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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

#751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Think about it - if you had invested at any point in Bitcoin before today, you would have made money. But keep on resisting. That's irrelevant to me. It's not all about "getting rich". It's not like everyone can become rich off of bitcoin. The only way you make money is taking it from someone else. At the end of the day, real work needs to be done in the world.

Lets assume it is a ponzi scheme and then make judgments based on that assumption.

... when people make money off Bitcoin, where does that money come from?

At least when the scam is selling shares of an imaginary gold mine, there is hypothetically somewhere for the profits to come from. With Bitcoin, there is only a $12B/year loss to electricity charges and no where for money to come into the system but absurd transaction fees.

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

#752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just buy a small amount of bitcoins now, something you won't mind losing? If they increase 100 fold you won't feel like you're missing out. And if they don't just think of it as insurance. I personally hate the idea of bitcoin and avoided it for a long time, but I feel better having a little just to avoid the thought I let my personal feelings get in the way of an opportunity with a good risk/reward ratio.

This doesn't necessarily mean you're invalid, but if BTC increased 100x, they'd exceed the world's GDP. So... yeah, though maybe you can't say that's impossible , if by some miracle BTC became the dominant currency in a (much richer) future.

> This doesn't necessarily mean you're invalid, but if BTC increased 100x, they'd exceed the world's GDP.

Ahh, but the asteroid 16 Psyche is worth $10 quintillion and one day we'll mine it. That lets the BTC cap go 100,000x further than the world GDP.

[On a more serious note, note that GDPs have a time component and market caps -- or the amount of a currency in circulation -- don't. If each unit of money gets spent every month, you only need GDP/12 units of money in circulation; if each unit of money gets spent every 10 years, you need GDPx10 units of money.]

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

#753
post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shares of Facebook for sure. Bitcoin's value is in the network effect, you can easily create a bitcoin clone but it's worth nothing if you are the only one hogging all the coins.

Agree but for a slightly different reason. If I acquired all the Facebook shares I could do the world a favor and kill off the company.

It's hard to make that call when you're making life-changing money every day. Alternatively, you could completely change the company's focus.

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

#754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your feeling is IMO the norm for lots of folks. I have had this conversation with many a friend, who actually view Bitcoin as a Ponzi, and therefore decide not to play the game (a ponzi ca be lucrative if : a) you know it's a ponzi b) you're smart in your timing and not too greedy but it's still a crapshoot). The real questions are: - what if it isn't a Ponzi ? - how much will your "won't touch it with a 10 feet pole…

It is a ponzi scheme. I think eventually majority of investors will participate in it. At present, total stock + gold market is $100T. If you expect 5% of this diverted to BTC then upper bound on BTC market cap is $5T. This means upper bound on BTC price is $250K. When that price arrives, suddenly things will become stagnant. People will wait for few years in the hope something will happen and then sell out for more…

Let me preface this by saying I agree bitcoin is like a decentralised Ponzi scheme...but you are wrong in your assumption that maximum price = number dollars in * number of bitcoins.

The trick of bitcoin is that creates the illusion of value in its price in dollar (or other fiat) terms. There is no true underlying value. Note: bitcoin depends on the dollar because there is no independent bitcoin economy. So the price is simply what fools are willing to pay for it recently, what the last bid was. How much money has gone into the bitcoin black hole over time has almost no bearing on its price at any given instance besides hysteresis (i.e. the current instant price is near the last price).

Price is thus simply the dollar amount that people are willing to pay in the present moment for a bitcoin; there is no reason it could not go to $1,000,000 a coin if people are dumb enough to pay that amount.

This is why bitcoin is like a black hole. It is not an equity, since there is no underlying, fungible asset, i.e. ASIC miners can't be used for general purpose computation, bitcoin is not a share of ownership in anything, etc. The market cap of bitcoin is zero at all times regardless the price. The price provides an illusion of market cap or value but is not actually value in of itself. It exerts a pull on real money that can be used to fund productive or legal investment, like a black hole, but pouring money into Bitcoin does not give it value. Money can be destroyed, just like matter into a black hole and this is something cryptoholders will find out when (1) there is no greater fool left or (2) bitcoin soaks up so much real money that it has real economic effects, e.g. deflation, which results in a regulatory social clampdown or (3) there is a regulatory clamp down before that point due to recognition of bitcoins only real use case, illegal activities.

