Live data from Hacker News

Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

cnbc.com

161–170 of 830 posts

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#161

What about the 51% attack problem? Why doesn’t this matter? Can someone explain how this currency is a good bet when there is this seemly huge gaping hole in the system. Honest question!

If I understand correctly, at the moment if someone would want to do the 51% attack, they would need to spend energy for proof of work that would overpower the rest of btc the network, which is equal to expenditure of Argentina in kWh. A lot of people complain about this expenditure.

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#162
post #48

Does anyone else feel like: - they've missed an opportunity to get rich with minimal effort from crypto - still have absolutely no interest in jumping in at this point?

Yup. That reminds me, I need to sell the free Stellar Lumens I got from Keybase. If I can work out how to do that without a scam or a disaster, I might consider touching the rest of the ecosystem.

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#163
post #78
post #26

I just wanted internet money, not a speculative financial instrument. :(

The only cryptocurrency that might one day become real “internet money” is nano , because it has no fees and transactions are almost instant.

* In the future sidechains are going to be used in a big way on Ethereum. Lower cost, higher transaction processing. All the cool shit is being developed on Ethereum right now because of a robust toolchain. Also, there are many infrastructure startups that are filling in technology gaps.

* Basic Attention Token (BAT) is another "internet money" contender because the user can earn it through viewing ads. No fiat onramp needed.

I haven't researched Nano but I would be interested to hear the trade-offs compared to Ethereum and Bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#164

I only keep half an eye on bitcoin, so I'm a bit out of the loop. Was there some thing (or things) that happend in October/November that started the most recent growth in price? It seems to have bounced around $5-10k for over a year and then in early october just started to take off and is now 4-5x that and not showing any signs of stopping. I heard about the Tesla thing, but that was very recent. What did I miss?

Halving.

Paypal announces you can buy and sell BTC IOU's (not real Bitcoins) on their platform.

Microstrategy declares they want to stash a sizable chunk of their treasury into BTC.

Elon makes a few grunts vaguely favorable to Bitcoin via twitter and stashes 1.5B of his Tesla treasury in BTC.

Mastercard makes vague claims they are going to "support" "some" cryptocurrencies.

A number of finance world pundits switch attitude from poo-poo-ing Bitcoin to "it's an interesting asset to watch".

A general feeling that "institutional money" (whatever that actually means) is coming to Bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#165
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTC going up doesn't mean it has fundamental value. It's a speculative asset with more and more people getting on board. Hedge fund managers are rich. TV personalities are rich. Many PhD students are poor. This is not people making the right decisions. This is concentration of money because of economy volatility.

Again, for the upteenth time: there is NO SUCH THING as "fundamental value". There is just one thing: supply and demand. The fact that demand might be powered by something some folks might consider "irrational" is completely irrelevant to the conversation.

It is not completely irrelevant: it is how you distinguish productive investment schemes from scammy Ponzi schemes.

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#166
post #4

I'm patiently waiting for the dismissals (it's just a fad like tulips or beanie babies), the negative permabulls (it's evil because people can use it to buy drugs / not pay taxes, it can't do as many TPS as Visa, it's bad for the environment...) while laughing all the way to the bank. Crypto is the HN equivalent of what the ipod was to Slashdot: "lame" to the people who think they are the typical user, who declare th…

Did you say you laugh all the way to the _bank_? Isn't that where they store worthless fiat currency?

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#168
post #2

Bitcoin still isn’t worth $1 trillion, which is the value of one large tech company. I think bitcoin is useful and important enough to be worth several large tech companies. Therefore, not selling! Onward to 100k.

>useful

>Bitcoin

...

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#169

So it sounds like lemming group think. It seems like someone one should hold “just in case,” but no real valid reason to do so yet (that I’ve heard). We know transactions are slow and expensive, so it’s not a good replacement for ordinary commerce. It can be used to transfer across borders, but there often is asymmetry in capital movement that makes this difficult in the places you need it most (poor countries with r…

> it’s terrible as a wide spread value store because it removes an important tool that governments have to handle the economy (dealt with debt via inflation aka printing money

How does a static rather than unconstrained supply make something a LESS good store of value?

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#170

So it sounds like lemming group think. It seems like someone one should hold “just in case,” but no real valid reason to do so yet (that I’ve heard). We know transactions are slow and expensive, so it’s not a good replacement for ordinary commerce. It can be used to transfer across borders, but there often is asymmetry in capital movement that makes this difficult in the places you need it most (poor countries with r…

The valid reason is that Bitcoin is the best money that has ever emerged in human history. The denationalization of money is inevitable and long predicted. Check out Nobel prize winning economist Hayek's Denationalization of Money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denationalization_of_Money

From your link:

“Stability in value is presumed to be the decisive factor for acceptance. Hayek makes the assumption that competition will favor currencies with the greatest stability in value since a devalued currency hurts creditors, and an upward-revalued currency hurts debtors.”

Stability is not the observed behaviour in BTC.

Post reply on HN