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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

#901

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda solved https://www.wired.com/story/cypherpunks-bitcoin-ham-radio/

Well ham radio operation, in the USA at least, requires a license. Are you proposing that everyone get ham-radio-licensed as a prerequisite to participating in the new economy?

You also can't use it for anything you have a "pecuniary interest" in. Most agree that means any commercial transactions are not allowed (with the exception of selling radio equipment to other ham radio licensees).

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

#902

What "moat" does Bitcoin have protecting it from other crypto which may have more attractive features? It seems to me that it's just the first one that everyone's grandma has heard the name of. Some journalists will say BTC is just the "most stable" but the fact that it has the most miners is just a consequence of the high price, not the other way around. As for the technology, what is actually maintaining BTC domina…

The "moat" is public adoption, because public adoption is going to be the strongest driver of eventual price stability. No other cryptocurrency has as much public media momentum and institutional buy-in.

Momentum being, Square and Paypal bought into Bitcoin, so other institutions bought into Bitcoin, and so Tesla is going to buy Bitcoin, and because Tesla bought Bitcoin, others are going to buy bitcoin. Why? Because each successive buy-in indicates more trust in the cryptocurrency, backed by the financial inertia of large companies.

Of course, down the line, if all cryptocurrencies become more stable, then there could be changes to other currencies with more attractive features. But by that point, it would have gained so much inertia and momentum that it will likely continue being the de-facto cryptocurrency, with other cryptocurrencies having their value underpinned to BTC similar to the way we currently value BTC in terms of USD.

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

#903

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are missing the trust-factor inherent in Bitcoin and related cryptocurrencies. If you pay me 1 coin, I trust that you have the coin to spend because of collective verifications from other nodes in the network which confirm the same. Similarly once you spend that coin with me, others may trust that I now have that coin to spend because of the same collective verification structure. Offline transactions eli…

while you work on restoring ubiquitous internet the rest of us in the wasteland still have something better than a bottlecap based economy you described something that temporarily puts it on equal footing with checks, but presented a higher standard exclusively for bitcoin to meet

Offline double-spend is still an unsolved problem. What prevents a rogue actor from making duplicates of the tokens and transact with it multiple times a day before the transactions are tallied with a blockchain? And fyi, it’s much harder to duplicate bottlenecks than your bitcoin wallet at the moment. Edit: bottlecaps not bottlenecks lol

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

#904

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…

Please feel free to never convert your fiat to cryptocurrencies. You'll do very well according to your logic.

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

#905
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.

I am a JavaScript hacker.

Are you serious...?

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

#906

So... what is Tesla going to spend that BTC on when the time comes? They can't use it to pay wages or purchase materials. What kind of assets could Tesla possibly trade $1.5B in BTC for? I like the idea of cryptocurrency, but right now it seems to be more like a stock than an actual currency. There isn't much you can do with it still other than trade it back and fourth for other currencies. And I've never heard of a…

They could lend out their Bitcoin holdings to platforms like BlockFi, Celsius, or even negotiate loans OTC. Even the minimum APY of 3% would yield ~$45m per year. That would of course fluctuate with the spot price of Bitcoin.

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

#907

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then can Etherium 2.0 get some love?

“Hey there, you love the rich getting richer and a perpetual level of Uber rich controlling the financial system that is unbreakable? Then you’re going to love proof of stake.”

The rich has incentive to not fuck up the system in Proof of Stake.

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

#909
post #328

Dec 2020 - Raises $5bn from investors Jan 2021 - Spends 30% of raised money to buy Bitcoin What value are Tesla adding here? Those investors could have just put 70% in to Tesla and 30% in to Bitcoin directly. Arguably, the only positive here (for BTC and TSLA holders) is short term, and it's that Tesla are associating their brand with Bitcoin to whip up froth.

or it is a hedge against a market downturn as gold is "not cool" to buy from Tesla and cash should be invested if not used.

Bitcoin dropped 55% in March 2020 vs S&P500 dropping 35%. You'd lose more with this hedge than without.

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

#910
post #299
post #24

Musk has been pumping Doge on his Twitter feed a lot too. I wonder how much if this is about Musk thumbing his nose at the mainstream finance industry that he so clearly loathes as it is about anything approaching a valid business plan.

Interesting. Assuming he wants to see the finance industry burn, what might his next step be?

A private exchange for stocks that is based on crypto?
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