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

$3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 540 posts

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#501

Post by TheCoelacanth »

whatshisface wrote: post #399
snovv_crash wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luna crashed because people lost trust in it. The only reason people have trust in BTC is because other people have trust in it. If that ever changed, there is no actual use for a BTC, and they are thus intrinsically worthless. Fiat currency has the backing of a government. The government demands certain payments of this currency in order to own land, and also for some extra rights like mineral extraction, fishing li…

Fiat currency does not actually have the backing of a government. What could the UK do when the pound peg broke? Nothing but lose enormous amounts of money trying to hold it.

Fiat currency isn't pegged to a specific value, but it does have government backing that gives it a baseline value.

Want to own a house? Even if you buy it with bitcoin, you're going to need fiat to pay for the property tax bill.

Get paid wages? Even if you get paid in bitcoin, you still need fiat to pay the income tax bill.

Sell something? Even if you sold it for bitcoin, you still need fiat to pay the sales tax.

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#502

Post by arcticbull »

Spivak wrote: post #464
arcticbull wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really see folks broadly moving from risk assets to a 2-3% interest savings account in a 3.x% inflationary environment?

I mean this sincerely if I could just park my savings in an “exactly matches inflation” account I would be over the moon. So yeah kinda, I believe it. Terrible interest rates have genuinely caused me to have to find somewhere to put my money that isn’t a bank.

You can! [1] Although it is slightly less liquid, if you're treating it as an emergency savings account, it's really not a big deal.

[1] https://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/products/prod_ibonds_gl...

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#503

Post by 0xCAP »

j245 wrote: post #278
DonHopkins wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In a sense, the market is going to take that as kind of bullish. The Levenshtein distance from bullish to bullshit is only 3.

And the distance between love and glove is only 1.. who cares ?

You just gave away free ad campaign material

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#504

Post by derangedHorse »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #501
whatshisface wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fiat currency does not actually have the backing of a government. What could the UK do when the pound peg broke? Nothing but lose enormous amounts of money trying to hold it.

Fiat currency isn't pegged to a specific value, but it does have government backing that gives it a baseline value. Want to own a house? Even if you buy it with bitcoin, you're going to need fiat to pay for the property tax bill. Get paid wages? Even if you get paid in bitcoin, you still need fiat to pay the income tax bill. Sell something? Even if you sold it for bitcoin, you still need fiat to pay the sales tax.

The government doesn’t give it a baseline value, it just has the power to force people to use the national currency when doing business involving legal affairs and the like (which may help bring up its value). Even then, I know of 3rd world countries that prefer the US dollar for all day to day (peer to peer) transactions even when the local government has their own currency established.

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#505

Post by ttfkam »

Terry_Roll wrote: post #391
ttfkam wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold can be used for corrosion-resistant electrical contacts, infrared reflectors for space telescopes, decoration in gaudy penthouses, and more even if everyone decided it was useless as a currency. An antique desk that loses all value in the open market can still be used as a desk or at least firewood. A rare car can still be used to transport yourself, as a prop in a movie, or scrap for other projects. A "worthles…

> Crypto that loses its value has no other underlying utility over and above the output of /dev/random. That's a MASSIVE difference and more clearly demarcates BTC as a money laundering/Ponzi scheme rather than "digital gold" or a viable currency. Its a decentralised currency, its not backed up by a country and their nuclear arsenal rammed down people's throats as we will possibly be seeing with Ukraine. Notes/curren…

I think you've nailed it. It's not backed by a nation. It has no underlying asset like gold. Your assertions of privacy only hold if you never convert it to a traditional currency or asset, otherwise you're on the radar. While many folks in Ukraine have been able to use crypto to buy goods recently, so has Russia to sidestep sanctions. As a result, we're seeing more incentive for nations to put the breaks on BTC and other crypto (with threat from their nuclear arsenal). China already has put substantial obstacles to crypto ownership.

Then there's the lack of an FDIC equivalent for crypto, which is HUGE for the "not just the super rich" demographics. The 19th and 20th centuries had many examples of runs on the bank where life savings were wiped out. Crypto exchanges have already screwed thousands, and maintaining your own wallet and transfers is not ever going mainstream even if crypto had any intrinsic worth beyond speculation—which it doesn't.

