Live data from Hacker News

Bitcoin hits $1T in market value

cnbc.com

61–70 of 115 posts

Re: Bitcoin hits $1T in market value

#61
post #49

For context: global equities market cap is $89.5 trillion https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-worlds-10-largest-stock...

Gold's market cap is approximately $9 trillion and I think BTC is a more attractive investment. https://cointelegraph.com/news/pomp-thinks-btcs-market-cap-w...

Re: Bitcoin hits $1T in market value

#62
post #51

Is there any good information on what set off this current bull run? The timing with the US election seems odd, but I can't see any causal mechanism that could link the two. Is it Robinhood adding crypto?

The most recent run seemed to start about the same time as GME - presumably people decided to hedge their bets. Maybe they sold GME at the peak and put it into things like BTC, coupled with a lot of new money trying to recover their losses from GME

Musk tweeted about it on Feb 8th which pushed it up, and then news stories of it hitting 50k, and now 1T, keeps the money coming in.

Stocks are massively overvalued, wouldn't surprise me if people are diversifying too.

Re: Bitcoin hits $1T in market value

#63
post #53
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the "what if" is always pegged to another currency. I don't know anyone that prices anything in just BTC (it's all BTC converted from USD or whatever, because anything else would be madness) - and I don't know anyone that doesn't peg their bitcoin to what they'd get if they sold it for "real money". Which makes me think any endgame isn't going to be the utopian, governmentless, money-freedom future I keep hearing…

Not sure if it means anything, but the first thing I do when reading about the price of say some huge tunnel built in Europe is mentally convert the quoted Euro price to USD. Doesn't make the Euro any less real as a currency.

The fact that a European project was priced in Euros suggests that Euros are more of a currency than BTC. Converting to USD is a matter of convenience for you. But within the European economy that same project would have a near comparable EUR price in 12 months as it does today. That is not true for things priced in BTC as the value of the BTC is wildly fluctuating (though generally trending up).

Please find a contemporary (don't look to someone selling alpaca wool socks in 2010 and 2011), stable priced product line in BTC. Anything that I can be confident I will pay +/- 5% of the same BTC for over a 3 month period (I'm deliberately selecting a short period, most currencies are stable for 12+ months at a time when used to price goods and services).

Re: Bitcoin hits $1T in market value

#64

Call me old fashioned but I feel like bitcoin is similar to fiat currencies simply because it's not backed by anything. It has invented scarcity. If I just created giraffe coin and there were only 5 coins it doesn't mean it has any value. Would someone please explain why on earth I want to own bitcoin? I really don't understand the bull case for it.

You don’t have to want it, other people want it. You want to have a pile of lightweight, secure doodads that other people want, because that’s easier to exchange than terminal wants like cars and sheep. What’s really crazy is the only reason other people want it is this same reason; it’s circular. It takes coordination to bootstrap, but once it’s set up it can be stable. Like those circles of people all sitting on each-others laps.

Re: Bitcoin hits $1T in market value

#65
post #42

~2.3% of addresses own ~95% of all bitcoins. [1] How is a cryptocurrency with this type of wealth inequality supposed to help the common person? It's already centralized, thus easy to manipulate. Bitcoin is reproducing the same type of wealth distribution we see in real life. What exactly does btc offer? I don't understand how one can look at this distribution of bitcoins, where essentially the 1% owns most of it and…

A lot of those are exchange wallets, and the wealth distribution of fiat currency in many societies is not much better. There are tons of valid criticisms of Bitcoin but this one doesn't amount to much.

Let's zoom out a bit. Is btc a currency or a stock or a store of value? Because depending on what you believe it is it will change how the discussion goes from here.

As a currency, which is what you mentioned, btc is awful. It's deflationary so nobody wants to spend it, it's volatile so you can get fucked in a transaction by the time it settles, and if you do spend it you have to pay a transaction fee. And where's the upside from all this pain? Nothing, cash is good enough.

If it's a store of value or a stock, then you should be absolutely worried about how it's distributed. Because based on that, it looks a lot like a ponzi scheme to me.

Re: Bitcoin hits $1T in market value

#66
post #55

Call me old fashioned but I feel like bitcoin is similar to fiat currencies simply because it's not backed by anything. It has invented scarcity. If I just created giraffe coin and there were only 5 coins it doesn't mean it has any value. Would someone please explain why on earth I want to own bitcoin? I really don't understand the bull case for it.

The US Dollar is backed by 20 aircraft carriers, thousands of nuclear weapons, 350 million Americans who think they have a manifest destiny, and a government with a long history of invading countries that threaten the dollar. What's bitcoin backed by?

CNBC and Grayscale Bitcoin Trust

Re: Bitcoin hits $1T in market value

#67

Call me old fashioned but I feel like bitcoin is similar to fiat currencies simply because it's not backed by anything. It has invented scarcity. If I just created giraffe coin and there were only 5 coins it doesn't mean it has any value. Would someone please explain why on earth I want to own bitcoin? I really don't understand the bull case for it.

You don’t have to want it, other people want it. You want to have a pile of lightweight, secure doodads that other people want, because that’s easier to exchange than terminal wants like cars and sheep. What’s really crazy is the only reason other people want it is this same reason; it’s circular. It takes coordination to bootstrap, but once it’s set up it can be stable. Like those circles of people all sitting on ea…

Yeah the greater fool theory doesn't sound too appealing to me.

Re: Bitcoin hits $1T in market value

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I as a parent from the fruit of my labors have no right to help my children through life? Also please note most millionaires in the world are self made, with over 80%. Of the other 20% most made it to millionaire status before receiving an inheritance. Also note the people you most worry about, the ones who get money young, usually plow through it and leave nothing for their children.

The notion that over 80% of millionaires in the world are self made is completely ridiculous. Just because you didn't receive large swathes of money doesn't make you self made. Growing up in a secure environment, where you don't have to worry about having a job while you finish high school, where you don't have to worry about not being able to go to college. Where you don't have to worry much at all about anything as…

You're defining "self made" to fit a very narrow definition. All the things you say are true to an extent, but it's not black-and-white. Would you consider Bill Gates self made, considering the magnitude of his achievements, etc?

Re: Bitcoin hits $1T in market value

#69

Calculation of market cap is interesting, because we (almost certainly) know that a good fraction — as much as 20% — of mined bitcoins are lost forever through accidental key destruction. So you have to adjust this market cap by the remaining, probably liquid, pool.

Ok, so now I get why Bitcoin is regarded as "deflationary": on long enough timescale almost all bitcoins will be lost this way, and the last man that still possesses his wallet keys will be a trillionaire. /s
Post reply on HN