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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

#631

Post by notahacker »

latchkey wrote: post #586
bryanlarsen wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western Union has been doing this for > 150 years.

Have you ever tried to use Western Union while in a foreign country? I did it in Vietnam. Everything was a barrier. Language, paperwork, carrying cash around safely, time and finally most importantly, fees. No thanks.

I've used Western Unions in Morocco and a village in rural Laos where the staff couldn't believe I was a slightly lost passing tourist and invited me for dinner with them. Both of them were easy: the most difficult bit about the Moroccan service was using my UK bank's online banking service to set the transfer up.

I didn't see any Bitcoin ATMs in either place, or Vietnam for that matter, and can't imagine the process of turning Bitcoin into spendable currency there would be easier, especially not for somebody without a local bank account.

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

#632

Post by camjohnson26 »

mordymoop wrote: post #617

Bitcoin “transactions” only appear to cost so much if you divide total energy usage by transactions. This is very silly, because it gives the impression that more transactions would lead to something like a linearly higher energy cost, which is not true; the energy cost is due to mining, and transaction validation comes along for the ride. You could try to figure out how to allocate the energy per transaction but onl…

You can’t have transactions without mining though and the block size is limited, so there’s an upper limit to how many transactions can go through in one block.

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

#633

Post by charcircuit »

azatris wrote: post #532
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 scena…

All bitcoin transactions are public. It does not allow for anonymous payments.

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

#634

Post by goseeastarwar »

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 mental gymnastics people will play to behave like Bitcoin is anything but a FOMO ponzi scheme is extremely entertaining. They’ll proselytize this fancy new currency that'll eliminate central banking and revolutionize money transfer, while also slipping in the price they bought in at.

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

#635

Post by fasteddie31003 »

brandmeyer wrote: post #284
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?

Would you like to take out fixed interest rate loan, payed out over the next 5 years, which is priced and scheduled in BTC? Because it sounds like an absolute horror show for every party in the transaction to me. Unless you can make long-term transactions and payment schedules with it, then its not a good currency.

In crypto you can make smart contracts based on stable coins that emulate a fixed interest loan.

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

#636

Post by dr-detroit »

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…

Literally every play Musk makes is for subsidies or tax dodge file this one under tax dodge.

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

#637

Post by sixQuarks »

eli wrote: post #386
sixQuarks wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Initially it was meant to be used as currency, but it's become more of an asset class now, mainly used as a store of value, similar to gold. Do you know how difficult it is to get millions of people to agree that something is a store of value, not only agree, but to put their money where their mouth is? THIS is why bitcoin is where it's at.

At least you can build useful things out of gold

a statement like this is exactly why people still don't understand the value of Bitcoin. The usefulness of a store of value has no relation to its actual value. The value comes from the network effect of others also agreeing that it has value.

What usefulness does a $100 million painting have?

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

#638

Post by me551ah »

mattm wrote: post #629
me551ah wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah this confused me for a long time as well. I then realized that there is tremendous value in something that acts as a reliable store of value. For example, rich people are known to buy expensive art and then lock it away in a warehouse. Why do this? You're not getting any value out of the piece. The reason is that the sole purpose of the art piece is to be a reliable store of value. You're paying a lot for someth…

Sorry but I disagree about your analogy with an art piece. An art piece is unique, especially the antique ones made by an artist who is no longer alive. And that artpiece will always be the only one to ever exist. There are many other cryptocurrencies which can do what bitcoin can, dogecoin was made just to illustrate that point.

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

#639

Post by freeplay »

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.

Western Union is a nightmare to use. You need send and pickup in a physical location, sometimes the recipient needs specific forms of ID, and the fees are insane.

I once sent $100 to someone in South America and it cost me $13.

WU is a relic that targets and takes advantage of the less fortunate and those in 3rd world countries.

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

#640

Post by nkohari »

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.

Except JavaScript, for all of its faults, is actually incredibly useful. Unlike bitcoin.
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