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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

#681

Post by imtringued »

ardy42 wrote: post #603
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. Elon Musk went on Twitter and called Bitcoin "BS" to drive the price down so they could buy at a discount. They then announced their Bitcoin purchase with fanfare that drove the price up, marking a quick return on their investment. They used Elon's influence to make a quick profit on the frenzy. Is that even legal? It sounds like pumping and dumping.

It's technically not pumping and dumping because Elon posts memes that shill his investments but he rarely gives a call to action and if possible avoids naming the cryptocurrency in question.

He's definitively manipulating the market in the sense of the colloquial meaning of the word.

If there are public signals that predict the performance of a stock then those who benefit the most are those who execute their trades as quickly as possible and since Elon knows what he is going to "announce" on his Twitter account he is going to benefit massively.

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

#682

Post by imtringued »

trident5000 wrote: post #410
stale2002 wrote: post #404

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.

People with whole Bitcoin don't necessarily care about a $50 transaction fee. They still drive the transaction fees up by wasting space and thus cause people who decide to use segwit to pay more.

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

#683

Post by imtringued »

ineedasername wrote: post #527
UncleMeat wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Yes, the role of bitcoin has been gradually changing from "revolutionary" to mundane financial asset class with a novel method of purchasing it.

It's actually moving away from that. It will be just be a settlement layer in 10 years.

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

#684

Post by imtringued »

fragsworth wrote: post #662
tootie wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We used to call them Ponzi schemes. This is the same but in slow motion. People are going to start taking their profits at some point and whoever takes them last will be holding the bag.

Counterpoint: People are going to start getting rid of their dollars at some point, and whoever gets rid of them last will be holding the bag.

CPI inflation is extremely low. This should be worrying to anyone who thinks that the value of a dollar is going down as much as the housing, stock and cryptocurrency market imply. No, this is an indicator for a large scale bubble in the financial system. Once interest rates go up again there will be a correction.

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

#685

Post by fogihujy »

Geee wrote: post #117
fogihujy wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, transaction times longer than a few seconds, and fees larger than a few cents puts Bitcoin in a worse position than regular Visa transactions/Bank transfers.

You can use Visa with Bitcoin: https://www.binance.com/en/cards

Good start. Still doesn't address actual Bitcoin transaction times or fees, though.

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

#686

Post by tsimionescu »

vmception wrote: post #660
tsimionescu wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin consumes more electricity than entire countries - more than the Czech Republic for example. It consumes a third (or was it a fifth?) of all the electricity of all data centers in the world. It is by no means insignificant.

That's not a counterpoint if those countries also consume an insignificant amount of energy. Isn't a rebuttal different than a deflection? Anyway half - 3/4ths of bitcoin mining is using clean energy that wasn't going to be used for anything else, or a sustainability solution for energy that was going to be used as pollution.

> Anyway half - 3/4ths of bitcoin mining is using clean energy that wasn't going to be used for anything else

While the clean energy claim may be true, why do you claim it wouldn't have been used for anything else?

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

#687

Post by noch »

imtringued wrote: post #680
noch wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sounds like you’re saying Bitcoin only has value because the PRC allows it to? Please learn how the Nakamoto Consensus works and how nodes protect the Bitcoin network while miners are slaves to the network. There's a rich history of this being tested by adversaries. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26089898

I once had the idea to run a decentralized (technically federated) crud app. It's just a regular database with a central authority but users can access the database and its indices with IPFS. In theory nothing could take it down. The practical problem is that users have to download the entire dataset. There are a lot of queries that cannot be done exclusively through an index and require downloading a substantial amo…

> It's ironic. Bitcoin will just be relegated to a settlement layer.

Not ironic at all. Bitcoin is supposed to be a robust, decentralised, censorship resistant settlement layer. That's literally the point. It's the base protocol.

We don't, after all, expect users to care about TCP/IP whenever they post to TikTok.

But it's reasonable, based on current trends, to predict that the number of full nodes will continue to increase all over the world.

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

#688

Post by ur-whale »

thekyle wrote: post #460
ur-whale wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read this exact same advice now easily 5 times in the last ten years. Draw what conclusions you want, just an observation.

Depending on when you heard the advice it may well have been correct each time you saw it.

It also points at how useless the advice is.

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

#689

Post by adhoc32 »

dodobirdlord wrote: post #600
adhoc32 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that time it will be impossible to ban because a large percentage of the US population will be exposed to it. If in spite of that they do decide to ban it there is not much they can do except ban the exchanges. The Bitcoin network is impossible to ban without heavily censoring the internet. Also what the US is going to do about the other countries of the world, invade them in order to ban the BTC?

Banning the exchanges is about all it would take. Besides, the current chorus is that large companies moving a share of their cash holdings into Bitcoin will drive the price way up. If the government bans Bitcoin then that's not going to happen.

Most probably a US ban will crash the price, but it will recover in time. Also it will establish a black market in the US which is the worst possible scenario for the authorities as they would have absolutely no control over it.

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

#690

Post by imtringued »

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…

I have used asset inflation in the past to mean the opposite of CPI inflation. The appreciation of assets without a corresponding increase in CPI inflation. I also refer to Bitcoin as a deflationary currency. The problem is that I needed a simple easy to understand term that cryptocurrency, real estate and stocks so I just referred to the entire class of goods gaining value relative to USD as "asset inflation" because CPI inflation also refers to a class of goods and thus its easier to transfer the concept. I will admit that this is not precise enough.
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