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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

#471

Post by tippytippytango »

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #83

It's a bit worrisome that we are inching towards the scenario where companies may be tempted at an economy wide scale to reduce investment in production in order to hoard cryptocoins instead. It caused the great depression when businesses switched to hoarding gold tied currency instead of producing in the 1930s. Now I'm not sure that crypto coins without being jacked up by central banks (like gold was during the grea…

They are just moving non-productive cash sitting around doing nothing and swapping it for an asset. It's just diversification, not diverting from production.

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

#472

Post by tippytippytango »

steve_taylor wrote: post #463

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.

This is the expectation from virtually every long term holder of BTC. Some plan to trade this price action, some will ignore it and just keep holding.

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

#473

Post by hogFeast »

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.

You didn't hear about SolarCity?

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

#474

Post by DenisM »

tylerhou wrote: post #275
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 invest…

> Bitcoin is inflating as an asset. I don't think this is precise. Inflation of an asset means that the asset itself drops in value, relative to the value of other goods. For example: when prices rise, the USD itself would be inflating because would then take more USD to buy goods. Bitcoin is rising in price compared to the USD. So it's not "inflating." If we treat Bitcoin as a currency, it's deflating because right…

> This is also why "asset inflation" is not precise

I'm afraid this ship has sailed.

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

#475

Post by UncleMeat »

incrudible wrote: post #323
UncleMeat wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The majority of people will also never own a Berkshire A share. It doesn't really matter.

BTC's price story is based on the idea that a huge portion of people will use it. Berksire A is expensive for an entirely different reason.

The story seems to rapidly shift between "BTC will save Venezuelans from an oppressive government" and "we never said it mattered if people could use BTC for transfers of non-huge amounts of money".

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

#476

Post by UncleMeat »

ramraj07 wrote: post #462
UncleMeat wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Have most individuals in the US bought a house? Have most individuals in the world bought a house in the US?

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

#477

Post by ac29 »

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 says that it's only going to support cryptocurrencies that meet a number of requirements—including stability, privacy, and compliance with money laundering laws".

So, not Bitcoin. And maybe not any existent cryptocurrency.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/02/mastercard-will-...

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

#478

Post by tippytippytango »

Jochim wrote: post #47
ur-whale wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, 100% with you here. I actually tremendously enjoy hearing a well constructed negative argument against Bitcoin/Crypto that presents a perspective I haven't heard a 100 times before and/or hasn't been debunked in depth. These are actually necessary given how new and different the whole shebang is. But that hasn't happened in a rather long time on HN, or if it has, it's buried 10 level of indent deep amongst HN r…

I'm interested in what you find lame about the climate change arguments? They seem fairly appealing to me, cryptocurrency is a fraction of the size of current payment processors and is already consuming a small country's worth of power. How much more power will it consume if scaled further? How will power efficiency strategies affect the utility of the network? I think there are some reasonable arguments for mining f…

The energy is used to provide security for the value the network stores. The energy consumed by the actual transaction processing is incidental. If bitcoin used a traditional database to store value it would need physical security (people with guns and/or lawyers) to ensure its integrity. To decide if bitcoin is actually wasteful you'd have to compare it to the energy consumption of the physical security that would be required to protect an equivalent amount of value (getting close to $1T).

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

#479

Post by xirbeosbwo1234 »

kerng wrote: post #336

Bitcoin has been around for a while now and it has been down talked quite a bit on HN whenever it comes up. It now has a larger market cap as Facebook - so the market sees more value in Bitcoin than Facebook. The sentiment on HN seem still be mostly against it whenever it comes up. I wonder why that is? I'd imagine 10 years from now Bitcoin will still be around and likely much larger than today - I'm less positive ab…

>I wonder why that is?

Because it tops out at four transactions per second while consuming as much power as Argentina. It's not rocket science.

>I wonder what will change the opinion of the skeptics?

All of the following are necessary but not sufficient:

1. Bitcoin users must panic when Bitcoin experiences deflation rather than celebrating it going TO THE MOOOOOON!

2. Someone has to find a way to make it scale.

3. Tether must be audited.

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

#480

Post by vimy »

urda wrote: post #354
giantandroids wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are often arguments (with merit) over Bitcoins wasteful use of energy, but I expect a lot of it is from hindight of 'why the hell did I not buy some'.

It's factually a horrific waste of energy. People pointing that out are not looking back in "hindsight", but are actually concerned with the damages it is doing to our planet.

So is Netflix or a ton of other ‘useless’ activities.
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