161–170 of 226 posts
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What probability to meet a dinosaur walking next to your house? It is 50%, either you will meet it or not.
If you accept bets, I'm sure the odds won't be 50/50 as they are here.
Now, will he?
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I think their opinions were validated quite well. If I would listen to my crazy anarcho-capitalist friend, I would be millionaire today. Other side is represented by Trump...
A lot of the people I know who were an-cap 10 years ago are millionaires today. At least from my circle. The problem is that the money-printing people are billionaires and it is a game you simply cannot win. And frankly, these days being a millionaire is not as fancy as it sounds - you can barely get a nice 7-series + a bit above average flat and living off investments/rent would require a very frugal lifestyle.
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Maybe when someone invents a “free” consensus scheme that actually competes with PoW’s security properties. There are plenty of reasons to suspect this isn’t possible.
If proof of work is necessary, how much work does proof of work need to do fundamentally? Is there any reason a cryptocurrency can’t be made that uses very little energy?
> Is there any reason a cryptocurrency can’t be made that uses very little energy?
As far as proof-of-work is concerned, if you don't use enough energy, you are vulnerable to 51% attacks.
As far as other schemes (e.g. proof-of-stake) are concerned - none of them have the same desirable security properties as PoW.
This analysis is flawed. People are paying a premium in the futures market to have exposure to BTC without having to acquire and hold physical bitcoins. There is a similar trend in other regulated exchange products like GBTC https://ycharts.com/companies/GBTC/discount_or_premium_to_na...
> physical bitcoins
For example, when you trade EUR/USD, you can take "physical delivery" of the position. That doesn't mean that you will get a stack of banknotes, only that the trade will be settled in a different way.
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Let's make people link their brokerage account while we're at it so that someone can't post Waymo news if they own GOOG stock.
That's a bad faith exaggeration argument you just made: we don't need to know everything someone has financial interest in, just if it's related to the topic. It's why VCs, for example, if writing a blog post about a company - they will write a disclaimer that they own shares in the company. We have laws to require people to disclose if something is sponsorship as well - because it changes the value of what's being s…
You wouldn't. You would just know that OP owns GOOG if the article is about GOOG. Only HN/the brokerage would have their entire portfolio.
> It's why VCs, for example, if writing a blog post about a company - they will write a disclaimer that they own shares in the company
As far as I can tell this isn't a legal requirement - shareholders have no obligation to disclose their position, even major stakeholders don't have to do so every time they post about the company - it's mainly to protect the writer's reputation and because they really don't want to mislead the reader. The point is that HN shouldn't be the one keeping the comments and submissions free of articles posted "for the intent of manipulating the market" regardless if we're talking about crypto securities or public securities.
I have been watching some BTC related companies recently and one caught my attention - Canaan. A few days ago they announced purchase orders of 100,000 mining machines for 2021. Supposedly many were pre-paid. Also of note was their claim that in late 2020 they shifted their client base from individual miners to mostly publicly traded companies. I am not sure what to make of it. Maybe HN can chip in?
https://cointelegraph.com/news/btc-miners-pocket-4m-in-60-mi...
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I think their opinions were validated quite well. If I would listen to my crazy anarcho-capitalist friend, I would be millionaire today. Other side is represented by Trump...
A lot of the people I know who were an-cap 10 years ago are millionaires today. At least from my circle. The problem is that the money-printing people are billionaires and it is a game you simply cannot win. And frankly, these days being a millionaire is not as fancy as it sounds - you can barely get a nice 7-series + a bit above average flat and living off investments/rent would require a very frugal lifestyle.
Oh come on... yes a millionaire lifestyle isn’t a billionaire lifestyle but still.
This analysis is flawed. People are paying a premium in the futures market to have exposure to BTC without having to acquire and hold physical bitcoins. There is a similar trend in other regulated exchange products like GBTC https://ycharts.com/companies/GBTC/discount_or_premium_to_na...
Exactly. The author says: > You can’t lose your Bitcoins – you just keep them on chain, and no exchange going bust will affect your position. You absolutely can lose your Bitcoins if your private keys are compromised. Large institutions can and do get hacked or have money embezzled all the time.
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A lot of the people I know who were an-cap 10 years ago are millionaires today. At least from my circle. The problem is that the money-printing people are billionaires and it is a game you simply cannot win. And frankly, these days being a millionaire is not as fancy as it sounds - you can barely get a nice 7-series + a bit above average flat and living off investments/rent would require a very frugal lifestyle.
Can barely buy a 7 series... Frugal lifestyle... Move out of the Bay Area, buy a nice house, get a Tesla model 3 performance, it’s faster and cheaper than the 7 series, and maybe reconsider what’s in your lifestyle that’s so expensive that being a millionaire is barely making it.
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Uh, my paper dollar is backed by the might of the US government and the US economy. It's a lot more than just "shared acceptance". Countries couldn't just switch off the US dollar reserve currency for international trade without massive economic repercussions, which is why no country or set of countries has developed a viable alternative to the dollar for a global reserve currency. It's not like China/Russia wouldn't…
Your whole comment is basically an ad for Bitcoin. USD is valuable because we have an imperialistic global army that will kill you or starve you off if you don't use it? Seems like something we desperately need an alternative to. USD is the dirtiest fiat there is because it's backed by blood at a global scale.
As for moral purity, it's no secret that a significant (albeit unknowable) portion of Bitcoin's current value comes from illegal transactions concerning everything from human trafficking to drug sales to organized crime rackets. The ability to obfuscate financial transactions is part of its intrinsic value, so anyone with an interest in doing so will be attracted to it. Plus if Bitcoin were to somehow grow large enough to even consider replacing the dollar, all the blood behind the dollar would simply shift to Bitcoin in some (albeit likely different) manner. Someone has to enforce monetary policy and financial laws, a chaotic, decentralized enforcement would arguably be even worse than centralized fiat enforcement.
There's no way forward financially without some blood on your hands at some stage. So for my money I'm going to build my financial house on solid ground. I'm all for making the system more just and less bloody, but IMO Bitcoin isn't it. In the meantime we've all got to play the hand we're dealt, the only other option is to be a martyr, and while they might get some occasional press and lip service, martyrs typically don't accomplish much.