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How Texas is becoming a Bitcoin mining hub

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Re: How Texas is becoming a Bitcoin mining hub

#61

Post by scotty79 »

skybrian wrote: post #55
polote wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the difference between BTC and a GOOG share ? Google doesn't give any dividend and the GOOG share has not any voting right. But even the GOOGL share there is a voting right, but Google founders will have the majority anyway. So what's the difference ? In both case you posses a piece of electronic paper that can be exchanged on a market and there is no other benefit. Not defending BTC, I'm just curious

Google often buys back stock, so that's money going to investors that comes out of Google's revenues. That's positive-sum for investors. (The amount of money so far isn't nearly enough to justify their market cap, but presumably more will come over the years.) For Bitcoin, by design, the only possible source of revenue is other investors buying in later. This is zero sum in the long run for investors, and negative su…

Isn't Google buying back stock is just another inverstor willing to gamble on value of GOOG stock?

I wonder why corporations buying back their stock is even legal. Isn't it quintessential insider trading?

Re: How Texas is becoming a Bitcoin mining hub

#62

Post by ur-whale »

captn3m0 wrote: post #57
ur-whale wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe I'm just not smart enough to understand BTC. There is one aspect of BTC that IMO does not receive enough attention. Can you think of any other asset that: 1) strictly no one knows you own, yet you do own it absolutely, short of losing your mind or dying. 2) can't be seized by anyone, especially if 1) holds true 3) is highly likely (because of - among other things - finite, known-ahead-of-time supply) to preser…

The majority of retail investors in BTC are not buying it for the above properties - they are buying it on exchanges that report to the taxman as a speculative asset. For these users, both 1 and 2 are not Satisfied (the bank knows you invest in crypto, and the exchange holds your crypto, you don’t have control over it). (3) is getting harder to claim every day but time will tell.

> they are buying it on exchanges that report to the taxman as a speculative asset

I believe you are correct for the vast majority of small retail crypto investors, and you are also correct that many of them are in a get-rich-quick type mindset. I feel sad for them, but ... there's no known cure for human nature.

But none of these arguments contradict the fact that the asset does have these desirable properties, and that it does create strong demand, especially from HNWI type investors.

As for 3) I disagree: it has always been very hard, and it's actually been much harder in the past.

A 30% downswing like the recent one is total peanuts compared to what happened in the early days. I seem to recall a time where it went from $30 down to $2 in a matter of weeks.

Re: How Texas is becoming a Bitcoin mining hub

#63

Post by scotty79 »

captn3m0 wrote: post #48
polote wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the difference between BTC and a GOOG share ? Google doesn't give any dividend and the GOOG share has not any voting right. But even the GOOGL share there is a voting right, but Google founders will have the majority anyway. So what's the difference ? In both case you posses a piece of electronic paper that can be exchanged on a market and there is no other benefit. Not defending BTC, I'm just curious

Google has assets (both physical like servers and virtual like user data) and revenue, the liquidation of which can make the shareholders whole. With BTC, there’s no underlying asset.

But the piece of paper that is GOOG stock has nothing to do with servers.

You can't go to Google give them GOOG stock and say "give me some servers for that, please".

Re: How Texas is becoming a Bitcoin mining hub

#64

Post by Hjfrf »

hihihihi1234 wrote: post #40
WalterGR wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes about 14 billion per year to maintain the current price given that new bitcoins are "mined" 14 billion what to maintain the current price? How does that work?

I think what GP means is that X amount of new bitcoins are "mined" every year, which is to say that X new bitcoins spring into existence from nowhere, so if the current exchange rate is Y dollars per bitcoin then X Y dollars needs to flow into bitcoin per year for bitcoin to retain its current market capitalisation. And I guess X Y = $14 billion but I haven't bothered to look the numbers up.

I got 17bn, but with constantly changing prices a rough figure is fine.

Here's the previous day's block reward and current price. https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/

The other thing about mining is the their costs are in hard currency, so there's not much opportunity to "hodl".

Those mined coins need to be sold once the electricity bill is due, so to maintain a stable price bitcoin needs an ongoing net dollar investment proportionate to the current price (taking halvings into account).

