Bitcoin, I've Been Here Before • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin, I've Been Here Before

#11

Post by jonny_eh » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 10:02 PM UTC

pmlnr wrote: post #6

stale2002 wrote: post #3

50$ in fees per transaction, I never thought I'd see this day. For the last 3 years, there has been a bitcoin civil war about how to scale bitcoin, as people have warned that the problems we are seeing now would happen. And unfortunately for bitcoin, the side that wanted high transaction fees, and wanted to prevent all scaling won the war. And now we are seeing those problems come home to roost, as segwit (which was…

> Those of us who are fed up with these problems have moved on to other coins, such as Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash. What do you use those for? In the article above the author mentions you were able to pay for dinner, for various bits and pieces in BTC - even for pizzas, as we all know. You can't do that with ETH, BCH, or any altcoin, and you can't use BTC for it any more either. So why move on to other coins?

This! Has any coin shown any value outside of speculation yet? Ethereum seemed to have a lot of promise with "smart contracts" but has it provided any value to anyone yet?

Re: Bitcoin, I've Been Here Before

#12

Post by stale2002 » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 10:02 PM UTC

pmlnr wrote: post #6

stale2002 wrote: post #3

50$ in fees per transaction, I never thought I'd see this day. For the last 3 years, there has been a bitcoin civil war about how to scale bitcoin, as people have warned that the problems we are seeing now would happen. And unfortunately for bitcoin, the side that wanted high transaction fees, and wanted to prevent all scaling won the war. And now we are seeing those problems come home to roost, as segwit (which was…

> Those of us who are fed up with these problems have moved on to other coins, such as Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash. What do you use those for? In the article above the author mentions you were able to pay for dinner, for various bits and pieces in BTC - even for pizzas, as we all know. You can't do that with ETH, BCH, or any altcoin, and you can't use BTC for it any more either. So why move on to other coins?

Merchant adoption for bitcoin cash is increasing very quickly.

You can indeed pay for things with bitcoin cash, and as soon at bitpay adds it to their platform (Which they are working on and will do so very soon), the merchant adoption rate will actually be higher than the bitcoin adoption rate.

And all of this was done in only a couple months.

Re: Bitcoin, I've Been Here Before

#13

Post by HenryBemis » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 10:03 PM UTC

smokeyj wrote: post #7

HenryBemis wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know munch about investing (I do), but 50$ on a 50k transaction that makes a 5k profit, is peanuts and never stopped anyone from investing. Investing is not a sport/hobby for teenagers that rely on the daily allowance.

But you can also pay $50 on a $5 transaction. LN existing on testnet has no bearing on the real world. Who wants to tie up $50 to open a channel and $50 to close it? Small blockers are kidding themselves.

But why would someone pay $50 for a $5 transaction? A criminal perhaps to stay under the radar. A sensible person would go for the cash option and pay $5 for $5.

If on the other hand someone was to launder money ;) then still the fee is tooo large to launder petty cash (pay 55 dirty to get 5 clean). An efficient money laundering rate is anything north of 50% (100 dirty --> 50-70 clean).

Re: Bitcoin, I've Been Here Before

#14

Post by justboxing » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 10:03 PM UTC

0x445442 wrote: post #2

Or... AMZN, I've Been Here Before. 5.97 in August 2001

> Or... AMZN, I've Been Here Before

Me too. Ahh the good old days. We'd be coding and day trading back and forth all day. Take turns watching for the Boss to come towards our area, so we could all hide the trading window and get back to coding.

My co-worker dev lost 3K on PETS.COM's stock in 1 day.

I'd gotten in on 100 shares of AMZN Apr 2000 at $57-ish, ate a loss of about 30$ / share in Oct 2000, sold at $28-ish. All I have left now is war stories ...ending very badly lol. The rush of trading on volatility makes it 'not a complete loss' tho.

Re: Bitcoin, I've Been Here Before

#15

Post by smacktoward » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 10:05 PM UTC

HenryBemis wrote: post #5

stale2002 wrote: post #3

50$ in fees per transaction, I never thought I'd see this day. For the last 3 years, there has been a bitcoin civil war about how to scale bitcoin, as people have warned that the problems we are seeing now would happen. And unfortunately for bitcoin, the side that wanted high transaction fees, and wanted to prevent all scaling won the war. And now we are seeing those problems come home to roost, as segwit (which was…

I don't know munch about investing (I do), but 50$ on a 50k transaction that makes a 5k profit, is peanuts and never stopped anyone from investing. Investing is not a sport/hobby for teenagers that rely on the daily allowance.

