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Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

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

#251

Post by rabuse »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #86
akmarinov wrote: post #29

So does it make sense to put in some money that I’m okay with losing now or have I missed it?

You probably missed it, since the hype around it has been going on for a while now. If the cycle continues like it has a few times now, there will be a big crash / correction, things will be very quiet around BTC / Crypto again for a few years, and then the next surge will happen. Not financial advice, but if you have BTC, sell now - or sell half, whatever. At least make sure you have your investment back. If you don…

I remember hearing this same advice when it peaked at $1,200 many years back. The honest answer is, nobody has a clue where this thing is headed.

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

#252

Post by tylerhou »

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #169
azinman2 wrote: post #120

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?

Econ 101: the value of ordinary goods are determined both by supply and demand.

Bitcoin-fanatic-USD-bears claim that Bitcoin is a good store of value because it has constrained supply. But they miss the demand side of the equation. Similarly, they claim that the USD is a bad source of value because it has "unlimited" supply. That also misses the demand side.

The demand for USD is robust because people need USD to pay taxes and to purchase most goods and services offered by US-based organizations. The demand for Bitcoin is based on... how many people Bitcoin-fanatics can get to buy and hodl Bitcoin.

(I don't count organizations that accept Bitcoin as payment because almost all of them exchange received Bitcoin into the local currency, negating the demand effects of the original Bitcoin purchase. In the US, that's usually USD.)

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

#253

Post by PragmaticPulp »

osrec wrote: post #208

I believe Bitcoin is the experimental precursor to proper distributed money. For some reason, even though BTC was meant to be "money", it is now being treated as an asset (at a basic level, an asset is something you hold onto, as it produces additional value, unlike money, which tends to devalue if not put to work). It's almost as if the next big idea in distributed money will be around disincentivising "asset" like…

If we're just passing money around, why do we need a separate currency at all? Stablecoins already exist, but they're not popular because all of the speculative value has been removed.

Bitcoin's real invention was censorship resistance, by incentivizing distributed miners to arrive at consensus about transactions in a way that no single miner could control. Sadly, that same distributed incentive is responsible for Bitcoin's ever-increasing energy usage.

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

#254

Post by nacs »

trident5000 wrote: post #233
rustybelt wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastercard announced that they will be supporting "crypto" not necessarily bitcoin. Bitcoin itself doesn't have the capacity to support widespread adoption as a medium of exchange.

Mastercard is without a doubt supporting Bitcoin. I think I need to break down how this works. Bitcoin L1 chain is a settlement layer where transactions are pooled per tx (its not 10 tx per second or whatever people think it is). Regardless, its L2 that processes small frequent transactions. That would be providers like Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, Circle, etc. They process the transactions and keep the account, only in…

> Mastercard is without a doubt supporting Bitcoin.

Source?

The only statement Mastercard has made is that they will support "crypto" on their network in the future.

They have not mentioned which cryptocurrencies they will support at launch from what I've seen.

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

#255

Post by Zamicol »

bobm_kite9 wrote: post #148

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!

It's a huge problem.

Worse, bitcoin's massive electricity usage results in data center consolidation.

If a nation state just simply wanted to impair bitcoin, they could chop off electricity to a few warehouses. If they cut off 25% of miners, blocks would take 25% longer, and difficulty retargeting would take about three weeks. At 50%, blocks take twice as long and retargeting would take a month.

Worse, there's the "time travel attack". Say a nation state quietly amassed 51% of mining power. They could quietly mine blocks and release them all at once, reversing transactions for however long they were mining. This is not a double spend mind you, just simply release empty blocks. Mined for 2 weeks? Reverse 2 weeks of transactions. Then rinse and repeat.

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

#256

Post by cwkoss »

bhupy wrote: post #96
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While ETH is cool technology, I haven't seen it impact my personal life in any way yet. That might just be my sheltered life though.

I've only just begun to wrap my head around all of this, and I tried playing with some of the DeFi lending platforms built on top of Ethereum. It has its kinks, but I think on the net it's a remarkably cool thing. I was able to lend $50 (overcollateralized) at 12% APY without any central institution. The only real wrinkle has been the insane transaction fees: it cost me about $80 to execute the "smart contract" for t…

Is the loan secured to anything? What is the incentive for the borrower to repay this loan?

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

#257

Post by snicksnak »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #68
seibelj wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, GME was bad enough but no way I’ll touch TSLA.

TSLA is high now, it might go higher but it's past peak hype at this point so even if you jump in now, you might end up with 2x your investment if it keeps going, but not 10 or 100x.

TSLA is still undervalued.

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

#258

Post by sytelus »

RestlessMind wrote: post #179
ben_w wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is rather a promise of an "eventual stability". Thinking through that lens, I think USD (and other Fiat currencies) are the ones exhibiting instability.

BTC cannot be stable, even eventually. There is no way to increase the BTC supply so when productivity increases, prices of goods (expressed in BTC) will always go up. Assume that BTC is the only currency and world productivity goes up 6% each year, or 0.5% each month. Then when you go in store to buy apple, you will see price gone up by 0.5% than previous month because there is no way to increase money supply. One of the advantage of fiat currency is that you can control the money supply and try to keep prices stable. For BTC, there is no way out either way. The worse case occurs when some economic disaster strikes like subprime mortgage. In that case there is no way to fix the issue and massive uncontrolled depression will trigger and can stay for decades whether you like it or not. In other words, the same things that makes BTC as good store of value, makes it a extremely weak to guarantee stable economy.

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

#259

Post by PragmaticPulp »

tylerhou wrote: post #252
mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Econ 101: the value of ordinary goods are determined both by supply and demand. Bitcoin-fanatic-USD-bears claim that Bitcoin is a good store of value because it has constrained supply. But they miss the demand side of the equation. Similarly, they claim that the USD is a bad source of value because it has "unlimited" supply. That also misses the demand side. The demand for USD is robust because people need USD to pay…

Exactly. Bitcoin proponents tend to tell only half of the story, and pick and choose economic theory that fits the "buy more bitcoin" narrative.

In economic terms, Bitcoin is inflating as an asset. Specifically, it's demand-pull inflation.

Bitcoin isn't even uniquely positioned to protect against inflation, other than the mistaken public belief on that topic. Inflation is an increase in the price of assets, so investors can (and do) escape inflation by investing their money.

Ironically, Bitcoin's limited supply disincentivizes holders from investing their money.

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

#260

Post by trident5000 »

bogomipz wrote: post #231
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The forefront of the Bitcoin frenzy isn't even on the blockchain, it's at the exchanges. Hardcore tech people and those who don't (or can't) trust institutions with their Bitcoin will pay the transaction fees to get their money out of exchanges and into their own wallet. The average retail investor, however, doesn't want to be their own bank. They just want in on the price action, while letting the exchange manage th…

>"Does anyone really think the person buying crypto $100 at a time in their Robinhood account wants to pay $18 (current average transaction fee) every time they want to move that BTC into their wallet?" I'm curious is this the transaction per $100 or is $18 a flat fee regardless of transfer amount?

The average transaction fee is a bit disingenuous. Many people are not even using segwit and thats on them. You can also use lightning at this point in time but people dont know how to do it and wallets have not implemented yet. High fees usually prod people and services to adapt to the current tech to get costs down. I expect this to happen soon as high fees are somewhat recent. Also you can send a 50 cent tx fee and it will make it through but not be the fastest.

One other thing - you cant even move BTC in or out of Robinhood. Robinhood for crypto is a complete scam right now.

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