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Bitcoin Falls Below $20k for the First Time Since 2020

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171–180 of 218 posts

Re: Bitcoin Falls Below $20k for the First Time Since 2020

#171
post #39

People here cheer for fall of Bitcoin and end of cryto not seeing that GOOG dropped from 2999.05 to 2157 and both charts look pretty much the same?

GOOG had 22% revenue growth up to 68 billion dollars last quarter. Not being able to see the difference between GOOG and crypto pretty much sums up the sophistication of crypto investors.

The original comment is still valid: why is the drop in Bitcoin on the top page of HN, and the drop of GOOG not?

Re: Bitcoin Falls Below $20k for the First Time Since 2020

#172
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking the cost of hardware as a sunk cost is foolish it’s one of the largest costs

I think what OP means is: if you've already paid for the hardware, it make sense to keep mining until the cost of electricity is higher than the value of a coin. And I agree with that.

Exactly. I was speculating on why the hash rate doesn't seem correlated with the price of Bitcoin.

The miners already have their rigs, so the initial investment wouldn't be relevant to the decision to keep mining or not. Though, you might expect the hash rate to decay over time as miners stop buying new machines.

Re: Bitcoin Falls Below $20k for the First Time Since 2020

#174
post #78

i wouldn't be surprised if eth survives but btc don't. Ethereum has actually built something on top of its coin, thanks to smart contract. To my knowledge, BTC is pure speculation.

Bitcoin has the name, which is used a lot as a synonym for cryptocurrency. Don't underestimate the branding power of such a marketing position (Same like Cleanex & Coca-Cola)

Re: Bitcoin Falls Below $20k for the First Time Since 2020

#175
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But you use a stablecoin because it's much more convenient since its stable. I don't know how to say this without sounding snide but I am genuinely curious: you need to back every single part of that sentence up with some serious citations. Specifically can you challenge my perception that you're advocating for option B of the following: Option A: find someone to trade for , haggle, transact. Option B: trust some t…

> I don't know how to say this without sounding snide but I am genuinely curious: you need to back every single part of that sentence up with some serious citations. You can check binance and other sites that offer P2P listings and you'll find that most of the listings nowadays trade stablecoins. I can't easily cite that for F2F (face to face) but I have done F2F trades many times and it's always with stablecoins > S…

The difference is that cryptocurrencies, in general, are being promoted as currency—something you trade for goods and services—not securities—something you trade for currency.

Re: Bitcoin Falls Below $20k for the First Time Since 2020

#176
post #94
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin has value for the same reason Visa has value. A medium of exchange is a tool, and tools people use have value. I grant the majority of the market is speculation but many of us actually regularly use Bitcoin for things like payroll, settling debts, cheap international value transfer, buying coffee, and for cash-like privacy for online purchases. For those like me that have been continually buying, saving, and…

> Bitcoin has value for the same reason Visa has value. No. Bitcoin has utility. Screws have utility also, they just don't have very much value.

Visa has value (on top of it's utility) because it is able to take a 1-3% cut of all payments that use the visa network.

Suppose bitcoin gave the equivalent utility as visa but for negligible fees. In this world, you would have the same utility for a lower cost, and the equity value of Visa would conceivably go to zero. My point is that converting utility to value depends on the ability to monetize something. If there was somehow a screw monopoly, I'm guessing the "value" of screws would go way up even with fixed utility. This of course was also true when the cost of producing a screw was much higher in the past. Technology is deflationary.

I don't know what the value of bitcoin should be (nor do I think it has comparable utility to visa), but we are undoubtedly in world where too much value is extracted from financial services relative to the utility that they provide. I think that will be disrupted, but have no idea what, if anything, will be valuable after it is disrupted.

Re: Bitcoin Falls Below $20k for the First Time Since 2020

#177
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin has value for the same reason Visa has value. A medium of exchange is a tool, and tools people use have value. I grant the majority of the market is speculation but many of us actually regularly use Bitcoin for things like payroll, settling debts, cheap international value transfer, buying coffee, and for cash-like privacy for online purchases. For those like me that have been continually buying, saving, and…

As a medium of exchange, the price of one bitcoin should be kind of meaningless. As long as you can quickly do the transaction and cash out on the other end, it shouldn’t really matter if BTC IS $100 or $100,000.

As a lower bound it would need to be high enough to support the largest supported transaction. If the market cap of bitcoin was only $100, you could not transact $200.

Re: Bitcoin Falls Below $20k for the First Time Since 2020

#178
post #97
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prices are gonna be dirt cheap after Ethereum switches to proof of stake in September

Hasn't that been promised and delayed dozens of times already? Do you think it will ever really happen?

Yea they've already completed it on 1 of the 3 testnets and it went well. Other two in the next two months then mainnet deployment probably September.

Re: Bitcoin Falls Below $20k for the First Time Since 2020

#179

ETH also briefly dropped below $1k. These should trigger a series of margin call events, shouldn't it?

If people are doing any kind of leveraged positions on Cryptocurrency then who the hell lent them the money?

You haven't heard of decentralized finance? It's a $250B industry mostly running on Ethereum.

Constantly surprised how out of the loop HN is on this.

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