Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto • Hacker News Board

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

#461

Post by chrismorgan » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:30 AM UTC

trident5000 wrote: post #260

bogomipz wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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 an…

> Also you can send a 50 cent tx fee and it will make it through but not be the fastest.

This has tended to be true (that it’d go through within a few days), but right now it’s probably largely false.

Assume a small 226 byte transaction (one input and two outputs); at $50,000 per bitcoin, 50¢ is 1000 satoshi, which is about 4.4 satoshi per byte.

Per https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#0,30d, transactions with fees under 5 satoshi per byte were last cleared on February 8 (~8 days ago), and before that last on January 28 (~11 days). (Before that, such transactions stalled for about 12 days in October/November; other than that, it looks like such transactions never stalled for even a week back to the January 2018 craze, to say nothing of 50¢ being more satoshi per byte back then anyway.)

And if your transaction expires after a week——

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

#462

Post by ramraj07 » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:31 AM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #302

incrudible wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a flat fee. The $18 may be the average currently, but it's on the high end. You'll probably be fine with $5. It all depends on how much you want the transaction to be in the next block. If you're sending $50,000 in BTC then you don't care about $18. If you're transferring smaller amounts, why are you using Bitcoin? Use Bitcoin Cash or Litecoin or one of these newfangled proof-of-stake currencies. Then it'll be a…

In my entire life, the largest transfer of cash I have ever done between institutions was I think $30,000 and it was between a bank account I owned and my brokerage. I'd wager that the majority of people have never transmitted more than $5,000 in their life. Power to the people?

Isn't the downpayment on the median us house much larger than 30k?

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

#463

Post by steve_taylor » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:33 AM UTC

It’s going to crash again, just like it always does. My guess is that it will sit around 30 for a while, dip to the low 20s, and fluctuate around that range for a couple of years until the next bubble.

I’d be checking which companies (e.g. TSLA) and ETFs (e.g. ARKK, given their TSLA holding) are exposed to BTC risk and putting your money elsewhere.

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

#464

Post by unstatusthequo » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:35 AM UTC

incrudible wrote: post #300

adhoc32 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That it is a hedge against inflation because of the network effect and vice versa.

Why would you hedge against something like inflation, which is relatively constant over a year, by putting your money into a highly speculative risk asset with absolutely insane volatility over that same timeframe? Like many arguments for Bitcoin, this one just doesn't make sense.

Because our government just printed a LOT of money. Look into what money supply does to inflation. More supply of money means things cost more. Interest rates go down, and it’s better to not have cash but assets. I just loaded up on gold, platinum, silver, art, crypto, and real estate. Those will all fare better than cash or savings as hyperinflation grips the country.

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

#465

Post by tyre » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:37 AM UTC

lph wrote: post #425

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…

> That said, Tesla's Bitcoin purchase does make a lot of sense ... They then announced their Bitcoin purchase with fanfare that drove the price up, marking a quick return on their investment. Tesla is a car manufacturer! It doesn't make any sense at all! At any company that made sense, a CEO would lose his job for gambling $1B of company money in a casino totally unrelated to the company's business interests.

Tesla's stock has never been a car manufacturer stock. That's why it has so much short-selling against it. If you value it as a car manufacturer and compare it's (underlying business numbers):(stock price) to anything else, it's insane.

"at any company that made sense" is true, to a point. But the point of tesla has been, for a not-insignificant number of people, not meant to make sense. It's faith based. It's cult based.

Elon Musk has strong parallels to Trump's appeal. It might not make sense. That's not the point.

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

#466

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:37 AM UTC

trident5000 wrote: post #416

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world needs to move to lifestyles that use less energy, not more, even if that means giving up things some people consider important. I thought that was the purpose of Tesla. Sure, maybe waiting for an electric car to charge isn't as convenient as filling up at a gas station, but it's worth doing for the planet. Personally, I have purposefully chosen to live in a tiny apartment, in one of the few parts of the US…

"The world needs to move to lifestyles that use less energy, not more" That is literally never going to happen through the nature of technological and human advancement. The solution is where you source your energy from, not reverting to the stone age or jogging in place as a society. Being forced to save in a currency the central banks treat as toilette paper would indeed decrease my life quality specifically throug…

[deleted]

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

#467

Post by DennisP » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:38 AM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #394

DennisP wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A carbon price wouldn't damage Bitcoin. Electricity costs for some miners would go up, some would drop out, hash rate goes down, difficulty adjusts to keep blocks coming out every ten minutes, and everything continues as before. (Still think proof-of-stake is big improvement though.)

Wouldn't the bulk of mining just move to the one part of the world without a carbon tax? I know that's a danger with carbon taxes in general, but it strikes me as far easier to do with Bitcoin than anything else.

