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Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180

bitcoinity.org

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Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180

#301

Post by celticninja »

brudgers wrote: post #250
celticninja wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>power usage of cpus, then gpus, and then asics, you'll see that in general power consumption for bitcoin constantly increases. That does not tell the whole story though, power usage per gigahash is a more accurate measure, because the higher the GH the more secure the network. From CPU, to GPU to ASIC the power use per gighash has fallen significantly. If you really want to compare it to the banking sector then you…

The bailout was done with fiat currency. There is no fiat energy.

This is a pretty dumb comment. The costs associated with bitcoin come down to power and hosting costs, the costs of banking can be huge, difficult to verify and can lead to consumers losing money that banks hold. No one loses bitcoins when a bitcoin miner goes broke or shuts down.

Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180

#302

Post by [deleted] »

celticninja wrote: post #301
brudgers wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bailout was done with fiat currency. There is no fiat energy.

This is a pretty dumb comment. The costs associated with bitcoin come down to power and hosting costs, the costs of banking can be huge, difficult to verify and can lead to consumers losing money that banks hold. No one loses bitcoins when a bitcoin miner goes broke or shuts down.

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180

#303

Post by celticninja »

mikeash wrote: post #279
celticninja wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>power usage of cpus, then gpus, and then asics, you'll see that in general power consumption for bitcoin constantly increases. That does not tell the whole story though, power usage per gigahash is a more accurate measure, because the higher the GH the more secure the network. From CPU, to GPU to ASIC the power use per gighash has fallen significantly. If you really want to compare it to the banking sector then you…

The higher the GH the more secure the network. The lower the cost per GH the less secure the network. These two will generally cancel out.

Not necessarily. You cannot magic GH into existence. Merely wanting it does not mean you can get it. So the higher the GH the more secure the network, lower the cost of GH and the bad actor and good actor are competing for the same product. The good actor requires less GH to continue to be a good actor than a bad actor requires to become a bad actor. If the bad actor does not mange to obtain 51% of the network hash power then they have to be a good actor or get rid of their equipment.

Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180

#304

Post by sanswork »

celticninja wrote: post #290
sanswork wrote: post #5

Not really surprising. 2014 was meant to be the year of bitcoin and it flopped as far as the general public was concerned. Bitcoin picked up some more merchants but they almost universally saw disappointing sales or dramatic drop offs(Overstock the poster child which at one point was claiming serious expectations of $15-20m in bitcoin sales ended up with a 5th of the lower end of their claim). Mining companies are cl…

this is hugely disingenous. > 2014 was meant to be the year of bitcoin You obviously base this off price alone. If you look at startups based around bitcoin or the blockchain, if you consider that regulatory clarity has or is being provided by most major economies, if you look at transaction volume, feature developement etc then 2014 was a good year for bitcoin. >Mining companies are closing left, right, and centre,…

I don't base it off price, I base it off adaption and public interest of which outside of new merchants there has been no indication of any growth(and I'm pretty sure if you started subtracting merchants who no longer take it or who don't have their staff trained on it it would be shrinking as well). Bitpay has shown now growth in processing numbers($1m/per day) for almost all of 2014.

Transaction volume is a ridiculously bad metric to judge growth. You want to prove growth get coinbase and blockchain.info to release MAU figures. They won't of course for obvious reasons.

>One cloud mining service (CEX.io) has suspened cloud mining operations.

HASH profit, PETAmine, Hashie, Coins-miner are the first few I found after a quick look for more names for you.

Also Cointerra for mining equipment.

>As for exchanges shutting to pursue other more profitable ventures, this is 1 exchange (Vault of Satoshi) not a huge exchange by anyones metrics. You said exchanges (plural) which others?

The other company I was thinking of was Delta Financial. Not an exchange.

>The general public may have, investors and people that understand tech have not responded in that way at all.

Except they have. Look outside of bitcoin forums for the general feelings towards bitcoin some time. It is almost universally negative especially in tech and finance circles.

?If you asked the general public about the internet in 1990 they would have said meh!, those same people now bank online, shop online and communicate online. Do they care about the internet? No, but at the same time could they bare to be parted from facebook?

Luckily though we have the internet now which has accelerated the spread of new ideas and products on it. We're not dealing with a pre-internet world anymore so comparing them is silly.

>Bitcoin will become widely used and adopted, whether consumers know they are using it or not is another matter.

If consumers don't know they are using it then there is no reason for it to be used. You think banks can't speed up their transfers to be instant if there is any pressure without using bitcoin?

Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180

#305

Post by lmm »

simonh wrote: post #289
lmm wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devaluing savings is good for society. Savings are fundamentally antidemocratic; unconstrained savings inevitably result in the capture of economic output by a rentier class, destroying productivity and entrenching a permanent aristocracy.

Unconstrained maybe, but savings as such aren't at all undemocratic. Savings are a primary source of investment and a cushion against unforseen adversity. I've read Pikety's material on this and he has a point about some aspects of the problem, but his proposed remedies are a sledgehammer to crack a nut, and would likely end up hitting the wrong nut anyway.