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

#755

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…

I think the second order effect will be from companies that accumulate too much cryptocurrency - only to see its value vaporize. Impact could be systemic if companies start to essentially gamble with their treasure chests. Example: what happens if other companies followed the likes of Tesla and MicroStrategy? Sure the $1.5B Tesla invested is pittance in the context of their market capitalization, but if Bitcoin price…

Note that in a way, this is a best case scenario, at least if it happens early.

Extra volatility in the crypto coin market disincentivizes hoarding. So while it might hurt specific companies that over do it, it may prevent an economy wide gridlock where all companies are hoarding coins instead of investing in real production.

In a way, volatility caused by corrections is a natural cure for the bad Nash equilibrium. It's when the correction mechanism stops happening that things can build up into dangerous situations. That's why when governments tried to stabilize gold in the 1930s, preventing it from naturally correcting into a volatile asset, it caused the great depression.

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

#756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

because a lot of energy is not utilized if it will be lost in transit. they don't send it and there is extra capacity on site and from the specific source of energy. there are gigawatts of energy that can only be used at the source, which has never had a use until the mining machines showed up.

Then why not stop producing it, instead of using it on Bitcoin? Even 'clean' energy production has environmental costs, from environment destruction for hydro to maintenance/production costs for solar and wind.

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

#757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If bitcoins price continues to rise, miners will be greatly incentivized to further decrease power costs. That's not how bitcoin works. The price of bitcoin is the budget you can spend on mining a single coin. If the price is higher, you can afford to run more miners. If the cost of electricity goes down, you can afford to run more miners. If the efficiency goes up, you can afford to run more miners. Running more mi…

Miners are motivated by profit, if your cost of electricity is lower, your profit is higher. I’m not sure why you are trying to obfuscate that simple fact.

There are industries in much better positions to revolutionize energy production than bitcoin miners. In fact, there basically a single industry that doesn't have this incentive.

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

#758
post #749
post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wait perhaps I misunderstood. If you have $15,000 in shares pledged as collateral, and they appreciate, and the loan is not repaid, the lender gets the shares, or the shares are sold and the lender gets $15,000 out of the sale proceeds and the rest reverts to the owner?

The latter; the lender doesn't get to enjoy the appreciation of the underlying collateral. The underlying collateral is simply meant to de-risk an anonymous loan with 0 credit check.

How does the sale work. My impression is smart contracts execute automatically. But if I have say apple stock to sell the market price differs moment by moment. An exchange would be specified, and trade type, and the whole collateral sold then proceeds divided?

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

#759

Does anyone else feel like: - they've missed an opportunity to get rich with minimal effort from crypto - still have absolutely no interest in jumping in at this point?

Haha, yes. In 2011, a guy on my team was all about bitcoin and dogecoin and such. I think bitcoin was like 11 cents a coin, or maybe a dollar by that point. I just plain didn't get it. Still barely do. I could have easily picked up a few hundred dollars of coin or, if I was a believer, a grand or two. Had I held onto it, I would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. However, if I got in at 10 cents, I would have…

A similar principle applies to tech stocks too. I know some Tesla and Apple millionaires. After reading The Psychology of Money I’m trying to be a more “buy and hold” investor and “let my winners ride”.

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

#760
post #667
post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the way to discourage hoarding behavior is inflation. Cryptocurrency follows similar models of scarcity like Bitcoin. Some cryptos have tail emission. None of them has any meaningful inflation. I designed Bitflate. It's a cryptocurrency with 7% inflation. The rate is moderately high to make it the opposite of Bitcoin. But it's not too high to cause hyperinflation. Bitflate is a Bitcoin software fork. So there…

Great at discouraging hoarding I'm sure! But how can this encourage adoption? Who would want to hold an asset that is designed to lose purchasing power? If nobody wants to hold it, then nobody wants to get it as payment.

I designed the reward schedule with 4 halvings. The schedule benefits early adopters. It is as follows:

Era Reward

0 50 (10 million coins)

1 25

2 12.5

3 6.25 (21 million coins)

4 6.56

...

10 9.85 (31 million coins)

...

30 38.11 (122 million coins)

Even though the supply inflates at 7%, it is still limited. There can be short-term speculation. If short-term adoption rises faster than 7%, the coin can gain value.

We're still in the early phases of mining. The reward schedule creates scarcity to allow the coins to gain value.

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