Live data from Hacker News

Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

m.dw.com

61–70 of 276 posts

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#61

So far, Elon/Tesla: 1. Bought a bunch of Bitcoin. 2. Announced they were going to accept Bitcoin, sending the price up. 3. Sold a bunch of Bitcoin to pad out otherwise poor earnings, citing their goal of "testing liquidity of the market." 4. Announced they were going to stop accepting Bitcoin, sending the price plummeting. As though he didn't know the environmental impact a week ago? As though he didn't check for liq…

Meanwhile they started accepting Dogecoin at SpaceX just couple of days ago . Dogecoin has exactly the same energy spending incentives as Bitcoin. The whole set of actions doesn't sound very logical.

> Meanwhile they started accepting Dogecoin at SpaceX

What does that mean ? That SpaceX sells LEO trips in dogecoin ? Or that the coffee machine takes dogecoin ?

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#62

So far, Elon/Tesla: 1. Bought a bunch of Bitcoin. 2. Announced they were going to accept Bitcoin, sending the price up. 3. Sold a bunch of Bitcoin to pad out otherwise poor earnings, citing their goal of "testing liquidity of the market." 4. Announced they were going to stop accepting Bitcoin, sending the price plummeting. As though he didn't know the environmental impact a week ago? As though he didn't check for liq…

When Tesla announced the initial move they received a huge amount of push back for the environmental concerns. And it didn’t look good for an EV company of all things. There is a trend I’ve seen of a company making a decison, everyone hating on them for it, then they reverse the decision, and they are still criticised. If a company turns around and reverses a decision citing the very reasons they were criticised for…

No, because this makes it seem like they are not making the right decisions because they are right, but only because doing the wrong thing made them unpopular. It makes you wonder what other wrong things they do that doesn't elicit enough of a popular response to make them reconsider.

It's not like the environmental impact of Bitcoin was a subtle or obscure issue when they first made the decision. They should have known better, and it remains worrying that they did not.

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#63

So far, Elon/Tesla: 1. Bought a bunch of Bitcoin. 2. Announced they were going to accept Bitcoin, sending the price up. 3. Sold a bunch of Bitcoin to pad out otherwise poor earnings, citing their goal of "testing liquidity of the market." 4. Announced they were going to stop accepting Bitcoin, sending the price plummeting. As though he didn't know the environmental impact a week ago? As though he didn't check for liq…

When Tesla announced the initial move they received a huge amount of push back for the environmental concerns. And it didn’t look good for an EV company of all things. There is a trend I’ve seen of a company making a decison, everyone hating on them for it, then they reverse the decision, and they are still criticised. If a company turns around and reverses a decision citing the very reasons they were criticised for…

Sure, but none of it makes any sense. I have to imagine the decision to buy Bitcoin and accept it as payment was vetted by a lot of people internally, not just Musk himself. And the environmental impacts from mining are well known. Musk isn’t stupid either - he must’ve known this would be an issue for Tesla’s image.

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#64

So far, Elon/Tesla: 1. Bought a bunch of Bitcoin. 2. Announced they were going to accept Bitcoin, sending the price up. 3. Sold a bunch of Bitcoin to pad out otherwise poor earnings, citing their goal of "testing liquidity of the market." 4. Announced they were going to stop accepting Bitcoin, sending the price plummeting. As though he didn't know the environmental impact a week ago? As though he didn't check for liq…

When Tesla announced the initial move they received a huge amount of push back for the environmental concerns. And it didn’t look good for an EV company of all things. There is a trend I’ve seen of a company making a decison, everyone hating on them for it, then they reverse the decision, and they are still criticised. If a company turns around and reverses a decision citing the very reasons they were criticised for…

The problem is that you can't really take a company at face value if they reverse course after having already profited from their "lapse in judgement". The parent post lined out potential motivations behind all this that IMO aren't really that outlandish. It's speculation, but it's not some outlandish crackpot theory

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#65

Once Ethereum completes its transition to Proof of Stake, which will reduce its energy consumption by 99.75%, it will be the natural choice for Tesla.

