international payment protocol is a good answer, but it also has a currency itself embedded in it. A type of currency to make this protocol work.

The whole thing saves a lot of manpower and energy in the world, so in that regard it potentially holds a lot of value.

However, if you told me to open up Excel and calculate the approximate true value of 1 BTC, I am unable to do so.

I can imagine scenarios where for someone with very specific needs of anonymity it solves problems, but I cannot imagine any direct problems it solves for me.

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

#533

Post by quesera »

valenterry wrote: post #442
quesera wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. :)

Please enlighten us.

If you have been an investor (or startup employee) for less than 13 years, you may not have witnessed large paper losses that make a good argument against never selling.

More directly: We are in the longest bull market in history. It is not always like this.

I've learned that it makes sense to miss out on some upside to protect against the downside. This was a reversal of my previous beliefs, which matched the GGP's.

I make no predictions about the future here -- short term, or long term. Somehow we (the investor class) survived a year of enormous social disruption which should have decimated the market, at least. The popular wisdom says that the next year will bring (social) recovery and economic expansion. This might be true.

But I would argue against a blanket policy of never selling. I have ridden that train all the way to $0 (literally) more than once, and while I was not harmed by these decisions, they were objectively poor ones.

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

#534

Post by pelliphant »

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…

What are the positive sides of "Evading capital controls"?

Also, does POS here mean "piece of shit"?

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

#535

Post by loceng »

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…

"Bitcoin is almost as bs as fiat money" - Elon Musk, https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1340588909974200321

E.g. it's still not the ideal, final solution - but Tesla seemingly aligning to being on the side of the "army of HODLers" makes business sense; you don't want that army that's financially incentivized via the MLM/pyramid scheme that it is to start rallying against you and your products/services.

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

#536

Post by MrMan »

fasteddie31003 wrote: post #494
thehappypm wrote: post #424

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.

Think of the crypto programmer who make it possible for poor Venezuelans to have an island of crypto inflation stability when their Bolívars are worth toilet paper. I don't know of any feel goody NGO where a Harvard grad could feel woke working at that could do that.

But is maybe the only inflation story anyone can come up with? Venezuela is misgoverned, but how do I know bitcoin governance is better? Bitcoin exchange rates are not stable. I can only hoard it, it's not an investment and not a currency.

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

#537

Post by xyst »

gnrlst wrote: post #422
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.

If the reports of BTC going to 100K by EOY are true, they just turned $1.5B into ~$4.5B.

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

#538

Post by pelliphant »

zionic wrote: post #529
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?

It would appear the corpo mercs have outnumbered the hackers for some time.

Am I a "corpo merc" since I don't like crypto currency?

What does that even mean?

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

#539

Post by zionic »

pelliphant wrote: post #457
DennisP wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If another cryptocurrency fixed the scaling problem so it could be used as a currency, would you have a different view?

Not OP, but I wouldn't. I consider the tools available to central banks to be actually usefull. Example: The ability to print more or less money depending on what is needed.

This position makes all sorts of unfounded assumptions about the nature of your government, that it is operating in your best interest, that it hasn't been captured by outside forces/interests etc etc.

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

#540

Post by bryanlarsen »

mrb wrote: post #489
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…

While away on vacation, I once sent $1000 in cold hard cash, on a Sunday, to an unbanked person in Los Angeles, in less than 1 hour, thanks to bitcoin and the recipient withdrawing it for cash at a Bitcoin ATM. There is not a single alternative service in the world that would have made this possible. If people thought a little beyond their personal use cases, they would understand the utility of Bitcoin/crypto for ma…

Western Union has been doing this for > 150 years.
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