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The first Bitcoin post on HN

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#151

Post by maxerickson »

Groxx wrote: post #120
digitailor wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Bitcoin is different in that is the purest form of a fiat currency in the sense that it is backed by nothing and thus has no intrinsic value whatsoever. It's backed by the tremendous amount of electricity required to run the transaction processing network (ie. "mining"). Remember this is the world's largest distributed supercomputer. BTC is a proxy for electricity, that's why mining equipment ended up at ASICs so…

The USD is backed by the material value of everything USA, at a minimum. It's practically impossible for the USD to go to absolute zero, there's still some gold in the reserves and oil and mining to be done at absolute worst. Obviously our debts exceed this, but that's a different issue. Say everyone cashed in at once - they'd get a percentage of our debts, not zero, since there's still material value. You can't "und…

If the U.S. government fell, any bodies of power that arose in the aftermath would be quite likely to repudiate the debts of the old government. So no, the dollar isn't quite backed by the material value of everything in the U.S.

It is backed by the stability of the U.S. government though.

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#152

Post by applecore »

rms wrote: post #146
pg wrote: post #75

How much money would you have made if you'd bought $1000 worth of bitcoin on that day?

Corollary: how many bitcoins would you have mined if you'd bought $1000 worth of the best mining GPUs on that day?

It wasn't until over a year later (July 2010) that the first block was likely mined using GPUs.

Satoshi implored people in December 2009 (several months after this post) to postpone mining using GPUs for as long as possible[1].

[1]: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=12.msg54#msg54

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#153

Post by aestra »

sliverstorm wrote: post #126
sentenza wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is not that black and white, is it? While it is quite clear that Bitcoin has "value" as long as people are willing to trade it (i.e., indefinitely), there is still no reason to assume that it will ever stop having these extreme fluctuations. To the contrary, I'd say that, as time progresses, we observe Bitcoin having the same problems that the gold standard had, mixed with an additional proneness to speculatio…

there is still no reason to assume that it will ever stop having these extreme fluctuations. Actually I was thinking about this yesterday, and I think if/when goods start to be priced in BTC (not just "fixed USD value converted to current BTC equivalent") that could help anchor the value of BTC.

Except this isn't going to make sense unless my paycheck is in Bitcoin. I'll still have to do the currency conversion in my head because I get paid in USD.

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#154

Post by redblacktree »

crassus wrote: post #84
vinhboy wrote: post #18

It's really not fair to dig these things up and call people haters for doubting it. I bet the list of failed companies and "haters" who called it accurately is much much bigger. Although I do like the nostalgic value of these posts.

Bitcoin could revolutionize the foundation of the world's economy with a piece of software some guy wrote in a few months. You'd figure that would be the kind of thing that hackers would get excited about, as opposed to social-sharing startups (which are just a replacement for reality TV)

I think it's just that most folks can't yet imagine that Bitcoin is really going to revolutionize anything. For now, it's interesting speculation. It's really hard to see, for example, getting paid in BTC, or buying gas in BTC.

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#155

Post by snake_plissken »

TomGullen wrote: post #109
mpg33 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate when people use the tulips comparison. The basic protocol of bitcoin that allows people to send value anywhere in the world and solves the double spend problem must have some value unto itself. I don't know it's worth $0.10, $100, or $1000000 per bitcoin to use the protocol but to compare it to a plant seems kinda ridiculous.

The easiest way to refute the tulip argument is simply point out Bitcoins total money stock is fixed at 21 million units, wheras you can plant new tulips at will. (The skill/time required to do this is irrelevant to the point).

That's not the point of the tulip mania comparison. It's more about the extraordinarily quick rise in price, and the (ir)rational choices/decisions that can follow.

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#156

Post by INTPenis »

jeffasinger wrote: post #86
pg wrote: post #75

How much money would you have made if you'd bought $1000 worth of bitcoin on that day?

This was posted in May 2009. On October 5th, 2009, $1 = 1,309.03 BTC [1], so you'd have bought about 1.3 million bitcoin. Which means you'd have over $500M dollars in Bitcoin. I bet that spending $1000 back then would have considerably changed the exchange rate though, and selling $500M now would definitely aversely affect the economy. 1: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/History

The problem today would be finding a buyer for those bitcoins.

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#157

Post by Steko »

TomGullen wrote: post #109
mpg33 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate when people use the tulips comparison. The basic protocol of bitcoin that allows people to send value anywhere in the world and solves the double spend problem must have some value unto itself. I don't know it's worth $0.10, $100, or $1000000 per bitcoin to use the protocol but to compare it to a plant seems kinda ridiculous.

The easiest way to refute the tulip argument is simply point out Bitcoins total money stock is fixed at 21 million units, wheras you can plant new tulips at will. (The skill/time required to do this is irrelevant to the point).

The point of the tulips argument is being missed. The point of the tulips argument is that everything looks great when the price is still increasing in a bubble. This is true whether you're talking about tulips in Nov 1636 or tech stocks in 1998 or Las Vegas real estate in 2005 or gold in 2012 or possibly Bitcoin today.

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#158

Post by defen »

pg wrote: post #75

How much money would you have made if you'd bought $1000 worth of bitcoin on that day?

At the current coinbase exchange rate, your BTC holdings would be worth about $576,000,000. It would have been tough to buy $1000 worth back then, though.

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#159

Post by fragsworth »

pearjuice wrote: post #121
pg wrote: post #75

How much money would you have made if you'd bought $1000 worth of bitcoin on that day?

Don't rub salt in fresh wounds, man.

That bastard probably actually got a bunch of them for cheap too. YC was aware of bitcoins pretty early. I mean they have Coinbase...

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#160

Post by moocowduckquack »

philwelch wrote: post #148
moocowduckquack wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't exchange your BTC back into electricity. Huh? Why not? Surely you could just buy some solar panels with bitcoins, or convert them to another currency and then buy electricity from the grid.

By that reasoning, I can convert my USD into donuts, and hence the USD is backed by donuts, hence the term "dollars to donuts".

Well, it is partly backed by donuts, along with any other commodities or instruments of value that it can be easily exchanged with.
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