I'm not sure that being the natural choice for another pump n dump scheme is a good thing.

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#66

So far, Elon/Tesla: 1. Bought a bunch of Bitcoin. 2. Announced they were going to accept Bitcoin, sending the price up. 3. Sold a bunch of Bitcoin to pad out otherwise poor earnings, citing their goal of "testing liquidity of the market." 4. Announced they were going to stop accepting Bitcoin, sending the price plummeting. As though he didn't know the environmental impact a week ago? As though he didn't check for liq…

When Tesla announced the initial move they received a huge amount of push back for the environmental concerns. And it didn’t look good for an EV company of all things. There is a trend I’ve seen of a company making a decison, everyone hating on them for it, then they reverse the decision, and they are still criticised. If a company turns around and reverses a decision citing the very reasons they were criticised for…

It's better than staying on a wrong course, but it would be even better if they had thought it through before announcing the plan. It's not as though the environmental impacts of bitcoin were a well kept secret that Tesla couldn't have known about.

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proof of stake is validation-by-the-rich I like https://chia.net , even if hackernews was just panicking about a harddrive shortage (proof of space) I can't accept that playing bingo on terabyte drives will ever be profitable enough to buy a data center for it. Anyway it's the programmability (chialisp) that is really interesting.

> Proof of stake is validation-by-the-rich But so is proof-of-work. PoS is weighted by how much wealth you’ve got at risk in the system, PoW by how much you have currently tied up supporting the system’s infrastructure. So, they look at different uses of wealth, but both are looking at wealth. Proof-of-X is pretty invariably “Wealth, applied to X”, especially if the system ever becomes even loosely recognized as mone…

Exactly, proof of work is even more for rich because it's all about availability to processors and cheap energy - guess who has that? super rich and corrupt.

Proof of Stake is validation by faith in the network which is infinitely more reliable and fair. In fact it's much more alligned with bitcoins philosophy of positive-greed than proof of work is in the current day. Heads of PoS need the network healthy for their assets to be healthy - heads of PoW can rotate shitcoins every month since they mine all the same.

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#69

So far, Elon/Tesla: 1. Bought a bunch of Bitcoin. 2. Announced they were going to accept Bitcoin, sending the price up. 3. Sold a bunch of Bitcoin to pad out otherwise poor earnings, citing their goal of "testing liquidity of the market." 4. Announced they were going to stop accepting Bitcoin, sending the price plummeting. As though he didn't know the environmental impact a week ago? As though he didn't check for liq…

They also wrote the customer agreement such that they would refund Bitcoin purchases in either dollars or Bitcoin[1], depending on which was more profitable. This can be used to effectively get free options on a highly volatile asset[2]. [1] https://twitter.com/TBPInvictus/status/1375088089002094595 [2] https://twitter.com/macrocephalopod/status/13750990694970286...

The alternative was to essentially provide free options to customers. It was stupid whichever way they did it.

Re: Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact

#70

So far, Elon/Tesla: 1. Bought a bunch of Bitcoin. 2. Announced they were going to accept Bitcoin, sending the price up. 3. Sold a bunch of Bitcoin to pad out otherwise poor earnings, citing their goal of "testing liquidity of the market." 4. Announced they were going to stop accepting Bitcoin, sending the price plummeting. As though he didn't know the environmental impact a week ago? As though he didn't check for liq…

When Tesla announced the initial move they received a huge amount of push back for the environmental concerns. And it didn’t look good for an EV company of all things. There is a trend I’ve seen of a company making a decison, everyone hating on them for it, then they reverse the decision, and they are still criticised. If a company turns around and reverses a decision citing the very reasons they were criticised for…

> There is a trend I’ve seen of a company making a decison, everyone hating on them for it, then they reverse the decision, and they are still criticised.

World is a complex place and there are groups who have different opinions on this. Bitcoiners were cheering when Tesla started shilling BTC, now they are booing. Environmentalists are now tipping Tesla but not that much because they still remain sceptical.

Post reply on HN