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Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

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Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#91

Post by kolinko »

55555 wrote: post #23
ur-whale wrote: post #16

Any article that uses the sentence "mostly men" in the first paragraph is highly likely not worth reading.

These says, if you write "men" instead of "mostly men", you get attacked my SJWs. My favorite form is when they write "men (and they are almost entirely men)." But as is becoming clear to many, you cant please everyone all of the time, and, especially these days, there are some people you cant please any of the time. What phrasing would you prefer? "Humans" or just "men"?

“People”. You shouldn’t use gender, race, religion or nationality to describe a group of people unless it is somehow important to the story.

Otherwise you end up propagating stereotypes.

Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#92

Post by [deleted] »

dmitriid wrote: post #80
iso1210 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is the fair value of bitcoin? It will never provide dividends or other types of future cashflows, so that aspect of its fair value is zero. The remaining part is purely speculative in that it is based on what other people will pay for it. Do Swiss Franks pay dividends or other types of cashflows? If I have 50,000 CHF in a box in my cupboard, what value is it beyond a small amount of fuel to burn? At some point…

> If I have 50,000 CHF in a box in my cupboard, what value is it beyond a small amount of fuel to burn? You are so close to understanding the true value of bitcoin.

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#93

Post by tiku »

WJW wrote: post #42
shawnz wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making it easier to speculate should in theory decrease volatility and make market manipulation harder, since having more speculators should mean that the price is driven to its fair value more quickly.

This gets back to the "gambling vs investing" debate we had on the front page yesterday. What is the fair value of bitcoin? It will never provide dividends or other types of future cashflows, so that aspect of its fair value is zero. The remaining part is purely speculative in that it is based on what other people will pay for it. It is not at all clear to me that having more (relatively uninformed) speculators will…

One of the values of bitcoin is the price miners get for it. If they lose money on selling their newly minted bitcoins they won't sell. So it's related to power prices, the difficulty of mining a new coin.

Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#94

Post by betterunix2 »

iso1210 wrote: post #72
WJW wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gets back to the "gambling vs investing" debate we had on the front page yesterday. What is the fair value of bitcoin? It will never provide dividends or other types of future cashflows, so that aspect of its fair value is zero. The remaining part is purely speculative in that it is based on what other people will pay for it. It is not at all clear to me that having more (relatively uninformed) speculators will…

> What is the fair value of bitcoin? It will never provide dividends or other types of future cashflows, so that aspect of its fair value is zero. The remaining part is purely speculative in that it is based on what other people will pay for it. Do Swiss Franks pay dividends or other types of cashflows? If I have 50,000 CHF in a box in my cupboard, what value is it beyond a small amount of fuel to burn? At some point…

Actually the ultimate reason why a note has value is that it can be used to settle tax bills and other debts, so you do not have to "hope" that someone out there will take it -- the government behind the money will take it from anyone who owes taxes, which is almost everyone who lives or does business in the country.

Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#95

Post by gfody »

random5634 wrote: post #66
dmingod666 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are repeating my point.. My point was, why do you want to attribute gender to things where it isn't directly relevant.. How does the author know the gender breakdown of a currency where we can't even figure out who the person behind the bitcoin address is...

"Hey guys, want to get coffee" - is a historically common (and yes, now bad way) of asking if a group of folks, of any gender, want to get coffee. The insistence that someone is focusing on genital's and have a pervasion when asking this really does seem like a projection on the part of the folks making that claim, and I have noticed the genitals things come up over and over now in this context - it seriously is WEIR…

btw "gaz" is a perfectly harmless way to address a mixed crowd - the men hear "guys" and the women hear "gals" and not even the worst griefer would pick on a speech impediment

Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#96

Post by [deleted] »

viraptor wrote: post #55
vbezhenar wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. I can buy bitcoins on localbitcoins and it's pretty decentralized.

The fact you got to the localbitcoins service and tell it who you do the exchange with makes it at least a centralised place of information.

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#97

Post by tiku »

asdev wrote: post #65

unrelated comment: it's crazy how anti crypto and anti blockchain HN is for being a tech community

We can't even begin to imagine all the new tech that will use blockchain (related) tech yet. The money making is just the "nasty" part of it now.

A recent development is that of NFT's for example. And the smart contracts thing is just understandable for us tech nerds, but if all our customers and entrepeneurs get wind of it.. brace yourself.

Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#99

Post by kemonocode »

geswit2x wrote: post #10

please, can you post something that we don't have to pay in order to read? thanks

I agree, there needs to be a ruling about paywalled articles already. At the very least, tagging them properly (so people may ignore them at their leisure) or also putting an archive link in the comments.

Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#100

Post by tiku »

mrfinn wrote: post #58
superbcarrot wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get why people's thinking swings to these wild extremes. Why does it have to be either a societal disruptor that changes everything or a doomed ponzi scheme? Can't it be something like "oh we tried to have cool internet money, turned out that it's not that great, some people are still into it I guess".

It becomes a Ponzi scheme the moment you realize that the idea is intrinsically broken, but still you keep shilling it and making grow the value exponentially, (value that somebody has to pay). BTW, flagged, really mods??

When does a Ponzi scheme stop being a Ponzi scheme?
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