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Bitcoin Price Pressure

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Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#161

Post by LyndsySimon »

driverdan wrote: post #136
mrb wrote: post #72

"as far as I can tell, mining is currently unprofitable with any reasonable cost of electricity." I have been mining for 3.5 years. This statement is utterly false. Current mining hardware, such as the KnC Jupiter, can mine at about 500 Ghash/s at less than 600 Watt at the wall. Over a month it mines: 500e9 (hash/sec) * 3600 (sec/hour) * 731 (hour/month) / (2^32 * 8.0e9 (current difficulty)) * 25 (btc/block) * 400 ($…

You're completely ignoring the capital cost of buying the miner.

That's a sunk cost.

The question wasn't "is it profitable to begin mining Bitcoin?", it was "is it profitable to mine Bitcoin?"

Miners already have the equipment - as long as proceeds don't drop below energy costs, mining will continue at current levels.

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#162

Post by dragonwriter »

LyndsySimon wrote: post #161
driverdan wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're completely ignoring the capital cost of buying the miner.

That's a sunk cost. The question wasn't "is it profitable to begin mining Bitcoin?", it was "is it profitable to mine Bitcoin?" Miners already have the equipment - as long as proceeds don't drop below energy costs, mining will continue at current levels.

> Miners already have the equipment - as long as proceeds don't drop below energy costs, mining will continue at current levels.

Doesn't that assume that mining equipment has infinite useful life?

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#163

Post by Phlarp »

philrapo wrote: post #160
Phlarp wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the network's security has no correlation to the amount of hashing power involved. (There's no 51% attack on Ripple) I think you are misunderstanding what the majority of users consider "security". Typically it involves a situation where someone else can't arbitrarily change the rules on a whim or influence the outcome of transactions on a one-off basis. I'd also like to point out this account is used almost exclusi…

You are mistaken. The consensus process does not allow for someone to "arbitrarily change the rules on a whim or influence the outcome of a transaction on a one-off basis". Here is a youtube explanation of consensus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj1QVb1vlC0 and here is an explanation on the Ripple wiki: https://ripple.com/wiki/Consensus and a brief explanation on stackexchange: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/qu…

Centralized authority in the form of the corporation that employs you.

It's generally considered proper (at least here on hacker news) to disclose any potential conflicts of interest upfront, particularly when making posts discussing an industry or company in which you are employed.

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#164

Post by Omniusaspirer »

dublinben wrote: post #120
VMG wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://reason.com/blog/2014/04/28/doj-operation-chokepoint-a... > Under "Operation Choke Point," the DOJ and its allies are going after legal but subjectively undesirable business ventures by pressuring banks to terminate their bank accounts or refuse their business. The very premise is clearly chilling—the DOJ is coercing private businesses in an attempt to centrally engineer the American marketplace based on it's o…

That specific article is spreading FUD and perpetuating a hoax. There's no evidence whatsoever that Ms. Presley's case is related to the DoJ. >Bitcoin on the other hand doesn't care about these things. Bitcoin certainly has made itself quite a reputation for being the currency of choice for scammers, hackers, drug dealers, online gamblers, and child pornographers. Merchants who consider accepting BTC might care about…

As someone who sells a lot of digital goods, the main appeal of Bitcoin for me is the complete elimination of chargeback fraud. It's just as good a tool for avoiding malicious intent as it is for enabling it.

The nearly non-existent transaction fees are worth mentioning as well.

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#165

Post by smm2000 »

driverdan wrote: post #133
loopdoend wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't benefit consumers for any transaction. Unless you consider the deed itself to be a benefit, outweighing all the negative. I don't. As a consumer, I don't like getting fucked by the spread on exchange rates on the buy AND sell sides when I try to pay in bitcoin. Want to buy some bitcoin? Unless you're doing it face-to-face you're going to get jacked a few percent. Want to spend them? Unless it's at a bitcoi…

Two words: money transfers. Bitcoin works very well for low friction P2P transfers. This may be considered a solved problem in Europe where bank transfers are easy and the norm but in the US and other parts of the world it's unsolved and a pain in the ass. There is no easy way for me to transfer money to a friend other than handing them cash. You might suggest an awful centralized service like PayPal but there are pl…

You can mail him a check - zero transaction fee and works every single time. No easy way to do it electronically though. Also you could not really do it with random strangers - risk of fraud is fairly high.

