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Our Thoughts on Bitcoin

bridgewater.com

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Re: Our Thoughts on Bitcoin

#81

Post by wmf »

nfin wrote: post #66
arebop wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the energy usage is proportional to its economic value. If energy prices go up or down while nothing else changes, bitcoin's energy usage will go inversely. If bitcoin's value goes up or down while nothing else changes, energy usage will go the same.

you missed the elephant in the room: bitcoin can almost double (2x) in value every 4 years without an increase of energy usage by miners (if you put a wide enough filter) - I guess most understand that the reason is the supply halving finding place every 210.000 blocks (roughly 4 years), and nothing to do with technology/moore's law or anything else - this will probably be true (more or less... lets say 1.8x -2x) for…

That's not good enough. Even a $10T market cap doesn't justify 6 GW of power consumption when PoS would consume effectively zero.

Re: Our Thoughts on Bitcoin

#82

Post by EdwardDiego »

sebastien_b wrote: post #5

> while those who are against it (which are a few scared souls cowering in a corner) Way to win over your audience.

I guess we're also cowering in fear from Monat and LulaRoe and anything else where earnings are predicated on more and/or bigger fools entering after you.

Re: Our Thoughts on Bitcoin

#83

Post by nostrademons »

sebastien_b wrote: post #46
Matticus_Rex wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shouldn't; they're very open to being shown to be wrong. That's a key feature in their company culture. They're just not shy about how they phrase their current beliefs.

Then they should really think about how they phrase their intentions. To me, this read like someone at a congressional hearing asking "Why are you against protecting children from predators?" to a witness opposing something on totally different grounds (ie. being needlessly confrontational from the get-go).

It's more like PG saying at AirBnB's interview: "People actually let strangers stay in their homes? What's wrong with them?"

It's a zinger and a challenge to the person making the claims. Some people will be turned off by that and refuse to engage. In the particular domain that YCombinator and Bridgewater are working in - finding undervalued opportunities that everybody else is overlooking - this is a feature, not a bug. Anyone who's turned off by a simple offhand zinger or personal attack is not going to have the strength of their convictions when everybody is attacking them, which is usually what happens when you sincerely hold very unorthodox beliefs.

Re: Our Thoughts on Bitcoin

#84

Post by mopsi »

cloudc0de wrote: post #60
hanniabu wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how people will always find a reason to remain cognitively dissonant. At first it was just people doing illicit activity, then it was only a tulip bubble, then it's just that retail investors are playing the greater fool. Not that there's financial professionals advocating for it you say that they just want your business. At what point do you consider you may be wrong? What will you say when banks start holdin…

Bernie Madoff ran a ponzi scheme for 30 years and had the entire financial industry and regulators like the SEC fooled the entire time.

The temporary fad of personal computing still seems to linger around, though.

Re: Our Thoughts on Bitcoin

#85

Post by kinghajj »

wmf wrote: post #81
nfin wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you missed the elephant in the room: bitcoin can almost double (2x) in value every 4 years without an increase of energy usage by miners (if you put a wide enough filter) - I guess most understand that the reason is the supply halving finding place every 210.000 blocks (roughly 4 years), and nothing to do with technology/moore's law or anything else - this will probably be true (more or less... lets say 1.8x -2x) for…

That's not good enough. Even a $10T market cap doesn't justify 6 GW of power consumption when PoS would consume effectively zero.

PoW uses energy consumption for security. PoS uses staking for security. Every analysis I've seen agrees that PoW is more secure than PoS, precisely because of the energy requirements. Those who favor PoS argue that it's still secure "enough"; those who favor PoW disagree and prefer the increased security it brings.

Re: Our Thoughts on Bitcoin

#86

Post by solosoyokaze »

christiansakai wrote: post #26
rafale wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see Bitcoin hardfork to POS once the tech has been proven in Ethereum. Bitcoiners only care about the 21 millions hard cap and a secure network, not the exact consensus algorithm used.

Cardano will prove PoS sooner than Ethereum, and it has hard cap. Yes I am a Cardano shiller.

How would you recommend acquiring Cardano? Is there an exchange you can buy it on?

Re: Our Thoughts on Bitcoin

#87

Post by leshow »

teryyy wrote: post #77
leshow wrote: post #74

I didn't see anything on energy consumption or transaction throughput/fees. How can one discuss merits of bitcoin and not talk about any of this?

It's more focused on the merits of Bitcoin as it relates to being a financial asset class, and not on the merits of Bitcoin as a system.

That seems pretty short sighted

Re: Our Thoughts on Bitcoin

#88

Post by notahacker »

meowkit wrote: post #62
sebastien_b wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * They do this for the selection bias effect: they want to weed out anyone whose emotional reaction to the content will prevent them from engaging with the data and the reasoning in it.* To me that sounds like the perfect way to create an echo chamber.

The exact opposite. Echo chambers shutdown heterodox thinking, Bridgewater apparently embraces it. They’re filtering out people who are most susceptible to getting stuck in groupthink.

In this case they're filtering for readers who are susceptible to a particular type of groupthink: people who've read mostly positive stuff about Bitcoin and are inclined to believe it. It is impossible to argue with a straight face that glibly dismissing one side of an argument as "a few scared souls cowering in a corner" (as opposed to "most people") is a statement embracing heterodoxy.

As pointed out in other subthreads, it's a marketing document targeted at people interested in Bitcoin, not a reflection of Bridgewater's internal culture. And having sucked in people who agree that "most people" seem to want to promote Bitcoin, the actual analysis is a lot more bearish than the Bitcoin-promoting stuff they're likely to have been reading anyway...

Re: Our Thoughts on Bitcoin

#89

Post by ralala »

superbcarrot wrote: post #65
ralala wrote: post #61

The rising of Bitcoin can be a threat to working democracies - at least if it is used as a currency. Monetary politics are important for our society to function properly. On the other hand: For broken countries, it can help the people as a temporary replacement.

How do people in those broken countries get Bitcoin? To buy Bitcoin in a first world country I need a valid ID, an online exchange that operates in my country, access to the internet and a bank account. And it can take days if you've never done it before. Is that realistic for someone living in a third world country? What does bitcoin give you that you don't already have if you have access to all the items listed abo…

I don't know exactly. There has to be enough liquidity in Bitcoin locally to find enough persons to trade with. Starting a new cryptocurrency in such a situation will be difficult because of deflation. Deflation is extremely dangerous for the economy.

Re: Our Thoughts on Bitcoin

#90

Post by greg7gkb »

hanniabu wrote: post #45
adflux wrote: post #17

Another company shilling a coin, hoping to convince many more greater fools. Only goal of this article is to convince you to buy, and to transfer a part of your wealth to them.

I love how people will always find a reason to remain cognitively dissonant. At first it was just people doing illicit activity, then it was only a tulip bubble, then it's just that retail investors are playing the greater fool. Not that there's financial professionals advocating for it you say that they just want your business. At what point do you consider you may be wrong? What will you say when banks start holdin…

This isn't a case of who's right or wrong. The success of Bitcoin is entirely based on belief, which doesn't have a right or wrong answer, particularly this early in its history.

Bitcoin is successful if enough people agree to believe that it is valuable. And that's the period we're still in now: trying to determine if this thing is valuable and by how much (hence the price volatility).

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