Bitcoin’s plunge intensifies, tanks 30% to $30k in single day • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin’s plunge intensifies, tanks 30% to $30k in single day

#121

Post by drcross » Wed, May 19, 2021, 3:25 PM UTC

cogman10 wrote: post #108

drcross wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll listen to Bitcoin FUD all day but you don't seem to care about the hydro carbons purged in the process of strip mining the earth for shiny rocks though. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/why-bitcoin-may-actually-spe...

This is pure garbage. The problem bitcoin solves, a distributed ledger, is one that's simply solved with a ledger over a trust network. In otherwords, this is a "solution" that is burning TWh of energy doing something global banks accomplish with kWh of power. All the power funneled into BTC would be far better spent doing anything useful. From electrolysis to protein folding. Also, it should be noted that shiny rock…

>over a trust network

There's your problem, you don't understand that bitcoin is trustless and the worlds first implementation of it's kind. If you can't understand why that's important I don't have the time to convince you.

Re: Bitcoin’s plunge intensifies, tanks 30% to $30k in single day

#122

Post by bruxis » Wed, May 19, 2021, 3:25 PM UTC

drcross wrote: post #56

535188B17C93743 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a cool technology/concept, but at the cost of all the energy it's wasting to be a "speculative asset" at best... yeah, it's frustrating.

You'll listen to Bitcoin FUD all day but you don't seem to care about the hydro carbons purged in the process of strip mining the earth for shiny rocks though. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/why-bitcoin-may-actually-spe...

Nothing the previous poster says implies that they are okay with wasting energy in other ways and it in no way diminishes the fact that Bitcoin (and other PoW cryptocurrencies) use a _lot_ of energy.

Re: Bitcoin’s plunge intensifies, tanks 30% to $30k in single day

#123

Post by salamandersauce » Wed, May 19, 2021, 3:26 PM UTC

itsoktocry wrote: post #99

endisneigh wrote: post #10

other than trying to get the money of suckers, I've never understood the point of bitcoin. no currency, digital or not, can be removed from the world's activities. why would you ever want something that could plunge 30% in a day? even if it went up 5 billion percent, then what? everyone sells and it goes down? what's the point? it's like the most zero-sum activity imaginable. edit: I'm sincerely wondering what the va…

> I've never understood the point of bitcoin I'm far from a Bitcoin maxi, but I own a small % in my portfolio. Here's my take: We are entering a world of abundant cyber-terrorism. If my bank and/or brokerage gets hacked, why do I own? I have nothing except that entry in their book keeping. And if you think, "It's backed up, they'll have you up and running in no time", I'm skeptical. I think anything like this would b…

Couldn't the hacker just transfer your bitcoin into their wallet?

I think if my bank had a castrophihic record failure I'm going to get the money back eventually. I have far less hope about recovering stolen bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin’s plunge intensifies, tanks 30% to $30k in single day

#124

Post by 3np » Wed, May 19, 2021, 3:26 PM UTC

nodesocket wrote: post #93

I don’t care to debate the merits of crypto, I am more interested how come the major US exchanges and players (Coinbase, BlockFi) all go down and then all come back up at the same time after bottoms were reached and the rebound. That’s incredibly suspect and warrants investigation. I’ve never not been able to access my ETrade account and trade (don’t bring up Game Stop) that didn’t affect ETrade and was debunked why…

It’s not sketchy at all that price movements on exchanges are seemingly simultaneous. it’s because of automated arbitrage. Another factor (the prevalence of which is hard to measure) is that those who want to buy or sell large amounts (is whales) will chunk their orders and split them up across exchanges.

These, especially the former, are signs of markets maturing.

Re: Bitcoin’s plunge intensifies, tanks 30% to $30k in single day

#125

Post by pdpi » Wed, May 19, 2021, 3:27 PM UTC

optymizer wrote: post #100

aazaa wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of Bitcoin is that the world's governments have weaponized money. If all you pay attention to is the ups and downs of the exchange rate, then it all probably seems pretty pointless. But if you look at it against the backdrop of sanctions, civil asset forfeiture, erosion of civil liberties, and monetary debasement, things look different.

These are some heavy assertions here. How would Bitcoin protect against any of that? The government already tracks who buys Bitcoin by having all points of purchase of USD Bitcoin require proof of identity, and they can obviously look at the blockchain to get all the transaction made by each individual. Let's be realistic for a second. All it would take for the government to forfeit your bitcoins is a $5 wrench [1].…

For a long time, you could achieve that through localbitcoins or similar (not sure what the situation looks like now). You have tools to achieve some degree of anonymity, and there's other currencies that deal with that aspect of things better.

