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What I Think of Bitcoin

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Re: What I Think of Bitcoin

#101

Post by gruez »

lalaland1125 wrote: post #59
CyberDildonics wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone who invests in bitcoin is breaking the cardinal rule of investing: don't invest in something you don't understand. If people realized that bitcoin's -average- transaction fee is around $25 USD because it is restricted (for no technical reason) to a few transactions per second (less throughput than 240p youtube videos) they would at least move on to other cryptocurrencies. If people realized that a sudden dro…

The actual cost per transaction in Bitcoin is ~$150 now once you include both the direct transaction fee and the miner reward (inflation cost). It's an incredibly inefficient technology.

>and the inflation costs

compared to the endless money printing done by the fed that still seems like a bargain.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...

Re: What I Think of Bitcoin

#102

Post by gaff33 »

thesausageking wrote: post #34
lalaland1125 wrote: post #24

This post should be mostly discounted because Ray doesn't really seem to be aware of the true risk of the Tether scam, the biggest component of and risk to Bitcoin's value. For those not aware, Tether is a "stable coin" that issues tokens that supposedly represent dollars and can be used as a medium of exchange. However, it's widely suspected that Tether is unbacked and printing fake dollars and even Tether itself ha…

Tether FUD always returns when there's an influx of a lot newcomers to Bitcoin. It's been debunked over and over. Here's one by Nic Carter that explains why these "takedowns" are completely wrong: https://medium.com/@nic__carter/assessing-bitcoins-liquidity...

Tether fails bond pricing 101.

If you have an IOU from the US government for $100 it's worth about $99 on the open market.

If you have an IOU from a highly rated US company (e.g. Ford) for $100 you'd expect it to be worth about $94.

Yet we're somehow supposed to believe than an equivalent IOU from tether is worth more?!

Oh and the US Government and Ford will probably pay you some form of interest if you hold it long enough...

It simply doesn't add up!

Re: What I Think of Bitcoin

#103

Post by Jasper_ »

bl557 wrote: post #82
Jasper_ wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Tether's own transparency page [0], there's $30 billion of USD sitting in some random bank, somewhere. No, they haven't told anybody where it is, and they have never released an audit. Yes, they are still delaying the NY Attorney General's investigation [1]. We know that at least $850 million has been seized and lost for good [2]. No, they don't report that on the transparency page. [0] https://wallet.te…

Tether is definitely very sketchy in their practices, but there is simply no good evidence that Tether issuance inflates the prices of BTC. Here is a study arguing the opposite - https://voxeu.org/article/stable-coins-dont-inflate-crypto-m...

I present an alternate argument. First, Tether ToS says that their tokens are useless and nonredeemable, and their service is not available to US residents [0]. Second, the majority of BTC/XYZ trades on major exchanges are for Tether [1]. Third, as a stablecoin, the way it is supposed to work is that when USD is put into reserves, Tether creates USDT. When money is taken out of reserves, Tether will send the USDT to a bogus address to "burn" it. They have only burned a miniscule portion, much less than the $850m that we know has been seized [2]. My guess is that USDT is being pumped into high volume exchanges, and USD is coming out of low volume exchanges, and very little of USDT is backed by reserves.

[0] https://tether.to/legal/

> The right to have Tether Tokens redeemed or issued is a contractual right personal to you. Tether reserves the right to delay the redemption or withdrawal of Tether Tokens if such delay is necessitated by the illiquidity or unavailability or loss of any Reserves held by Tether to back the Tether Tokens, and Tether reserves the right to redeem Tether Tokens by in-kind redemptions of securities and other assets held in the Reserves. Tether makes no representations or warranties about whether Tether Tokens that may be traded on the Site may be traded on the Site at any point in the future, if at all.

> The following Persons are prohibited from depositing to, or withdrawing from, any Digital Tokens Wallet on the Site: > any Person that resides, is located, has a place of business, or conducts business in the State of New York; and > U.S. Persons.

[1] Volume charts and breakdowns are available in lots of places as the data is public, but the easiest chart is halfway down the right side of the page here. "Money flow from/to Bitcoin in the last 24 hours" https://coinlib.io/coin/BTC/Bitcoin

[2] there used to be a site called "omniexplorer" for navigating the Tether chain transactions, but it seems it went down. Now you have to piece it together using tools like blockchair, but it's far more difficult to read to find the coinbase transactions. https://blockchair.com/ethereum/erc-20/token/0xdac17f958d2ee...

Re: What I Think of Bitcoin

#104

Post by gruez »

loceng wrote: post #55
learnstats2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would agree, and this matches it to gold, also from Ray Dalio's perspective. Ray Dalio invested heavily into gold, and has since repeatedly press released that he had done so. It's the same characteristics as an MLM scheme.

Apples to oranges comparison: gold actually has a use, and its value is kept in check by that - it's tied to the physical world, to reality, and gold also wasn't/isn't an attempt to replace a transactional layer. I'm sure there are more differences that make it incomparable - certainly that pro-Bitcoiners will simply dismiss the differences saying they're unimportant, irrelevant. Edit to add: qualitative comments reb…

>Apples to oranges comparison: gold actually has a use, and its value is kept in check by that

Is it? According to one source[1], the overwhelming majority of the gold use is for speculation (investment/central banks) or quasi-speculation (jewelry).

