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Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

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Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#91

Post by matheusmoreira »

beaconstudios wrote: post #54
camjohnson26 wrote: post #43

For all the hate Bitcoin gets because it’s obviously in a bubble market, can we at least agree that it is an astounding engineering achievement that an anonymous individual and a small group of researchers were able to build a network capable of transacting billions of dollars of value with only 2 service incidents in 14 years? All without any meaningful service costs and no hacking of the network, despite huge incen…

There is a meaningful service cost, it's just paid for by mining. Environmentally there's also a massive cost, one that is not offset by the benefits bitcoin brings - which is primarily financial speculation and scams. Cryptocurrency is probably one of the worst inventions in recent memory.

There's no benefits to mining bitcoin specifically. You're right about that, it buys us nothing. Wouldn't mind even more energy being spent to secure the Monero blockchain though.

Also, scams are only common in the smart contract networks. People create useless shitcoins and spam telegram groups in order to generate some quick hype and exit with as much money as possible. I'd certainly like to believe nobody would be dumb enough to actually invest massive amounts of capital into these scams but that's exactly what they do.

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#92

Post by AlbertCory »

No one gets their shoes shined anymore, but [1], [2].

In 15 years, everyone touting crypto now is going to be either:

1) bragging about how they got out before the wipeout

2) changing the subject

[1] https://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archiv...

[2] https://work4btc.com/the-shoeshine-boy-in-1929-and-my-co-wor...

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#93

Post by kevinak »

ogogmad wrote: post #26

What happened to Lightning? Did it solve Bitcoin's problems yet?

I'd say so. There are some smaller issues here and there of course - but it's getting better all the time. Bought a game on Joltfun the other day, took me all of 2 seconds to scan a QR code and pay.

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#94

Post by amelius »

arthurz wrote: post #87

Bitcoin, or any Crypto, Block Chain, are too complex, unfortunately, to understand, and therefore is a huge barrier to their adoption. Whoever comes to an easy way of doing the digital currency first will win big. One other turn off remains: is to solve the material part, how to turn crypto back into Fiat Money so it really seamlessly works and not entangled into revenue control traps, losses on exchange between netw…

> Bitcoin, or any Crypto, Block Chain, are too complex, unfortunately, to understand

That's a feature to make them look less like a Ponzi scheme.

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#95

Post by notch656a »

beaconstudios wrote: post #86
notch656a wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quantify the environment cost that has been borne by bitcoin and now compare it to the cost by overheating or cooling houses (except perhaps a few elderly or infants, no one needs a house to stay within 60-80 degree band, you can survive with much less heating/cooling energy usage). Then explain to us how anyone living in a comfortable room temperature heated home that complains about bitcoin isn't a hypocrite, using…

"You criticise bitcoin for using more electricity than Ireland while using disproportionately high levels of coal power usage, and yet you live in a house. Hypocrite!" This isn't a cogent argument. Yes, overheating or overcooling houses is also bad. If AI training used as much electricity as Ireland I'd be critical of that too.

Heating and cooling uses way more electricity than Ireland. This message is for the hypocrites who complain about bitcoin while keeping their house above 60 when it's cold, or those running A/C below 80 when its hot. Y'all are wasting way more energy than bitcoin, while many of you simultaneously complain about bitcoin.

>This isn't a cogent argument. Yes, overheating or overcooling houses is also bad. If AI training used as much electricity as Ireland I'd be critical of that too.

It's a cogent argument to point out the hypocrisy. If you want to argue we should create a watt-police or ensure externalities of power consumption are better accounted for, that's a different argument.

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#96

Post by olalonde »

donmezgel wrote: post #77
olalonde wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could probably parse the Bitcoin Core logs (assuming reorgs are logged) or run a modified Bitcoin node software which explicitly tracks such reorgs.

Since chain reorgs identical to the individual nodes, i assume we cant gather such data..

You wouldn't catch all of them but I believe you could get a pretty good sample by running a single node. And you won't be able to get historical data unless someone else has been tracking this and shares their data with you.

