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$365B wiped off cryptocurrency market after Tesla stops accepting Bitcoin

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Re: $365B wiped off cryptocurrency market after Tesla stops accepting Bitcoin

#161

Post by swyx »

Robotbeat wrote: post #150
ben_w wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s only perplexing if you assume he knows all that you know. Musk appears to be a fantastically competent salesman and decent rocket scientist, but we shouldn’t expect him to have the Midas touch on other fields of competence. And while Musk ought to employ people to warn him about all the issues he now cites as why he changed policy, remember that he did start The Boring Company in response to getting stuck in a t…

Technically, the kid name was Grimes’ idea.

he added A-12, which honestly was the least objectionable part of the name

Re: $365B wiped off cryptocurrency market after Tesla stops accepting Bitcoin

#162

Post by robertlagrant »

phire wrote: post #141
slg wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is incredibly hard to imagine that the upside in Musk's personal Bitcoin stake, whatever it is, is anywhere close to approaching his personal stake in Tesla. Something like 70% of his net worth is Tesla stock. It would be unbelievably stupid to jeopardize the value of the Tesla stock to pump up the value of his Bitcoin holdings. Some of these anti-Musk conspiracy theories are truly crazy especially considering the…

Sure, his net-worth might be higher if this "tesla dabbling with bitcoin" never happened... but he made those tweets anyway, and any effects on tesla stock happened. Maybe there was no master plan, but it would be a lot better for his personal net-worth if he went long/short on bitcoin before each tweet.

No it wouldn't. The best thing for his net worth is to make Tesla valuable, and holding loads of Bitcoin while saying Bitcoin's not great is not what you would do if that's your motivation.

Re: $365B wiped off cryptocurrency market after Tesla stops accepting Bitcoin

#163

Post by rjbwork »

latchkey wrote: post #160
orblivion wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, here's my Big Brain, 4D Chess take: Elon Musk wanted to adopt Bitcoin, but he knew there was this big problem with energy consumption. It's bad for his brand, and perhaps goes against his own ethics. Could he say "hey, get the energy consumption down and I'll go all-in with Tesla"? People wouldn't think much of it. Better option: Buy a huge stake in Bitcoin, announce that he'll be accepting bitcoin at Tesla, ge…

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-05-13/elon-m... Surely by next week he’ll be tweeting, like, “we are building a giant battery in the desert to mine Bitcoin, Bitcoin is good again, you can use it to pay for Teslas,” and the price will shoot back up, and I’ll once again hit the button that auto-generates this column.

Lol. I freaking love Money Stuff. Levine writes so clearly and humorously on so many modern finance topics.

Re: $365B wiped off cryptocurrency market after Tesla stops accepting Bitcoin

#165

Post by rawtxapp »

phire wrote: post #66
slg wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this a pump and dump? They never dumped. It is certainly stupidity from Musk, but I don't know why you are implying maliciousness when they are still holding Bitcoin and therefore they are equally hurt by this drop in value.

Tesla might not have dumped. But I'd be very interested to see Musk's personal trading accounts, and the trading accounts of his close associates.

Yep, there were some big movements on the blockchain and the exchanges prior to the public tweet.

Re: $365B wiped off cryptocurrency market after Tesla stops accepting Bitcoin

#166

Post by svachalek »

snotrockets wrote: post #147
thedudeabides5 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or better yet, did they move into Dogecoin, which apparently uses a lot less energy. Setting up the inevitable 'use Doge instead, it's better for the environment'

Doesn't matter: considering that all cryptocurrencies have significant environmental impact, using them would force ESG-screening funds to drop the company.

Bitcoin is deliberately inefficient to a horrifying degree but it is not "all cryptocurrencies". Most modern designs are thousands or millions of times more efficient.

Re: $365B wiped off cryptocurrency market after Tesla stops accepting Bitcoin

#167

Post by hef19898 »

rchaud wrote: post #164

Musk blaming excessive energy use for withdrawing from BTC sounds like a ruse, considering that he of all people absolutely knew that going in. I smell Teslacoin in the works. A ostensibly green cryptocurrency, with his face on it.

Is Tesla into Blockchain already? Because if they are, that would be close to peak hype BS bingo.

Re: $365B wiped off cryptocurrency market after Tesla stops accepting Bitcoin

#168

Post by rchaud »

dragoncowman wrote: post #77

I don't really buy the pump and dump take here. Even if it had been an intentional pump, no reason to trigger a selloff. Some Theses: - Elon is a quick decision maker, he could have genuinely been persuaded about energy usage post-hoc. The energy bit does run somewhat contrary to Tesla's core mission. - In line with this, tesla may be about to form a partnership or make a move with another crypto platform, both becau…

I find it hard to believe that a guy who talks non stop about clean energy does not know how much dirty energy cryptomining uses. It is even less likely that he signed off on a $1.5b purchase of it, and that no-one involved in that process brought up its energy use.

Re: $365B wiped off cryptocurrency market after Tesla stops accepting Bitcoin

#169

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

paulpauper wrote: post #138
noxer wrote: post #135

How long until he figures out that DOGE also wastes energy?

or that electric cars do not actually have zero carbon footprint while we're at it, don't rockets pollute too

Nobody thinks that EVs have a zero carbon footprint.

But over the lifetime of the car, they have a lower footprint than ICE. Yes, they have a higher footprint than ICE to manufacture, but even if you get your power from coal, over the long term their carbon footprint is lower. And if your power comes from a renewable source, then the break-even point is less than two years.

Engineering Explained did a good video doing the math behind the carbon footprints of ICE versus EV over the life of the car:

https://youtu.be/6RhtiPefVzM

Re: $365B wiped off cryptocurrency market after Tesla stops accepting Bitcoin

#170

Post by adventured »

hinkley wrote: post #118
notyourwork wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks like a pump and dump scheme in its finest form. Nothing changed over last year in regards to energy consumption. There's no way that Elon or those in Tesla discussing this were not aware of this prior.

Elon is a gambler on a hot streak. He keeps making big bets that pay off, but the luck to cunning ratio is dangerously high. Some day the shoe is going to go cold and he's going to be fucked. He'll drop off the richest people list faster than he climbed it (which was too fast).

> He'll drop off the richest people list faster than he climbed it (which was too fast).

His level of wealth presently is silly and unsustainable, however SpaceX can probably sustain him on the richest list just fine (takes $20b+ to stay in the top 100, SpaceX can give him that by itself). It would have to RUD for him to fall off, which appears quite unlikely at present. I'd bet against Tesla before I'd bet against SpaceX. There are no serious competitors to SpaceX looking out five years, whereas Tesla has enormous competition coming at them from every angle (not least of which is in China, where they may have already extracted what they wanted from Tesla, explaining the recent propaganda attack there against Tesla and turn south in the narrative in the state controlled media). The US Government, NASA and the military all desperately need SpaceX to succeed, they're nice allies to have so vested in your well-being, they help smooth over problems and risks; they've been paving the way for SpaceX since early on.

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