Re: How Texas is becoming a Bitcoin mining hub

#65

Post by ameminator »

twalla wrote: post #47
ameminator wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha I don't live in Texas and it always did seem strange to have key infrastructure privatized in the way that they did. To be fair, however, almost no community is ready for the effects of climate change (despite the reporting). In fact, most people have trouble with statistically rare events, so it doesn't surprise me. It's hard to say whether a government-managed endeavor would have been more prepared if I'm bein…

Pretty sure I've made this comment before but one of the main reasons Texas runs its own grid is to avoid the need to meet federal regulations, which ironically and also unsurprisingly, contain winterization guidelines.

I did not know that! Very interesting! Although, I do think that having some differentiation makes sense.

For example, I'm sure Vermont's winterization needs would look very different than Texas'.

Re: How Texas is becoming a Bitcoin mining hub

#66

Post by seltzered_ »

fivea wrote: post #29
seltzered_ wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Good idea to build and consume renewable energy" A deeper dive: they aren't renewable, they're at best rebuildable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYeZwUVx5MY&t=2682s - (Dr. Nate Hagens - Earth and Humanity: Myth and Reality - Myth #21: Renewables Can Power THIS Civilization)

> A deeper dive: they aren't renewable, they're at best rebuildable I find your YouTube video neither insightful nor informative. It reads as a string of desperate attempts at gotchas, only possible by repeatedly moving goalposts and misrepresenting positions, which are at best immaterial to the discussion. I mean, the main point the YouTuber made against renewables is that different energy generation and distributio…

I recommend watching the full video. I don't think he's against renewables but trying to frame what they really are in a more realistic manner.

Re: How Texas is becoming a Bitcoin mining hub

#67

Post by ABeeSea »

puszczyk wrote: post #39
ABeeSea wrote: post #10

Not surprising that Texas Republicans are fully behind wasting as much energy as possible. They talk about renewables but most of the Texas mining will be powered by burning natural gas.

I honestly don’t know (I’m not US-based), but the article reads like both candidates are pro-bitcoin.

Both candidates are Republicans. It’s a primary race.

Re: How Texas is becoming a Bitcoin mining hub

#68

Post by sudosysgen »

scotty79 wrote: post #63
captn3m0 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has assets (both physical like servers and virtual like user data) and revenue, the liquidation of which can make the shareholders whole. With BTC, there’s no underlying asset.

But the piece of paper that is GOOG stock has nothing to do with servers. You can't go to Google give them GOOG stock and say "give me some servers for that, please".

If you've got enough, yeah you can

Re: How Texas is becoming a Bitcoin mining hub

#69

Post by kayamon »

captn3m0 wrote: post #48
polote wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the difference between BTC and a GOOG share ? Google doesn't give any dividend and the GOOG share has not any voting right. But even the GOOGL share there is a voting right, but Google founders will have the majority anyway. So what's the difference ? In both case you posses a piece of electronic paper that can be exchanged on a market and there is no other benefit. Not defending BTC, I'm just curious

Google has assets (both physical like servers and virtual like user data) and revenue, the liquidation of which can make the shareholders whole. With BTC, there’s no underlying asset.

> With BTC, there’s no underlying asset.

lolwut

BTC defines computation/energy as a tradable asset -- that's literally the whole point of it.

Re: How Texas is becoming a Bitcoin mining hub

#70

Post by pharmakom »

tejohnso wrote: post #52
dvt wrote: post #9

I'm genuinely curious when the fat lady will stop singing in regards to Bitcoin. I sort-of understand the allure of ETH and its derivatives ("programmable money" does bring something new to the table), but BTC is supposed to be a "value store" yet is down 30% from November; or it's supposed to be a "currency" but you can't use it as one; or it's supposed to be "decentralized" but mining is monopolized by a handful of…

Here is Every Reason Bitcoin Will Not Fail[1]. I believe some of what you mentioned is at least partially addressed. [1]: https://safehodl.github.io/failure/

Nice list but what if governments don't ban bitcoin, but make it more onerous to trade, tanking the price. it would only take one major bloc to do this for price movement to happen.
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