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#166

Post by philrapo »

Phlarp wrote: post #163
philrapo wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are mistaken. The consensus process does not allow for someone to "arbitrarily change the rules on a whim or influence the outcome of a transaction on a one-off basis". Here is a youtube explanation of consensus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj1QVb1vlC0 and here is an explanation on the Ripple wiki: https://ripple.com/wiki/Consensus and a brief explanation on stackexchange: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/qu…

Centralized authority in the form of the corporation that employs you. It's generally considered proper (at least here on hacker news) to disclose any potential conflicts of interest upfront, particularly when making posts discussing an industry or company in which you are employed.

>Centralized authority in the form of the corporation that employs you.

So... it's wrong to work for a company? I dont understand your argument, sorry.

>It's generally considered proper (at least here on hacker news) to disclose any potential conflicts of interest

I wasn't aware of the HN disclosure policy, but I'm not trying to hide something. Does this disclosure policy also require people who own bitcoin or work on a bitcoin related project to disclose the conflict of interest before posting on this thread? I find it hard to believe that this is the standard.

If you have a constructive argument on consensus, still happy to hear it...

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#167

Post by dragontamer »

MarkPNeyer wrote: post #123
dragontamer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't need outs, then you don't care about the value of BTC. Lets make this more explicit: Why are you so attached to the value of BTC? Dollars for instance, are worth less than a Euro and less than a British Pound. It is only in the insanity of the BTC market that people seem to care about making BTCs "worth more".

The value of a currency is a measurement of the faith of people holding it. That's all it is. If people have no faith in a currency, they'll drop it like bad habit. If people have a ton of faith in a currency, they'll hoard it like crazy. Everything you buy with a currency is, again, a decision you make based upon faith. You have _faith_ that a house will be a good place to live, that it'll provide for your needs and…

You're not understanding my point. Dollar / BTC is a terrible measurement of faithfulness. You're so fixated on dollars per BTC that you've lost sight of what BTC is supposed to be: a currency.

You should be watching THIS chart: https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-popu...

NOT this chart: https://blockchain.info/charts/market-price

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#168

Post by sillysaurus3 »

LyndsySimon wrote: post #155
michaelt wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two words: Mt Gox. In April 2013, Mt Gox handled 70% of bitcoin trading [1] - they were a widely trusted, well known brand, operating in a stable legislative environment. Coinbase today has what Mt Gox had a year ago. Admittedly, coinbase also has some VC investors. If you believe, should they be hacked or robbed by an insider, that the VCs are going to throw good money after bad to compensate customers, you are much…

You're mostly correct, but there were lots of warning signs about MtGox, far before they folded - the repeated suspension of USD withdrawals chief among them.

There's plenty of warning signs for Coinbase right now, but people dismiss those. The difference is that Coinbase hasn't failed yet. It's easy to try to dismiss Mt. Gox as a one-off, but something like a dozen exchanges have already collapsed due to insolvency. It's the norm, not the exception.

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#169

Post by logicallee »

gnaritas wrote: post #159
logicallee wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bingo. It can succeed the way beanie babies did, which were never used as a unit of account or medium of exchange. /s

Don't be so simple minded. It can succeed as a remittance mechanism without succeeding as a currency. If it does nothing more than eliminate Western Union for international wire transfers it'll be massively successful.

I think by definition it is a currency if it succeeds as a remittance mechanism - because you can really only send BTC using the bitcoin network, it can't track USD values directly (as a network.) Using the Western Union network you can literally "send dollars" (or euros or pounds) but the same isn't true of bitcoin. It's a remittance network tied to a currency, and that currency is bitcoin.

In this sense its use as a remittance network implies its success as a currency.

For this reason, I had no idea this is what you meant - I thought you meant it can succeed as an investment, without succeeding as a currency.

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