Well-regulated exchanges are part of an effort by (usually VC-backed) startups to legitimise making money off of cryptocurrencies, rather than a core part of the original ethos behind Bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin’s plunge intensifies, tanks 30% to $30k in single day

#126

Post by drcross » Wed, May 19, 2021, 3:28 PM UTC

hn8788 wrote: post #117

drcross wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll listen to Bitcoin FUD all day but you don't seem to care about the hydro carbons purged in the process of strip mining the earth for shiny rocks though. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/why-bitcoin-may-actually-spe...

"Bitcoing drives renewable energy" is one of the most nonsensical arguments I've ever heard. It's not like the components for solar panels and windmills grow on trees, and bitcoin miners aren't going to just stop expanding wherever there is cheap power, so it won't get used for anything besides mining more bitcoins. It's like saying that we should deliberately cause more pandemics to drive interest in vaccine researc…

Wait until you hear all the energy it takes to run the current financial system, or the energy it takes to run the worlds gaming consoles, or any other stuff that you have personally found to be more useful than crypto currency. If bitcoin frees us from financial tyranny it's all worth it.

Re: Bitcoin’s plunge intensifies, tanks 30% to $30k in single day

#127

Post by maaaaattttt » Wed, May 19, 2021, 3:30 PM UTC

optymizer wrote: post #100

aazaa wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of Bitcoin is that the world's governments have weaponized money. If all you pay attention to is the ups and downs of the exchange rate, then it all probably seems pretty pointless. But if you look at it against the backdrop of sanctions, civil asset forfeiture, erosion of civil liberties, and monetary debasement, things look different.

These are some heavy assertions here. How would Bitcoin protect against any of that? The government already tracks who buys Bitcoin by having all points of purchase of USD Bitcoin require proof of identity, and they can obviously look at the blockchain to get all the transaction made by each individual. Let's be realistic for a second. All it would take for the government to forfeit your bitcoins is a $5 wrench [1].…

When (if) speculation settles down, even if the governments know who owns bitcoins, they won't be able to "print" more of it and that's a big advantage over any other fiat currency.

Re: Bitcoin’s plunge intensifies, tanks 30% to $30k in single day

#128

Post by cma » Wed, May 19, 2021, 3:32 PM UTC

tudorizer wrote: post #103

cma wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not zero sum, it already got close to 1% of the worlds electricity usage. It is negative sum.

This pales in the face of other useless things people waste energy on...

Some other things are negative sum too.

Re: Bitcoin’s plunge intensifies, tanks 30% to $30k in single day

#129

Post by wppick » Wed, May 19, 2021, 3:33 PM UTC

endisneigh wrote: post #10

other than trying to get the money of suckers, I've never understood the point of bitcoin. no currency, digital or not, can be removed from the world's activities. why would you ever want something that could plunge 30% in a day? even if it went up 5 billion percent, then what? everyone sells and it goes down? what's the point? it's like the most zero-sum activity imaginable. edit: I'm sincerely wondering what the va…

Zoom out. Look at the performance on a larger scale. Are you making the same claims about stock options? They can plunge much more than 30% in a day, but is there no value in them? Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are still in their infancy. Compare to other assets in their infancy. This might not be a great comparison but think about real estate. In it's infancy raiders or militaries could wipe out the value of your real estate overnight. Now it's relatively very stable. Why? Because we made it that way over time. Just because an asset is currently volatile does not mean it has no value.

Re: Bitcoin’s plunge intensifies, tanks 30% to $30k in single day

#130

Post by paulgb » Wed, May 19, 2021, 3:34 PM UTC

drcross wrote: post #56

535188B17C93743 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a cool technology/concept, but at the cost of all the energy it's wasting to be a "speculative asset" at best... yeah, it's frustrating.

You'll listen to Bitcoin FUD all day but you don't seem to care about the hydro carbons purged in the process of strip mining the earth for shiny rocks though. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/why-bitcoin-may-actually-spe...

> you don't seem to care about the hydro carbons purged in the process of strip mining the earth for shiny rocks though

This persistent idea that people who care about the carbon footprint of Bitcoin somehow single it out is silly. I dislike unnecessarily large SUVs, cruise ships, American suburb culture, and diamond mining too. Bitcoin just happens to be the topic of this thread.