I'm not arguing for anything super-radical - ordinary (i.e. small but nonzero) inflation, inheritance taxes, taxing investment income (both capital gains and things like land value) more like labour income (e.g. use the same tax brackets, and tax based on market value like we do for non-monetary employment benefits, rather than the weird "recognizing gains" system we have at the moment), and cutting the use of trusts to avoid tax.

Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180

#306

Post by tzs »

moe wrote: post #270
sanswork wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say the problems only occur if you treat bitcoin like a credit card. I said the problem occurs. You said that you can not worry about charge backs because you can just ask for the money back. Problem solved. I gave you a list of occasions where no you couldn't just ask for the money back. You have ignored this and focused on this irrelevant argument to avoid having to face the main discussion. Just because y…

Hm... ok, guess I'll quote myself again then too...: Since you know there is no Chargeback mechanism wouldn't it be wise to demand product/service first or use an escrow service? What part of "Bitcoin is not a credit card, do not treat it like a credit card" is so hard to understand? Yes, if you send coins to some address which might belong to a scammer then those coins might be lost. Duh. You can now complain all da…

You seem to have lost track of why we are talking about this. Let's recap.

Someone said the Bitcoin obsoletes the entire business practice of Visa and MC. I pointed out chargebacks as something Visa and MC do that is not reasonably supported by Bitcoin, with the implication that chargeback support is a feature of Visa and MC that consumers find attractive, and hence Bitcoin does not obsolete credit cards.

So yes, you are right...Bitcoin is not a credit card. And that means those who want credit card features will continue using Visa and MC, and hence they are not going to be obsoleted by Bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180

#307

Post by lmm »

celticninja wrote: post #301
brudgers wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bailout was done with fiat currency. There is no fiat energy.

This is a pretty dumb comment. The costs associated with bitcoin come down to power and hosting costs, the costs of banking can be huge, difficult to verify and can lead to consumers losing money that banks hold. No one loses bitcoins when a bitcoin miner goes broke or shuts down.

Banks don't fail because of mysterious hidden costs that they didn't know existed. They fail because they get the accounting wrong and/or because people defraud them - i.e., the exact same reasons that lead to mtgox's failure. Difference is, bank deposits are FDIC protected.

Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180

#308

Post by im2w1l »

sanswork wrote: post #111
alkimie2 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to respectfully disagree. It is not the transaction fees itself, but the currency exchange rates that kill you at one end or the other. (I would agree with you regarding intra-Europe CEPA transfers however.) I'm American and have lived overseas for several years and the currency exchange rates in combination with the 10-20 USD fees are a constant annoyance. And an annoyance for my startup which operates in USD…

With bitcoin you don't get rid of the currency exchange rates you add another one. Source -> Bitcoin -> Destination.

I think he is not complaining about the fact that currency need to be exchanged but at how big the spread is. I.e. they give him a quite poor exchange rate as a way of extracting a hidden fee.

Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180

#309

Post by moe »

skrause wrote: post #186
brazzy wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any idea how much energy, work and time is being spent on the infrastructure of regular currencies? Minting, ATMs, secure transport, brank branches, all kind of mainframe dinosaurs running 40 year old COBOL code? Even if scaled up to global usage, I very much doubt Bitcoin mining would be worse.

Minting, ATMs, secure transport, CC transactions are all things that can be optimized for lower energy if necessary. Bitcoin mining will always be a race on who can spend the most energy.

Bitcoin mining will always be a race on who can spend the most energy.

No. It is a race on who can spend their energy the most efficiently. (in terms of hashes per kWh).

That's why old mining methods (CPU miner, GPU miner...) are obsoleted by new ones (ASICs).

You can pump a Gigawatt into an old GPU mining rig and it will only cost you a lot of money.

Pump the same Gigawatt into a modern ASIC rig and it might make you money.

Re: Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180

#310

Post by Jtsummers »

bigbugbag wrote: post #132
hueving wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in the US. If a bank fails, the FDIC will insure each account for 200 or 400k (can't remember which).

I'm not sure how this contradicts what I said, isn't FDIC an insurance company set up to act when your bank disappear with your money you had there ? What if your bank is not a member of FDIC ? It's sort of what the European Union has with those bail ins, deposits are guaranteed up to 100k but this comes from inside the bank, first from shareholders and creditors then larger accounts. Makes sense that the public shou…

> What if your bank is not a member of FDIC ?

Then don't do business with that bank. The vast majority of banks and credit unions in the US offer insured accounts. If yours doesn't you should move your money elsewhere.

The FDIC insurance is $250k per insured-account-type per institution. That is, if I have a checking and a retirement account with one bank I'm insured for a total of up to $500k. Anything exceeding that needs to be in another account type or another bank to be insured. Most investment accounts aren't insured, but some brokerage accounts are (you'll get that info when you talk to your bank) but the investments themselves (naturally) are not, just the value of any non-invested cash.

The cost (in the US) is put upon the banks to pay for this insurance. It's just a federally created insurance agency. Barring a major collapse across many (most?) banks, it should have enough stored up over the years to cover the cost without requiring financing from the federal government. In theory, you can have private insurance (I believe these do exist) for your bank, but I'm not sure how common this is in the US.

Like most insurance schemes, the more participants the more affordable it is. It'd be a tough market for someone else to break into.

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