The point is that Bitcoin is supposed to be a currency, and nobody is ever going to use a currency that costs you $50 to process every transaction regardless of whether it’s for $50k or 50 cents.

Re: Bitcoin, I've Been Here Before

#16

Post by stale2002 » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 10:05 PM UTC

HenryBemis wrote: post #5

stale2002 wrote: post #3

50$ in fees per transaction, I never thought I'd see this day. For the last 3 years, there has been a bitcoin civil war about how to scale bitcoin, as people have warned that the problems we are seeing now would happen. And unfortunately for bitcoin, the side that wanted high transaction fees, and wanted to prevent all scaling won the war. And now we are seeing those problems come home to roost, as segwit (which was…

I don't know munch about investing (I do), but 50$ on a 50k transaction that makes a 5k profit, is peanuts and never stopped anyone from investing. Investing is not a sport/hobby for teenagers that rely on the daily allowance.

Who is making these 50k transactions?

And for what purpose? Speculation? Day trading?

I really don't care about the wealthly wall street day traders who are throwing around hundreds of thousands of dollars. That "use case" is boring. "investment" is boring.

What I care about is the average person.

Bitcoin was originally supposed to be a peer to peer electronic cash system. As in, you buy things with it. It was not supposed to be a new wall steet.

Re: Bitcoin, I've Been Here Before

#17

Post by bbrx » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 10:07 PM UTC

Pardon my very limited knowledge about those things, but one thing I wonder and find fascinating about bitcoin is this : I understand that a very limited number of people, probably the initial developers, hold a very hight percentage of available bitcoin. (disregard the rest in case i'm even completely mistaken in that assumption...) Those people have an asset with an incredibly high face value. Of course, the market is probably far too shallow for them to cash out even a small part of this face value.

The question is this : for those people, assuming or not that they can coordinate, what is the optimal strategy? I'm thinking something like draw regularly, in order to build a war chest to "defend" the cryptocurrency against too violent crashes, such sustaining the confidence of the public. In a way controlling and fine tuning the influx of external money coming in from fools wanting in on the pyramid effect.

Is it realistic to think such strategy could be feasible, and if so, for how much time those people could/would want to sustain it?

Re: Bitcoin, I've Been Here Before

#18

Post by justherefortart » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 10:07 PM UTC

0x445442 wrote: post #2

Or... AMZN, I've Been Here Before. 5.97 in August 2001

I told a few wealthy people I know to put 10% of their investments on Apple in 2003.

When I talk to them now, I said why'd you ask for a stock tip if you weren't willing to follow through?

Sadly, I put my money into my own startup. Got about 15-20x return on my investment. You live and learn :-)

Re: Bitcoin, I've Been Here Before

#19

Post by stale2002 » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 10:07 PM UTC

HenryBemis wrote: post #13

smokeyj wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can also pay $50 on a $5 transaction. LN existing on testnet has no bearing on the real world. Who wants to tie up $50 to open a channel and $50 to close it? Small blockers are kidding themselves.

But why would someone pay $50 for a $5 transaction? A criminal perhaps to stay under the radar. A sensible person would go for the cash option and pay $5 for $5. If on the other hand someone was to launder money ;) then still the fee is tooo large to launder petty cash (pay 55 dirty to get 5 clean). An efficient money laundering rate is anything north of 50% (100 dirty --> 50-70 clean).

Money laundering is not the glorious vision that Satoshi sold to me or the world. I really don't care about that use case. If THAT is all that bitcoin is good for, then I hope it dies.

I got into bitcoin because I believed in a peer to peer electronic cash system.

Re: Bitcoin, I've Been Here Before

#20

Post by olalonde » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 10:11 PM UTC

If this article interested you, you might like https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoinobituaries/.

And here's more or less the same article from 2013 when price was $84: https://whistlinginthewind.org/2013/04/12/the-bitcoin-bubble...

"So what now for bitcoin? It will crash and disappear like Pets.com, Leheman Brothers and Anglo Irish Bank, existing only in the memories of economists."

"There have been some slight recoveries which have given hope to bitcoinites. They cling to the hope that this is only a correction and that bitcoin will bounce back stronger than ever. They fail to realise that all crashes include a slight recovery followed by another crash."

I'm not saying the author is necessarily wrong, just highlighting the fact that no one knows what the hell they're talking about or what's going to happen.