There's some discussion about reorg frequency/depth on BitcoinTalk[0][1]. Also there is this academic paper[2].

[0] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1403436.0 (2016)

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5351869.0 (2021)

[2] https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/127476/119301...

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#97

Post by brokencode »

notch656a wrote: post #71
beaconstudios wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a meaningful service cost, it's just paid for by mining. Environmentally there's also a massive cost, one that is not offset by the benefits bitcoin brings - which is primarily financial speculation and scams. Cryptocurrency is probably one of the worst inventions in recent memory.

Quantify the environment cost that has been borne by bitcoin and now compare it to the cost by overheating or cooling houses (except perhaps a few elderly or infants, no one needs a house to stay within 60-80 degree band, you can survive with much less heating/cooling energy usage). Then explain to us how anyone living in a comfortable room temperature heated home that complains about bitcoin isn't a hypocrite, using…

Of course we could live at 60 degrees in the winter, but most people would agree that their lives are meaningfully improved by increasing the temperature to closer to 70-72.

On the other hand, Bitcoin provides no meaningful benefit to society compared to other currency. The only real benefits of Bitcoin are that it makes ransomware easier to accomplish (which is bad for most people) and that it has made some people a lot of money due to its pyramid scheme qualities (again, bad for most people).

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#98

Post by wombat-man »

unobatbayar wrote: post #89
beaconstudios wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a meaningful service cost, it's just paid for by mining. Environmentally there's also a massive cost, one that is not offset by the benefits bitcoin brings - which is primarily financial speculation and scams. Cryptocurrency is probably one of the worst inventions in recent memory.

How is financial speculation and scams an environmental cost?

driving up the price of bitcoin increases the motivation to run even more bitcoin miners which use more and more electricity. Depending on where it's generated that can come at the cost of the environment.

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#99

Post by Guvante »

cft wrote: post #60
beaconstudios wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a meaningful service cost, it's just paid for by mining. Environmentally there's also a massive cost, one that is not offset by the benefits bitcoin brings - which is primarily financial speculation and scams. Cryptocurrency is probably one of the worst inventions in recent memory.

>Cryptocurrency is probably one of the worst inventions in recent memory. Do you have a source for this fact? It might survive the 50 year old fiat dollar experiment. Until 50 years ago, there has not been a currency that wasn't backed up by something that was beyond the government

Don't believe the lies they say about fiat currencies in crypto circles. Currency is way more complicated than they lead you to believe.

After all fractional reserve banking has existed since before currency did. And if you have fractional reserve banking you aren't "back up by something" unless you count the credit of the bank as something. Given that is the literal definition of fiat currency (backed by the full faith and credit of the United States) that means that it is way more complicated than the gold standard.

To give a modern example (the gold standard no longer exists anywhere) many countries have a fixed currency backed by the USD. Since fractional reserve banking is a thing there too it isn't like the country is holding onto $1 USD for every $1 USD equivalent of currency. However it isn't like there isn't a relationship so the source of that relationship is government exchange. You can exchange $1 USD equivalent of currency for $1 USD.

Now we get to the real wrinkle. How can countries have higher inflation than the USD if they are locked with USD? (Which they objectively have) By simply restricting the amount of currency that can be exchanged for USD. This can be hand waved around pretty easy "we have a shortage" or "it is difficult to obtain that much". Now you have a fiat currency in reality but technically it is a backed currency.

To be clear it isn't like ditching the gold standard was without downsides, this is just long enough to point out that broad statements like "backed by anything" fail to account for the reality of backed currencies in a modern financial system.

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#100

Post by [deleted] »

rawtxapp wrote: post #61
faeyanpiraat wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who would pay my profits if it all blows up?

You'll buy it dirt cheap to cover your short position and keep the initial capital you got from the short sale. Pretty dangerous though, even if you're right in the long term, short term anything can happen and you'll get liquidated.

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