Yes, it'd probably need to be some kind of global system to prevent that. Countries doing their own carbon taxes normally add carbon tariffs to imports, but of course that wouldn't help for bitcoin.

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

#468

Post by judge2020 » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:42 AM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #385

aphextron wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My opinion of Bitcoin will change when it stops using more electricity than entire countries, for something Visa can do for comparatively nothing. To be fair, Bitcoin does not do what Visa does. Visa uses trust in existing institutions to accomplish transactions. Bitcoin mining creates trust out of electricity. And trust is a valuable resource, no different than any other form of value creation.

There are plenty of other stores of trust. You could buy index funds or government bonds or any number of other things, and the price will be less volatile than Bitcoin to boot. I know a lot of Bitcoin enthusiasts are skeptical of traditional institutions, but really, if all the world's governments go bankrupt you're going to have bigger problems. Heck, if you must use a cryptocurrency, at least pick one of the newer…

> You could buy index funds or government bonds or any number of other things, and the price will be less volatile than Bitcoin to boot.

That's not trust, that's security in the value of your money. BTC can never be taken from you unless someone either breaks crypto or steals your wallet secret key. The U.S. dollar is backed by the federal reserve, so while I don't think the U.S. is going to have a revolution that destroys or inflates the dollar anytime soon, there's a possibility of such a thing happening. BTC has an actual limited amount that can be distributed (like gold) so it'll always have value.

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

#469

Post by tylerhou » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:44 AM UTC

oraphalous wrote: post #447

tylerhou wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citing "latent demand" or "induced demand" as counter-evidence to my original statement shows your (mis)understanding of basic economics. In fact, basic economics predicts "latent demand" for ordinary goods! > But currency is different - opposite even. If supply goes through the roof - then demand will respond inversely. This is terrible reasoning. It depends on why that supply is going through the roof. Maybe the su…

>Citing "latent demand" or "induced demand" as counter-evidence to my original statement shows your (mis)understanding of basic economics. Your original statement: >The demand for USD is robust because people need USD to pay taxes and to purchase most goods ...remains an absurdly simplistic explanation of USD demand. I wasn't citing latent demand as a counter example to this explanation - just an illustration of easy…

> remains an absurdly simplistic explanation of USD demand.

Are you willing to provide a more sophisticated explanation for USD demand? The biggest thing missing from my explanation is demand as an investment, or foreign demand to hedge risk. Which right now isn't huge, given interest rates are at 0.

> just an illustration of easy to intuit scenario where demand responds dynamically to supply

Sorry, I was not correct that you were using this as an "counterexample." My intended point was that you seem to be presenting this as an unexpected phenomenon (like how others present "latent demand"), which signals that you don't understand basic econ. (And if one isn't familiar with basic econ, how are they supposed to understand monetary policy, which is based on a second/third year econ (macro)?)

A person who understands economics would usually write: a rise in supply (with all else equal) causes the price of an ordinary good to drop, which shifts the equilibrium to a point where usually there is more demand. "Supply is intimately linked with demand" misses the mark completely! Supply isn't at all "intimately" linked with demand; it's linked with price, which is linked with demand.

That distinction is critically important. It's the difference between central-bank money printing being inflationary (as you seem to suggest) vs. it being stabilizing (which is what is actually happening). And it affects behavior: people don't start buying food when when they see the news reporting an increase in supply. People start buying food when that supply increase causes the price to fall. If the price doesn't fall, people don't buy the food!

The same happens with USD. People don't swap the USD to another currency because they see the central bank creating money (apart from Bitcoin-fanatics). Normal people start migrating off the USD to other assets when they see its value fall (inflation), which isn't happening at all (as measured by the CPI)!

> "Because you can't pay taxes with it! Hurrumph!".

This is a strawman of my argument. Not only can you not pay taxes with Bitcoin, you also can't use it to buy any goods and services. In fact, the only thing it seems like you can do with Bitcoin is to tell others that how Bitcoin is the future, and if they are a disbeliever, that they will be left behind claiming "with 100% theoretical consistency that everyone is a stupid lemming."

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

#470

Post by ac29 » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:45 AM UTC

Lorin wrote: post #435

lph wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That said, Tesla's Bitcoin purchase does make a lot of sense ... They then announced their Bitcoin purchase with fanfare that drove the price up, marking a quick return on their investment. Tesla is a car manufacturer! It doesn't make any sense at all! At any company that made sense, a CEO would lose his job for gambling $1B of company money in a casino totally unrelated to the company's business interests.

I'm afraid it makes sense if they are hedging bets against a major global economy...

Hedging against what? There are plenty of ways to hedge against inflation risk or currency risk without buying into an asset that can lose 50% or more of its value very quickly (and has, a number of times).