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Nouriel Roubini: Bitcoin is not a hedge against tail risk

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Re: Nouriel Roubini: Bitcoin is not a hedge against tail risk

#111

Post by rawtxapp »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #82
rawtxapp wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was considered worthless at the time so many weren't careful with it. People are going to be a lot more careful when their coins are priced at 44k+.

Doesn’t matter. Most of the coins have already been mined. New entrants must buy from old entrants.

Old entrants that may have bought it because they believed in it pushing it to mainstream.

How do you feel about the government that's about to print 1.9 trillion dollars, therefore devaluing your money?

Re: Nouriel Roubini: Bitcoin is not a hedge against tail risk

#112

Post by x3n0ph3n3 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #107
mpfundstein wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the calculations make sure the btc network works. so it can't be useless. or do you dismiss ALL of btc as useless?

You’re missing the point. The Bitcoin network is literally designed to incentivize, with payment, bringing new energy-inefficient operations online to “mine”. The efficiency of the network gets worse and worse all the time, all while processing the same limited number of transactions. Worse yet, Bitcoiners seem to like it this way. Proposals to increase block size have not been welcomed, and they go to great lengths…

> Worse yet, Bitcoiners seem to like it this way. Proposals to increase block size have not been welcomed, and they go to great lengths to discourage switching to other protocols with better energy efficiency (because it would harm their investment).

That's exactly why the Bitcoin Cash fork happened.

Re: Nouriel Roubini: Bitcoin is not a hedge against tail risk

#113

Post by bcheung »

yladiz wrote: post #56

I'm very conflicted about this. On one hand, I have a little bit of Bitcoin and am happy about some of the gains I've gotten (not life changing in any sense, but more than I expected). On the other hand I hesitated for a long time to buy any because I knew of the large environmental impact that its energy use has (yes, I really did avoid buying Bitcoin for a long time because I roughly knew of the environmental/energ…

You might be interested in Proof of Stake based blockchains then. They don't require the crazy electricity. Check out Ethereum, Polkadot, and Cardano.

I personally shy away from investing in Bitcoin in favor of those.

Bitcoin also does not provide any mechanism for "smart contracts" either so it has even less utility in my mind.

Re: Nouriel Roubini: Bitcoin is not a hedge against tail risk

#114

Post by f6v »

rybosworld wrote: post #10

"The value of Bitcoin is negative if we applied a carbon tax to it" (paraphrased). Can't this be said about literally anything? Bitcoin and cryptos in general are actually worth more than $0 because people are tired of seeing their cash devalued on the whim of politicians and bankers.

> Bitcoin and cryptos in general are actually worth more than $0 because people are tired of seeing their cash devalued on the whim of politicians and bankers.

I bet they like it much more when the value of digital currency jumps up and down when a South African guy feels like tweeting.

Re: Nouriel Roubini: Bitcoin is not a hedge against tail risk

#116

Post by coralreef »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #90
coralreef wrote: post #46

Funny trend: solar and wind power are now cheaper than coal. https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/11/Price-of-electric... Here's a hot take: Bitcoin subsidizes clean energy development. Miners buy cheap energy; clean energy infrastructure gets profitable return. Cost of development and manufacturing lowers further because of scale; pollution and externalities reduced; humanity wins. Bitcoin saves humanity?

Cost of wind and solar was going down already. Bitcoin alone isn’t the driver. Bitcoin is, however, consuming some of that new energy generation with a new consumption: Doing useless calculations to mine Bitcoin. Bitcoin increases energy demand which also drives an increase in supply . We can’t take old power plants offline if the new hydro power is taken up by new mining operations. It’s silly that we’re going to su…

Costs go down with scale; scale comes from demand.

Energy on earth is not a finite, limited resource. Fossil fuels are finite, but energy is not.

The earth is bombarded with more potential energy every day then we could ever spend, aka solar energy.

Re: Nouriel Roubini: Bitcoin is not a hedge against tail risk

#117

Post by nprateem »

junippor wrote: post #66
rybosworld wrote: post #10

"The value of Bitcoin is negative if we applied a carbon tax to it" (paraphrased). Can't this be said about literally anything? Bitcoin and cryptos in general are actually worth more than $0 because people are tired of seeing their cash devalued on the whim of politicians and bankers.

> Bitcoin and cryptos in general are actually worth more than $0 because people are tired of seeing their cash devalued on the whim of politicians and bankers. How do you justify this, given that inflation is so low? (at least in the EU it's been oscillating between 0 and 2% for a very long time) https://tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/inflation-cpi Is this what people are so tired of? 1% inflation? I'm just trying to…

People thought all the QE during the financial crisis would cause inflation. It has and it hasn't. It has because you just need to look at how asset prices (stocks, houses, etc.) have increased. It hasn't because conveniently many governments don't include asset prices in their calculations of inflation. So although food prices for example haven't shot up and officially rates of inflation have remained low, asset prices have shot up.

Re: Nouriel Roubini: Bitcoin is not a hedge against tail risk

#118

Post by FlownScepter »

miracle2k wrote: post #110
FlownScepter wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 'service' doesn't need to exist. It didn't solve a problem that wasn't already solved, we've had ledgers since the Bronze age, and probably before that. That's not to say that the blockchain itself isn't useful, of course it is for numerous applications, including even financial ones. However, Bitcoin as it stands today is functionally useless apart from being something that our system has decided has value, bec…

But that doesn't seem to square with your GP post in my mind. If cigarettes went away, the world will keep moving just fine. They don't need to exist. But you posit that people choosing cigarettes provides some value, despite the negative effects. Why is there no value than in people being able to chose a money/investment vehicle they believe to be to their benefit?

> Why is there no value than in people being able to chose a money/investment vehicle they believe to be to their benefit?

Because the only thing generated is fake money on a spreadsheet. There is no product, there is only consumption of resources to generate nothing.

For all of what's involved here, you could just pull the same amount of money out of thin air, deposit it in their IRA, and nothing changes, apart from way, WAY less energy consumption.

Re: Nouriel Roubini: Bitcoin is not a hedge against tail risk

#119

Post by tromp »

astalwick wrote: post #80
arnavs wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto mining produces a service, which is maintaining a ledger of payments that works in a certain way. This specific problem — settling transactions — is an industry amounting to billions. Think of BTC like a MasterCard or Visa competitor, albeit a unique one.

Bitcoin currently consumes roughly the energy used to power one quarter of CANADA. I'm optimistic that there is a better way to store a ledger as you describe. Perhaps a database?

Not better in terms of Bitcoin's goals of decentralization and censorship resistance...

Re: Nouriel Roubini: Bitcoin is not a hedge against tail risk

#120

Post by ad31mar »

dang wrote: post #97
ad31mar wrote: post #55

So much anti-Bitcoin sentiment on HN lately, recycling decade old strawman arguments. Does the Occam's razor apply here? Are people just salty they didn't buy a few back when they first heard about it, now trying to justify themselves?

It's just a divisive topic and people repeat the same things over and over again about those (including versions of what you've said here). It's been the same for many years already.

I think these mindless copy-paste criticisms don't even deserve a thoughtful reply. They are the reason there's tribalism in Bitcoin - it's just an efficient way to cope with (endless) ignorance and trolls.
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