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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

#301

Post by pumaontheprowl »

throwkeep wrote: post #101
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.

A pump and dump is approximately the least likely explanation.

How are you downvoted for this? Tesla directly lost over $100M as a result of this decision. If this was a pump-and-dumb, they did a horrible job of it. Also, a pump-and-dump scheme doesn't require you to crash the price of an asset after you exit your position. Suggesting this was a pump-and-dump is flat-out idiocy.

More likely is that Musk liked the idea of Bitcoin, but got a lot of pressure from environmental activists after committing to it and decided it wasn't worth it anymore. Companies change their positions based on the outcry of political activists all the time. That's far more believable than saying Musk tanked his own company in effort to execute the worst pump-and-dump of all time.

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

#302

Post by matwood »

slg wrote: post #54
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.

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.

> They never dumped.

Not true. They made their numbers by selling 100M or so of BTC last quarter.

https://www.autoweek.com/news/green-cars/a36266393/tesla-mad...

> The second item that helped Tesla were sales of bitcoin, the "positive impact" of which amounted to $101 million.

The article says that was 1/10 of what they own. We won't know until next quarter how much more they have sold.

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

#303

Post by TomSwirly »

fastball wrote: post #251
pkulak wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And denying covid kept workers in his factory, against the law. I think there needs to be some rule in discussion that as soon as you start arguing over if someone is dumb or evil, you have to stop. It's impossible to figure out which (or what mix) it actually is.

I'm fairly certain it was not in violation of "the law", but rather in violation of edicts from unelected officials.

It makes me so sad that it's impossible to have a polite conversation these days without clinical paranoids popping in at every juncture to say, "COVID is a hoax! Public health officials are frauds! Medicine is meaningless!"

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

#304

Post by UncleMeat »

nprz wrote: post #299
UncleMeat wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the btc network should be thought of as a settlement layer, rather than a payment layer This ruins all of the stuff you mention. Or at least restricts these nice features to the rich. People don't have access to these features if they are only used indirectly through the major institutions they work with.

All of those features remain intact, even with the eventual creation of a payment layer. There is nothing to prevent someone from transacting directly on the blockchain.

Except the high fees due to limited throughput and the absolutely gargantuan CO2 emissions, which are the topic of this thread.

You can't say it is a settlement layer in one breath and then immediately turn around and say that no really everybody truly has access.

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

#305

Post by brazzy »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #288
worik wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not possible to clean up bitcoin. Even if it moved entirely to renewable energy it would still be a massive opportunity cost. There are productive uses that energy could be put to. Bitcoin is not productive. Using gigawatts to process a few transactions a second, when existing financial frameworks can process millions of transactions a seconds at a fraction of the energy input means that bitcoin is always a mas…

You seem unaware of proof-of-stake and other initiatives that should significantly reduce Bitcoin's footprint.

...which are unlikely to ever get implemented because adoption of such an "initiative" would have to be decided by miners, and that decision would immediately make their very expensive ASIC hardware completely worthless.

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

#306

Post by [deleted] »

pkulak wrote: post #234
onion2k wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX wins lots of space contracts with the help of Musk's "Occupy Mars" marketing. Tesla sells lots of cars on the promise of self-driving in the marketing. Musk bought BTC, single-handedly pumped the price of BTC, and then sold at a huge profit. I don't think he's a genius but Musk is definitely not stupid. He's just not playing the obvious game you think he's playing.

And denying covid kept workers in his factory, against the law. I think there needs to be some rule in discussion that as soon as you start arguing over if someone is dumb or evil, you have to stop. It's impossible to figure out which (or what mix) it actually is.

[deleted]

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

#308

Post by dylan604 »

onion2k wrote: post #229
pkulak wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cus he's not that bright. Isn't this the elephant in the room that no one wants to consider? Why do we have to start with the assumption that Musk is a genius, then work back from that? The dude thought covid would go away last May. He thinks it's easier to make Mars habitable than it is to keep the Earth habitable. He's thought that full self driving was 6 months away for literally 4 years now. And he didn't really…

SpaceX wins lots of space contracts with the help of Musk's "Occupy Mars" marketing. Tesla sells lots of cars on the promise of self-driving in the marketing. Musk bought BTC, single-handedly pumped the price of BTC, and then sold at a huge profit. I don't think he's a genius but Musk is definitely not stupid. He's just not playing the obvious game you think he's playing.

>Musk bought BTC, single-handedly pumped the price of BTC, and then sold at a huge profit.

Doesn't this have legal ramifications when done in the stock market? If it is shady for that market, why is it acceptable in other markets? Oh, right, they're not regulated.

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

#309

Post by TomSwirly »

tpmx wrote: post #233
pkulak wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cus he's not that bright. Isn't this the elephant in the room that no one wants to consider? Why do we have to start with the assumption that Musk is a genius, then work back from that? The dude thought covid would go away last May. He thinks it's easier to make Mars habitable than it is to keep the Earth habitable. He's thought that full self driving was 6 months away for literally 4 years now. And he didn't really…

No comment on how smart or stupid Elon is (he is somehow effective ), but I'm with you on all of those things except "He thinks it's easier to make Mars habitable than it is to keep the Earth habitable": The concept of having humans on another planetary body makes a lot of sense as a backup-plan for humanity. The Drake equation be damned - in case we're actually alone, we have a pretty strong moral requirement to mak…

> The concept of having humans on another planetary body makes a lot of sense as backup-plan for humanity.

Sorry, but it's like planning your workout routine in a burning building.

The climate emergency is building right now, this instant. Cosmic threats like asteroids happen on the order of millions of years apart.

We need to stabilize the planet, now, in this generation, immediately, or we will doom a million species and most of humanity.

Once that is done, we can look at problems on the ten thousand to ten million year scales that cost quadrillions of dollars to solve, like "moving to a second planet".

Let me be blunt - unless we go all out, the collapse will happen a hundred years before any Mars colony is self-sufficient, and none of them will survive.

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

#310

Post by kofddfjdfdfdff »

rodiger wrote: post #264
Siira wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The energy consumption is the only security mechanism Bitcoin has. It's impossible to drive it down. PoS would be a completely different fork, and it's not clear how secure/censorship-proof it would be.

Any protocol change is, by definition, a fork. If everyone says the new PoS Bitcoin is the real Bitcoin, then it is so.

But what would be incentives to using a PoS Bitcoin fork, as opposed to starting over with a fresh altcoin?
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