Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future • Hacker News Board

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

#911

Post by BlueTemplar » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 9:21 PM UTC

cateye wrote: post #588

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…

Do you really think this is a technical limitation of the current banking systems and a missing "feature"? Or is it the Bitcoin technology that "solves" this? The whole reason that it is not allowed to send money to an anonymous person is... Well don't actually know where to start explaining it. Anti money laundering? Counter-terrorism financing? Financial transaction reporting?

Since every bitcoin transaction is recorded, law enforcement is rather helped. There are "mixers" that supposedly allow to make it harder to figure out, but that didn't stop them from busting Silk Road !

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

#912

Post by delaaxe » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 9:24 PM UTC

rospaya wrote: post #841

xyst wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm curious how they calculated that considering the extreme volatility of BTC.

Look up "stock to flow" model for BTC

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

#913

Post by BlueTemplar » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 9:24 PM UTC

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #878

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…

> to an unbanked person Who in this modern era is unbanked and how did that unbanked person turn around and spend the $1,000 in BTC you sent them?

Apparently the USA alone has 7 million unbanked households?

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

#914

Post by delaaxe » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 9:38 PM UTC

Closi wrote: post #842

xerxespoy wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin != Cryptocurrencies It's like using the term "COBOL" when you mean "programming languages", and then criticising COBOL's modern utility in that context. The parent comment was about crypto (short for "cryptocurrencies") in general, not Bitcoin, which is 12-year old technology, and broadly not fairly comparable to current cryptocurrencies or their applications. You are as correct that you can't do much with a…

> I too find it baffling how uneducated and "luddite" many on HN are regarding blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Ah, people who disagree are uneducated on it. Nice! I actually understand the technology, but my view is as follows: * As an investment I take the Warren Buffet approach - I will only invest in things where I can see fundamentals. Bitcoin has no fundamentals. There is no utility and it generates no income,…

Gold, and any other commodity for that matter, doesn't generate income and is a poor currency

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

#915

Post by Closi » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 9:39 PM UTC

bhupy wrote: post #510

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…

I'll try, even though I'm also still wrapping my head around it. > 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. I'd say that there are 2 ways to address this: 1. Bitcoin is less analogous to cash or credit cards, and more analogous to the US dollar . Today, when you buy a cup of coffee with a credit card, your issuing processo…

> This process is extremely asynchronous, and can take up to weeks to complete. Processing a Bitcoin transaction on the blockchain is analogous to that very slow, very asynchronous process.

The difference is that you have a level of guarantees that it is going to clear - at least in the UK, the second I make a payment I get a notification and the debit is posted onto my account in real time. If someone sends me money I receive it within seconds at no fee. With Bitcoin you don't have that guarantee until it has cleared which can take hours and cost over $2.

> It produces one, and only one thing, and that's trustless transactions. As long as there is a market need for this, it has some use, even if it's a niche use-case.

Your bitcoin doesn't produce that - your bitcoin sits there not doing anything. The transactions are verified by actual assets (servers).

> I think this is a good criticism, but is one that a bull might argue will hold less true over time. In the bull's perfect world, there exists enough tooling and frameworks to allow someone to live their entire life off of Bitcoin while still interoperating with the tradition financial systems seamlessly.

Even the bulls seem to admit that the transaction fees of BTC are too high and the validation time too slow - this is why they seem to push towards alt coins. I can see that someone might be able to live their entire life off bitcoin, but I still wonder why. I mean I live in the UK and people can hold all their money in Yen and pay via MasterCard if they want which will automatically do the currency conversion, but people don't do it because it would be insane. I don't see why BTC is any different.

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

#916

Post by lawn » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 9:40 PM UTC

Closi wrote: post #834

lawn wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mainly the question 'what can I actually do with a bitcoin?' If we're talking about cryptocurrencies in general, then start here: https://whycryptocurrencies.com/eli5.html

It doesn't answer the question. Like what am I supposed to do? Spend it? Where? I can't buy a coffee with it. The first article linked claims it has "better monetary properties than anything else in history" but then seems to misunderstand the most fundamental property - acceptability. This is actually "Do other people accept it as payment" rather than "could people theoretically accept it as payment". Fingernails do…

> Like what am I supposed to do? Spend it? Where? I can't buy a coffee with it.

Yes in certain places you can buy coffee, for example in Tokyo (although that's Bitcoin Cash, not Bitcoin).

Other places include buying domains, email, hosting or VPNs while preserving your privacy. Or buy computer equipment from Webhallen or Inet, two of Sweden's largest computer stores. Or buy games, porn or similar.

> but then seems to misunderstand the most fundamental property - acceptability

No, the properties don't change depending on how many use it. That's the functions of money, which you're right cryptocurrencied don't fair well in.

For example gold was once an excellent medium of exchange, but it's not anymore as people has stopped accepting it for payments.

Even if something is technically better, you don't replace the money quickly. The point is the potential, not that we're there today.

> explain the value proposition of bitcoin without eventually it just boiling down to "well the value is going up so I'm hodling"

The whole book is based on this premise and that cryptocurrencies are a better currency, and the volatility of Bitcoin is one of the biggest drawbacks. (Besides the ridiculous fees and the lack of privacy.)

To simplify the value proposition is mainly twofold:

* As a better means of payment as it's cheaper, faster and uncensorable.

* As a form of money where nobody can manipulate the supply.

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

#917

Post by MrMan » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 9:46 PM UTC

bob33212 wrote: post #849

MrMan wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intention of cash management is hedging to facilitate commerce and protect the balance sheet, not speculation.

This is a hedge. A hedge against consumers/suppliers/employees using BTC as their preferred form of payment.

tesla doesnt need to hold sizable BTC reserves to accept BTC as payment, so using the word hedge there doesn't seem correct to me.

please elaborate on your stratement, it doesnt make sense that this BTC position is a hedge. it seems like a speculative allocation, betting on BTC price increasing vs USD? and maybe some kind of marketing thing to convince people tesla is cool?

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

#918

Post by sixQuarks » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 9:49 PM UTC

christiansakai wrote: post #905

sixQuarks wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...?

I actually like javascript. And yes, I'm serious.

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

#919

Post by MrMan » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 9:50 PM UTC

qqii wrote: post #746

pelliphant wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a crypto hater, I consider bitcoin to be a pyramid scheme. And also, I think that it is a positive thing that an institution that I can influence (government) is in control of deciding how transactions work. This might also be a cultural thing, since I'm scandinavian, and "we" generally consider government regulation as something necessary.

As a counter to being a pyramid scheme, we've seen the 4 year moving average price of bitcoin continue to trend upwards. That's more than 10 years and the price hasn't collapsed. Bitcoin governance is performed through mining pools signaling their opinion on proposals, we saw this with segwit and larger block sizes. As a relevant example Ethereum currently is going through a proposal and one pool has been vocal in be…

"Bitcoin governance is performed through mining pools signaling their opinion on proposals"

yes this is a regression from representative government - a corporate cartel controlling monetary policy

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

#920

Post by sixQuarks » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 9:53 PM UTC

xnx wrote: post #882

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.

It happens periodically: tulips, Beanie Babies, etc.

True, and that's a legitimate argument - that bitcoin is simply the largest bubble in human history. But I think this argument is very unlikely, it's been over 10 years since the introduction of Bitcoin, and it's already gone through a period of euphoria and crash, only to sustain itself and break through its previous highs. Bubbles don't tend to do this, nor do they last this long.