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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

#331

Post by nprz »

UncleMeat wrote: post #304
nprz wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, that’s how the btc network works, that’s what censorship-resistant means. You would primarily transact on a payment layer, which true, may not have all the features of the base layer. But you also have the ability to opt-in and transact directly on the blockchain and get all those nice features listed above, however the transaction fee would be higher and the speed of the transaction slower.

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

#332

Post by samatman »

pydry wrote: post #290
samatman wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just from a couple tweets he's made, I infer that Elon actually agrees that a lot of his wealth is fake. Tesla's valuation is insane, it's great evidence that markets are just kind of broken right now. We could speculate on why, but I decline to do that right now. It appears to me that he mostly focuses on the fundamentals of his companies, including engaging in braggadocio and performance art to pump interest and ke…

The market is partially broken because of him. He engaged in deliberate market manipulation to draw short seller blood. Once it became clear he'd get nothing more than a slap on the wrist for that stunt they backed off and the hype machine had no counterbalance. Once the shorts do come back though they will come back with a vengeance.

Like it or not, and I'm undecided, that's principled on his part.

He's been pretty clear that he thinks shorting, as it works right now, is dirty pool and should be illegal.

I try to stay out of esoteric finance stuff, but it's hard the way the world works these days. I kinda think he has a point about naked shorts, at least, Gamestonk showed everyone an ugly failure mode for that one.

So my take is that the huge Tesla pump was just a side effect, this was Elon taking something personally and wading in like the 800 pound gorilla he is.

No opinion on whether he should have been punished more, or deserved it, I basically don't understand where the boundaries on market manipulation or insider trading or any of those things are really supposed to be. Just moderately confident that he was personally trying to rake short sellers over the coals, not so much moon Tesla stock to an insane valuation.

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

#333

Post by zamfi »

sakopov wrote: post #31

Very perplexing behavior from Musk, I must say. Bitcoin's energy consumption has been front-and-center for a few years now and even more so when the bull market got hot. How does Musk decide to throw $1.5 billion worth of Tesla's cash into BTC without acknowledging this? I was expecting a little bit more due-diligence from him, but he's been absolutely consumed by crypto markets in general.

Elon probably read about the retired coal power plant in New York state that's being retrofitted and brought back to life for the explicit purpose of mining bitcoin [0].

Honestly, this is really frankly terrible. Even though I knew that the power consumption of bitcoin miners was high before reading this story, this particular concrete example still moved me.

One could easily be tempted to think "sure it's power-intensive, but this will all move to solar/wind along with the rest of the grid"---but it's hard to square that with stories about dirty power being spun up explicitly for mining.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-f...

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

#334

Post by grumpitron »

dylan604 wrote: post #308
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.

>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.

The SEC doesn’t consider Bitcoin a security, so it can’t be securities fraud. Also there usually must be lies (or intentional omissions) involved to prosecute these things, and I don’t think either of those apply here.

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

#335

Post by learningwebdev »

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.

> 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.

I really like this, and I propose it be called "Kulak's Law".

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

#336

Post by dheera »

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.

Why does it matter? Manipulation is de facto legal in crypto, because no legal jurisdiction has absolute control of it, and people getting involved need to factor that in as a rule of the game and optimize their own strategies taking that into account.

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

#337

Post by jreese »

kevinbache wrote: post #283
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…

He's single handedly accelerated the adoption of electric cars by 10 years while advancing literal rocket science to the point where launches will be done 10x cheaper. For those of us who measure by outcomes, he's a genius.

> He's single handedly

Tesla employs almost 80k workers, and SpaceX employs almost 10k. Elon might have had the idea, but it's the employees that made it possible and a reality.

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

#338

Post by nprz »

worik wrote: post #321
nprz wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is utility in the bitcoin network that is not found in existing financial systems (censorship-resistant, seizure-resistant, borderless, and pseudonymous). And If you are thinking about the energy consumption of btc on a per transaction basis you are misunderstanding that the btc network should be thought of as a settlement layer, rather than a payment layer. > Bitcoin is therefore best understood as a high-inte…

Golly. All those things (just like payments) are available much cheaper other ways. I am not a cryptographer, but the cryptographers I know and trust all agree on that.

Say you wanted to pseudonymously send funds to a family member with a frozen bank account in say, Gaza, by the end of the day. What tech would you use to accomplish this?

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

#339

Post by dragontamer »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #318
TomSwirly wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 speci…

We can do both at the same time and we should.

"Global Warming" is about the Earth going ~2C to 4C out-of-whack with our traditional norms over the next century or so.

Mars is about being at -60C all the time, or roughly 80C away from what humans want. And temperature isn't even the worst part: Mars doesn't have enough oxygen for Humans to survive. Mars doesn't have enough nitrogen for plants to grow (and make oxygen). Mars doesn't have enough gravity to keep a dense enough atmosphere for us.

---------

Look, I recognize the difficulty that Global Warming has on the human race. But Global Warming is a far, far, far easier problem than trying to have a sustainable, livable experience on Mars.

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

#340

Post by fao_ »

learningwebdev wrote: post #335
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 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. I really like this, and I propose it be called "Kulak's Law".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor is basically the same thing

Also the word "kulak" is loaded - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak

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