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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

#511
post #507

I'm confused about the scaling issue. It's not like every time I buy a cup of coffee, I initiate a wire transfer to Starbucks. I buy these things on credit and the issuer of that credit charges me and Starbucks a fee for the service. Then I settle up at the end of the month. Looking at my bank account, I only have a few transactions per month (salary, mortgage, credit cards etc). Why couldn't something similar work f…

That's exactly what's happening.

Decentralized, trustless version is the Lightning Network, https://www.lopp.net/lightning-information.html

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

#512
post #131
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you ever think that you losing out on tens of millions of dollars might have affected your desire to challenge your believes that "bitcoin is something that cannot work"? I know I'd probably cope in a similar manner

It's also a possible butterfly effect. Would Bitcoin have taken off without those specific few thousand coins in the economy? If even half of Bitcoin holders at the time thought they'd make it big and held, how could Bitcoin have had the liquidity to gain value?

liquidity never mattered because its not a currency

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

#513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You can also use lightning at this point in time It has a big warning saying to not use it with cash you aren't willing to lose.

Neither Visa nor MasterCard have ever told me something like that.

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

#514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When "the market" does something that somebody considers to be irrational, the explanation is almost certainly that they either simply don't understand it, or that they do understand it and they're just being judgemental about the motives at play. The reason it has value is because people have demand for it. People have demand for it for a variety of reasons. I think it's reasonable to presume that a non-trivial port…

Or maybe just markets are stupid and bitcoin is mostly driven by hype based speculators

I think this would be covered by the "judgemental dismissal of market rationale" explanation I was talking about.

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

#515
post #507

I'm confused about the scaling issue. It's not like every time I buy a cup of coffee, I initiate a wire transfer to Starbucks. I buy these things on credit and the issuer of that credit charges me and Starbucks a fee for the service. Then I settle up at the end of the month. Looking at my bank account, I only have a few transactions per month (salary, mortgage, credit cards etc). Why couldn't something similar work f…

The transaction fee right now is $18. Even if you only go to the ledger rarely, that gets expensive fast.

(And, if you go to the ledger rarely, there's all kinds of complicated creditworthiness and double spend issues).

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

#516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been over 2 years since segwit was released. It turns out that people were right when they said that it would take a long while for it to be adopted.

I use it and I pay lower fees. You pay the price you deserve.

I though you paid the price dictated by the market/bidding system... How does bitcoin figure out what is deserved?

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

#517

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'.

Just virtue signaling. If bitcoin replaces gold it would be a net win for the environment. And btc uses mostly renewables and excess energy. Also there are many other random applications that use more energy than btc like HFT, gaming, video rendering, but we dont persecute individual liberty, expression, or advancement. A society moving forward simply takes more energy. The solution is to tackle the entire energy spa…

... All being equal, it probably isn't good to build a system of distributed ledger whose entire trustworthiness and participation depends upon "proof of energy usage".

Pushing one transaction through Bitcoin effectively uses about half the electricity that a typical US household uses in a month.

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

#518
post #480
post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Doing one transaction on Bitcoin effectively consumes about half the electricity a typical house uses in a month.

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

#519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>One other thing - you cant even move BTC in or out of Robinhood. Robinhood for crypto is a complete scam right now. I definitely would not call that a scam. I have no reason to move my BTC.

It's only a scam if you're trying to own actual bitcoin instead of simply using it as an investment vehicle.

Besides, if you really want to own a given amount of bitcoins that you have in your robinhood account, you just liquidate your position in RH and use those funds to purchase bitcoins directly.

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

#520
post #515
post #507

I'm confused about the scaling issue. It's not like every time I buy a cup of coffee, I initiate a wire transfer to Starbucks. I buy these things on credit and the issuer of that credit charges me and Starbucks a fee for the service. Then I settle up at the end of the month. Looking at my bank account, I only have a few transactions per month (salary, mortgage, credit cards etc). Why couldn't something similar work f…

The transaction fee right now is $18. Even if you only go to the ledger rarely, that gets expensive fast. (And, if you go to the ledger rarely, there's all kinds of complicated creditworthiness and double spend issues).

And the entire Bitcoin blockchain can only support just 7 (yes 7) transactions a second.
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