Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 211 posts

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

#141

Post by SkyMarshal »

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…

Well so far it’s anything but zero sum. From nothing to tens of thousands of dollars in 10yrs is not zero sum.

It’s highly volatile yes, and has lost >= 80% of its value four times in those ten years (so this little 30% dip is nothing by comparison). But not zero sum.

It originally mainly appealed to two factions: techies who like disrupting big things from first principles, and people who were long concerned with the mechanics of government fiat money and central banks [1]. There was some overlap between those two groups, and they were the innovators and early adopters.

Interest has since expanded to investors of all kinds due to its, so far, non-zero-sum aspect.

But if you’re not interested in the mechanics of how money works, it’s not surprising Bitcoin or cryptocurrency won’t be of interest to you.

Also, Bitcoin has aspects of both currency and commodity (and possibly security, though the US SEC has said they don’t consider it that). It’s impossible to categorize based on previous definitions for this reason. Try not to get caught up in debating whether it’s one of these things, because it’s a mix of both (or maybe all three). So many people drive themselves crazy trying to define it as a currency, or arguing against it as a currency, but that’s just a mental tar pit.

[1]:One well-researched take: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princes_of_the_Yen

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

#142

Post by drcongo »

codyswann wrote: post #136
wppick wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rea…

It sounds like you’re arguing crypto is a commodity and not a currency. I think OP is saying “why would you want a currency that could lose 30% of its value in a day” Which I agree with wholeheartedly.

Fiat currencies can and do do that also.

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

#143

Post by whateveracct »

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…

BTC narrative pivoting is wild.

Remember "of course it's not a currency - it's a store of value, like gold"?

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

#144

Post by ericmay »

codyswann wrote: post #136
wppick wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rea…

It sounds like you’re arguing crypto is a commodity and not a currency. I think OP is saying “why would you want a currency that could lose 30% of its value in a day” Which I agree with wholeheartedly.

I think the idea is that eventually this won't happen, and there are currencies issued by governments where this happens too, and certainly you wouldn't want that either.

Cryptocurrency will simply have to compete with currency issued by sovereign governments, similar to how government-issued currencies compete with each other now.

I think an issue for many people is that crypto is looked at categorically as a currency, but it could be much more. It could be a crappy currency, but a good store of value (a better version of gold in most respects, though gold retains an intrinsic value), it could also be a great currency - transiting government borders with impunity and anonymity, which may be very valuable to some.

Historically, we've used gold, up until the last 150 years or so (don't quote me on exact timeline here) and even then the U.S. finally went off the gold standard in the 1970s. For most people, cash was still thought of as a store of value - they'd throw it in the bank or under a mattress. Or they thought gold was, but since it's heavy they just trade cash instead that's backed by gold. It'll take a while for the global paradigm shift to occur that pits currencies (sovereign issued and otherwise) against each other as a separate theory to assets in general. Cryptocurrency (which is now a bad name IMO) straddles the borders here, so it tends to be confusing.

Personally I view cash as good for liquidity, but that's mostly it. I want the cash I receive to be turned into productive assets, so I hold a much smaller amount compared to assets.

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

#145

Post by cogman10 »

paulgb wrote: post #133
drcross wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Wait until you hear all the energy it takes to run the current financial system Every Bitcoin defender repeats this line, but I never see any numbers. Whatever the energy use is, it's provably less than Bitcoin by any metric like transaction volume or market cap, by the simple fact that if you were to scale up Bitcoin's energy use for comparison to the world financial system, it would use magnitudes more energy tha…

The numbers I have seen usually comes from something like this

https://docsend.com/view/adwmdeeyfvqwecj2

However, it's a terribly bad faith argument.

Essentially, they wrap up everything that isn't involved with ledger maintenance (ATM power, data center power for running the website, Air conditioning at branches power usage) and compare that to Bitcoin, which is only doing ledger maintenance. They do that, because if you had a true apples to apples comparison, you'd end up with kwh of power usage. That's because a ledger is computationally cheap to maintain over a trust network. We were able to do that in the 70s with servers that had no more power than today's raspberry pis.

And how do we know it's garbage? Because if banks stopped doing their own ledgers and instead did everything through bitcoin, would their power usage drop? Absolutely not. They'd still have branches, ATMs, and data centers running their websites. In fact, some banks do manage BTC. Do those banks have lower power footprints compared to like banks without BTC? Absolutely not.

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

#146

Post by unknown_error »

drcross wrote: post #126
hn8788 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

How would cryptocurrency free us from financial tyranny? At some scale finance becomes a state affair, and regulated by law backed by a monopoly on violence. Or, otherwise, you end up with crypto-warlords with private military companies. In neither sense would the average user be meaningfully "free"; it seems like you're replacing democratic checks-and-balances with harder-to-regulate digital capital, which is "freedom" only to the super-rich.

It's like somebody at the bottom of the Ponzi scheme defending it to death because someday, maybe, just maybe, he'll rise to the top...

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

#147

Post by soco »

maaaaattttt wrote: post #127
optymizer wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can somebody please explain me what is the big deal for me if the government cannot print more currency? I remember old readings saying that inflation was a useful tool - is this not an argument anymore?

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

#148

Post by fsociety »

unmole wrote: post #104
LanceH wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can hold value while your country's fiat currency doesn't. Or while you move out of that country and they would seize your assets as you leave. Or you can buy the reopening of your pipeline.

> It can hold value while your country's fiat currency doesn't. It can also spectacularly crash overnight.

Do you think fiat can’t do that?

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

#149

Post by unknown_error »

endisneigh wrote: post #78
hparadiz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used it to pay for things more than a handful of times. Just cause you don't have a reason doesn't mean the tech should be immediately dismissed.

you can also use fiat to pay for things. what's the benefit of bitcoin compared to say, USD for paying for things? is it cheaper or faster to buy $1 trinket using bitcoin vs. paypal?

> what's the benefit of bitcoin compared to say, USD for paying for things?

You help enrich the Bitcoin speculators. Spending in USD doesn't do that.

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

#150

Post by hparadiz »

endisneigh wrote: post #78
hparadiz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used it to pay for things more than a handful of times. Just cause you don't have a reason doesn't mean the tech should be immediately dismissed.

you can also use fiat to pay for things. what's the benefit of bitcoin compared to say, USD for paying for things? is it cheaper or faster to buy $1 trinket using bitcoin vs. paypal?

International transactions where PayPal locks your account for no reason comes to mind.
Post reply on HN