If you have the assets to gamble, that's for you to decide. I myself would rather rely on assets with underlying value that extends beyond speculation.

My house is worth way more than I think it should be. Helps my credit score. But if it and all the homes in the area suddenly and magically dropped to $0, I'd still live there, because it's a home. The reason I purchased it wasn't for speculation or my credit score; it was to live in. You can't live or eat or build in BTC. When the bottom drops out, you will only get to keep the bits and the memories of a more naive era.

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#506

Post by derangedHorse »

thematrixturtle wrote: post #395
deadbunny wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That not how bitcoins are created. You don't just make a few extra. The block reward is fixed, if someone made a block with more than the block award it'd be rejected by the network.

No need to create net new coins, if you can crack SHA you can start moving around somebody else's existing bitcoins. Choose your target carefully (lots of dormant and/or hacked BTC out there) and nobody will twig on for a long, long time.

The transference of Bitcoin still relies on digital signatures so the only way to forge transfers would be if ECC (or bitcoin’s implementation of ECC) was broken).

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#507

Post by vmception »

jtbayly wrote: post #495
vmception wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright. Fine, I'll concede its fine to be skeptical of their actions, I just don't care enough because of the other bigger ways that it doesn't make a difference for the burned user. Okay, people are out for blood from someone they trusted that did a bunch of dumb things extremely transparently while undiscerning users chose to ignore that. So they want to find a bad opaque thing now to justify their anger and legal…

Oh, I couldn’t care less, personally. It means nothing to me. I lost nothing because I assume essentially all crypto is a scam. I was honestly curious if there is any reason to assume this wasn’t just another scam.

That was the impression i initially got from you

Not everything bad is the same bad thing

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#508

Post by lottin »

Karunamon wrote: post #485
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please explain the mechanism by which a "bank" is able to transfer to you an amount of BTC that they do not have wallet control over? BTC that's in an offline wallet is like cash under the bed; and you're right that no-one is lending money that they have under the bed. However, a significant number of BTC owners don't keep their money in their own wallets - they keep it at an exchange, which almost certainly commin…

That still is not the same thing. Coins in an exchange can only be traded for other coins in the same exchange - it's effectively KrakenBTC or BinanceBTC or [...]. Unlike fiat money in a bank, these exchange balances exist only in their walled gardens and cannot be exchanged for goods or services, effectively decoupling them from the total supply. The total supply of bitcoin is the sum of all unspent transaction outp…

If the bitcoins can be withdrawn at any time (i.e. without a notice of withdrawal), then these deposits are just like a current account, which means they are considered a component of the circulating supply of bitcoins (what we would call M1, if bitcoin was a currency).

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#509

Post by lottin »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #494
Karunamon wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That still is not the same thing. Coins in an exchange can only be traded for other coins in the same exchange - it's effectively KrakenBTC or BinanceBTC or [...]. Unlike fiat money in a bank, these exchange balances exist only in their walled gardens and cannot be exchanged for goods or services, effectively decoupling them from the total supply. The total supply of bitcoin is the sum of all unspent transaction outp…

> Unlike fiat money in a bank, these exchange balances exist only in their walled gardens and cannot be exchanged for goods or services, effectively decoupling them from the total supply. These are demand deposits with the exchanges/shadow-banks. You can (at least with some products; others look more like time deposits) withdraw your deposit at any time. This seems basically the same as a bank account where you can w…

Note that the money supply increases simply as a result of banks not holding full reserves against deposits. Whether the bank lends or not is not important, as far as the money supply is concerned. The same applies to crypto-currency exchanges, of course, which can inflate the circulating supply of bitcoins by lowering the reserve ratio, regardless of whether they engage in lending.

Re: $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse

#510

Post by spywaregorilla »

mcguire wrote: post #325
spywaregorilla wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The era of low rates is over. It is possible that you might live another 100 years and never again see a 14 year stretch where rates average as low as they did from 2008 to 2022. The interest rate is currently at 1%. In the 80s it hit 20%. I expect it'll go negative in the next 20 years.

The inflation rate also hit 13.55% in 1980 and didn't go much below 6% between 1973-1982.

You're not wrong. I just think inflation will get within comfortable numbers again, but we'll still face recession events that cause a drive to lower the interest rates.
Post reply on HN