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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

#541

Post by azatris »

bronak1 wrote: post #401
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

Gold is a decentralized store of value too, to be fair.

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

#542

Post by _alex_ »

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 key technical innovation that bitcoin gave us (that ethereum and other systems took to the next level) is a replicated state machine shared by untrusted peers. That's a huge deal for decentralized systems. It turns out that economics is a good way to keep network participants honest.

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

#543

Post by NiceWayToDoIT »

The other day I was thinking about Tesla employing guy from the Wall street and now all it looks as they capitalizing on Elon fame, people gullibility and and inflating economic balloon by mimes.

Basically idea is simple if you have a billion to spare, you buy something very cheap, then you say that that will be most important thing in the world. Many people buy it, and then you sell your share. Don't get me wrong I love what Tesla and SpaceX do, but in this game I can envision that Elon wins, and many other ordinary people will lose.

In some way I consider all this - very, very wrong.

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

#544

Post by tom_ »

MobileVet wrote: post #339
bhouston wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do illustrate exactly why no one should ever buy a Tesla in bitcoin, because it isn't currency, it is more of an asset like Gold. So why does Elon say that people will buy Tesla's in BTC then?

Because there are massive tax benefits to purchasing something with bitcoin. What other asset can be turned into a hard good without realizing a tax on appreciation?

Not sure about other places, but the UK and US treat this situation as equivalent to a sale of the cryptocurrency. Capital gains tax may become due.

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

#545

Post by londons_explore »

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…

But your example use case will be made illegal soon - that bitcoin ATM won't be allowed to give cash to an unbanked person without them providing their birth certificate, passport, 3 forms of utility bill and a driving license, then waiting 3 days for identity verification to complete.

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

#546

Post by xtracto »

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.

For me it solves "trust". See, Americans find it so difficult to relate to this issue because US central bank has such strong economics that a major event is unthinkable.

But going back to 2009 Greek crisis and the "bank run" prevention. Same thing happened in Argentina before and also in Mexico (the ones I know of).

We people in these countries dont trust our monetary and banking systems. The traditional way to offset that was gold or USD. But they are not so liquid or easy to store.

Cryptocurrencies are an instrument to detach the "value transfering" properties of money from the government control. With high liquidity and extremely easy to store.

The inefficiencies of BTC (performance, traceability, ease of use) are more technical details that people has been slowly tackling.

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

#547

Post by bearjaws »

sixQuarks wrote: post #406
Closi wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yeah but Javascript can actually be used to create a blockchain or any number of applications. I bet SpaceX could land a Falcon-9 with Javascript if they wanted nightmare difficulty.

Bitcoin's main purpose for everyone I know is to buy drugs and treat as an 'investment'.

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

#548

Post by jcranmer »

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…

If you look at the history of the gold standard, this comment doesn't really make all that much sense.

The gold standard attracts a lot of people because of the naïve view that the government can't debase gold like it can fiat. However, that view is naïve: the gold standard doesn't prevent debasement, it just means that the government has to make a choice between maintaining the gold standard or pursuing the fiscal policy. (And the moment of decision can be delayed a surprisingly long amount of time.)

Yet, historically, when forced to make the choice, governments have almost always chosen continuation of fiscal policy over the gold standard. Many times (e.g., the early 1930s), governments chose the gold standard only for things to get even worse and instead opt for fiscal policy. In the long run, every country has ultimately abandoned the gold standard.

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

#549

Post by loceng »

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.

The VC-finance industrial complex is a problem, Bitcoin being the next MLM scheme they're trying to profit from by taking advantage of the broader undereducated society.

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

#550

Post by kiliantics »

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.

We have been cornered into nihilism. We've been shown that any attempts at making positive change in society will be crushed by entrenched power -- e.g. Bernie Sanders, climate movement, etc. So might as well just make a quick buck instead.
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