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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

#571

Post by tgraves83 »

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #465
whb07 wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot tell if this is sarcasm or not. But I’ll assume it’s not: You cannot eat gold or bitcoin. The “hoarders” at some point will want to consume be it a pizza or a lambo. Then there’s those who invest in ways to get more... what for it.. gold or bitcoin so they go out and purchase picks and shovels. Crazy stuff, extremely complicated when I write it as such. Btw, the FED made a trivial recession into a “great” on…

I am dead serious. The FED did cause the great depression and a lot of it had to do with currency being tied too closely to a deflationary token (gold). >You cannot eat gold or bitcoin. That is precisely the problem. The economy can get into a bad equilibrium where hoarding intrinsically valueless tokens displaces investing in productive assets. This state can persist because the firsts to invest in productive things…

Do you think the government is going to tie the currency to bitcoin and we'll be on a bitcoin standard? That would be the equivalent and would mean bitcoin would be insanely valuable so maybe you should buy some.

On the other hand, it's far more likely the fed will stick with fiat currency. You'll still get paid in USD, pay your taxes in USD but bitcoin will exist as an alternative store of value like gold. There is around ~$11 trillion worth of gold above ground. Bitcoin has some properties that could make it a better store of value and much easier to transact with than gold. If it eats into gold's primary use case it will probably be a lot more valuable than it is right now.

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

#572

Post by acapybara »

fxtentacle wrote: post #440

Probably Elon Musk has friends who own Bitcoin, and now they can exit at a high price. I'd be surprised if this turns out to be more than a celebrity endorsement pump and dump.

I like this realist, skeptical, Machiavellian perspective.

Is it a money game, or is there something more to it? https://bitcointreasuries.org/ is a site I use to try to determine if this is a legitimate trend or not. At $1.5B, Tesla's initial position is 1.31x the original position of MicroStrategy, which was the previous largest position for a public company. Granted, MicroStrategy's position has since appreciated to about $3B, so Tesla is about half that in terms of current market value.

It seems Tesla's position is serious, not just a token. But I suggest everyone try to look at the data and make up their own mind.

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

#573

Post by SEJeff »

hfsp wrote: post #366
bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin has definitely done that but more importantly it has revolutionized the Shadow Economy - which is a lot larger than most people realize.

The USD remains the choice of the cartels and professional money launderers. After all, pro crooks do not want to leave an eternal trace of their transactions on a public ledger on the internet.

This so much ^

The FBI has already proven pretty well that with a big enough dragnet (and resource that places like the NSA absolutely have), they can associate people to wallet addresses. It just takes slipping up a single time and they'll find you.

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

#574

Post by cassianoleal »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #540
mrb wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know where you are but in a lot of places to use Western Union you have to physically go to one of their stores.

With BTC I can buy them via the internet, and the person on the other side can also convert to cash in their own account via the internet, then withdraw on any ATM.

It's worlds apart.

Edit: I guess if you only consider the parent's use-case where the other person went to a Bitcoin ATM it's not that different but my point stands as it's only 1 other layer in the process and it's an online one.

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

#575

Post by twox2 »

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…

How exactly does bitcoin liberate you from the shit that went down in the last year, besides the fact that luck, manipulation, and celebrity shilling propelled it to new heights. Not to mention that your taxes will be astronomical, and it's easy for the federal government to regulate it into oblivion.

As for me, I loved the original promise of bitcoin. A decentralized peer-to-peer electronic cash. It's not that though, and it never will be.

There are lots of fascinating blockchain projects though, and we have bitcoin to thank for that.

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

#576

Post by rglullis »

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.

> Try paying your taxes in Bitcoin.

It's happening already: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/-crypto-valley--canton-to-accep...

> You want to live in a jurisdiction, then you pony up the tokens that jurisdiction demands.

It has less to do with paying the taxes in the currency used by the State and more with protecting your wealth at the same that you can keep yourself liquid. If you ever experienced hyperinflation you would understand. Growing up in the 80's in Brazil, I remember how every 5th of the month (when my dad and my mom would get paid) was very busy.

- Pay school, bills as early as possible to try to get a discount. Prices were adjusted 20-25% every month and if you paid earlier you could get some 5-10% off.

- Going to the supermarket to buy 3/4 shopping carts of groceries.

- Fueling up the car. I remember the traffic(!!) caused by car lines backed at the gas stations, waiting to get fuel before the prices went up.

- If we needed any clothes / school stuff, head to the mall.

As soon everything was paid that month, my father would get whatever money was left in the bank and would buy US dollars. For him it was worth the 5-10% spread between the black market rate and the official rate because the alternative was to see all his melt away.

He would still pay his taxes in local currency.

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

#577

Post by Tenoke »

sandworm101 wrote: post #170

Lol. Not that I think it will ever happen, but the purchase of a car is perhaps the one transaction that might actually work in bitcoin. It is huge one-time purchase that isn't really time dependent. Neither party would mind if it took a few days to process.

A bitcoin transaction typically takes 30 minutes for 3 confirmations which is plenty sufficient unless you think the other party is pulling a very sophisticated/expensive attack on the network.

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

#579

Post by cloudhead »

me551ah wrote: post #438
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…

I 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 u…

Gold's inherent value represents less than 1% of its total value. The rest is monetary premium. Bitcoin is 100% monetary premium, ie. inter-subjective value.

Another thing to consider is that people buy gold jewellery as a store of value. You don't spend $30k on a watch if you don't think it will keep its value.

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

#580

Post by xyst »

yall think eth will experience the same highs as btc? considering mainstream adoption, I think eth has more viability than btc due to possible enterprise adoption (either via the public or private blockchains). With the enterprise adoption, mainstream usage should accelerate even faster than btc would.
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