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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

#411

Post by mbesto »

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.

Two very plausible theories:

- Musk is not very smart, or at least doesn't always think decisions through or go through proper due diligence(we have evidence for this: see SEC tweets, thai children rescue, excessive management turnover, etc.)

- He (and Tesla management) know he can manipulate the crypto market. So they (first) bought $1.5B in BTC unknowingly to the public, (second) told the market they did (third) sold the BTC unknowingly to the public and (fourth) told the market that it wasn't viable and all the while keeping the profits so they can keep wall street happy/distracted from less than ideal financial performance figures.

Crypto advocates want democratization of currency. Well here ya go - whales can easily manipulate the system.

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

#412

Post by akouri »

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.

Tesla would have been dead if he had not brought the Fremont factory back online. I give him credit for this, as I think ignoring the “rules” was one of the smartest business moves ever made in 2020.

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

#413

Post by p_j_w »

fastball wrote: post #252
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…

Most of those things sound like techno-optimism, which isn't really the same as being dumb. COVID could've started to go away in May with HCT / massively more aggressive vax.

Vaccinations weren't an option last May, which is when Musk was saying Covid would be gone by, not this May.

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

#414

Post by nickik »

deckard1 wrote: post #382

Matt Levine already pointed out the environmental hypocrisy of Tesla. To which I quoted 15 days ago... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26973193 > -2 points by deckard1 15 days ago nice.

Literally 1000s of people have been pointing this out since the very second Tesla started talking about it.

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

#415

Post by sumedh »

reader_mode wrote: post #398
kevinbache wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>accelerated the adoption of electric cars by 10 years Did it really ? Tesla rode on the advances of battery tech driven by mobile devices, there were other EV efforts arround the time Tesla came up. I agree they recognised it early on and made it fasionable + they had this narrative driven market valuation which pressured other automotive execs to invest in the EV narrative. But 10 years is way too much - battery te…

> Did it really ?

Electric cars were a gimmick before Tesla, almost no-one was taking them seriously, after Tesla that changed.

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

#416

Post by sumedh »

jreese wrote: post #337
kevinbache wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Elon might have had the idea,

and the money to convert the idea into execution with a high probability of losing his money.

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

#417

Post by iab »

Traster wrote: post #344
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.

Isn't this just the same thing idiots did for Trump though? Look at whatever Trump does, and then find a reason in retrospect why actually that was a smart move. SpaceX wins contracts because they are able to send payloads into space, nothing to do with marketing, and sending payloads into space isn't even that hard - they basically beat out Nasa who weren't allowed to compete and Boeing who can't send a plane to 30,…

Sending payloads reliably into orbit is incredibly difficult. Not sure if I missed some glaring joke/sarcasm here

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

#418

Post by techrat »

shiyoon wrote: post #273
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…

It's not that he's dumb, he's just not as transparent or even ethical as people paint him out as.

Required reading for anyone who thinks otherwise:

https://elonmusk.today/

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

#419

Post by refurb »

jreese wrote: post #337
kevinbache wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Without Musk would that same group of people accomplished those things?

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

#420

Post by Barrin92 »

plebianRube wrote: post #408
Lramseyer wrote: post #393

I'm surprised that nobody's mentioned it here, but this crypto boom has sent demand for mining hardware through the roof, which has contributed in no small part to the chip shortage. Miners are buying up ASICs, GPUs and FPGAs at a premium. In the short term, crashing the crypto market can ease demand for semiconductors, but in the long term, getting cryptos to move to Proof of Steak will hopefully ease it up for good…

Proof of work keeps the network fair. Non mining nodes have the final say. Proof of stake lets players with the most money have the most say.

>Proof of stake lets players with the most money have the most say.

Okay, and what do you think the mining equipment is acquired with exactly?

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