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/299609/gold-demand-by-in...

Re: What I Think of Bitcoin

#105

Post by orange_tee »

gruez wrote: post #98
orange_tee wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this shows how the supposed transparency of Bitcoin is useless. The blockchain does not really tell you anything. Price goes up 500%. Nobody knows why. People speculate it is because of Tether or some cabal of Chinese BTC mining tycoons or exchanges faking volume;, or WallSt playing their voodoo with billions worth of BTC. What other asset has this situation where the reason for the movement of its price is so…

>All of this shows how the supposed transparency of Bitcoin is useless. This seems like begging the question to me. Was bitcoin ever supposed to be some sort of asset where the pricing is transparent?

I don't quite remember from the original white paper if it was pushed as a feature or just a property of the system. But later proponents certainty try to say it is some revolutionary feature.

Now don't get me wrong. Transparency in the financial system is good. But a public blockchain as is, does not provide any transparency at all.

Now that I am thinking about it, they probably mean something else entirely by transparency. They probably mean, they know the total amount of BTC out there.

Re: What I Think of Bitcoin

#106

Post by frankenst1 »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #35

I don’t get how Bitcoin can become a viable currency or store of value in the future. It’s almost exclusively owned by a small group of individuals. Are we gonna accept that level of centralisation? Of course not.

Bitcoin is permissionless and bootstrapped. It had to start with 0 users and $0 value. 10 years later it is now worth $50K and has 100M users (doubling every ~2 years).

We are currently living in a world in which the rich get richer (bailouts, stocks, real estate, efficiency gains) while the poor get poorer (cash only, inflation, wage stagnation). Every $1 that trickles down from the top 1% is returned to them as $2 freshly printed from the central banks. Wealth and income inequality continue to rise as a result.

Bitcoin has a fixed supply, and now you can't bailout the riches anymore while having the poor pay the bill in the future via inflation.

Do we accept that inflation causes wealth centralisation? Of course not, but until Bitcoin there wasn't anything we could do about it.

Re: What I Think of Bitcoin

#107

Post by kgkyltpgllg »

lalaland1125 wrote: post #24

This post should be mostly discounted because Ray doesn't really seem to be aware of the true risk of the Tether scam, the biggest component of and risk to Bitcoin's value. For those not aware, Tether is a "stable coin" that issues tokens that supposedly represent dollars and can be used as a medium of exchange. However, it's widely suspected that Tether is unbacked and printing fake dollars and even Tether itself ha…

> Tether isn't a small component of the Bitcoin ecosystem. It's at the heart of Bitcoin with it being the primary currency used to buy Bitcoin with at most exchanges

So if you were a big company, let's say Tesla, which wanted to buy a lot of bitcoin, let's say 1.5 bil, would that mean that you first need to convert that 1.5 bil to Tether, since that's the most liquid denomination of BTC?

Could it be that some of those "fake" $500 mil daily Tethers were actually really backed by Tesla dollars?

Re: What I Think of Bitcoin

#108

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

Jasper_ wrote: post #69
thesausageking wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tether FUD always returns when there's an influx of a lot newcomers to Bitcoin. It's been debunked over and over. Here's one by Nic Carter that explains why these "takedowns" are completely wrong: https://medium.com/@nic__carter/assessing-bitcoins-liquidity...

According to Tether's own transparency page [0], there's $30 billion of USD sitting in some random bank, somewhere. No, they haven't told anybody where it is, and they have never released an audit. Yes, they are still delaying the NY Attorney General's investigation [1]. We know that at least $850 million has been seized and lost for good [2]. No, they don't report that on the transparency page. [0] https://wallet.te…

Is it even legal for any bank to hold tether's money if it is in USDs?

Re: What I Think of Bitcoin

#109

Post by lalaland1125 »

kgkyltpgllg wrote: post #107
lalaland1125 wrote: post #24

This post should be mostly discounted because Ray doesn't really seem to be aware of the true risk of the Tether scam, the biggest component of and risk to Bitcoin's value. For those not aware, Tether is a "stable coin" that issues tokens that supposedly represent dollars and can be used as a medium of exchange. However, it's widely suspected that Tether is unbacked and printing fake dollars and even Tether itself ha…

> Tether isn't a small component of the Bitcoin ecosystem. It's at the heart of Bitcoin with it being the primary currency used to buy Bitcoin with at most exchanges So if you were a big company, let's say Tesla, which wanted to buy a lot of bitcoin, let's say 1.5 bil, would that mean that you first need to convert that 1.5 bil to Tether, since that's the most liquid denomination of BTC? Could it be that some of thos…

Legitimate actors like Tesla have no need for Tether. They could directly wire in their cash or use an actually legit stablecoin like USDC.

Re: What I Think of Bitcoin

#110

Post by kgkyltpgllg »

lalaland1125 wrote: post #109
kgkyltpgllg wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tether isn't a small component of the Bitcoin ecosystem. It's at the heart of Bitcoin with it being the primary currency used to buy Bitcoin with at most exchanges So if you were a big company, let's say Tesla, which wanted to buy a lot of bitcoin, let's say 1.5 bil, would that mean that you first need to convert that 1.5 bil to Tether, since that's the most liquid denomination of BTC? Could it be that some of thos…

Legitimate actors like Tesla have no need for Tether. They could directly wire in their cash or use an actually legit stablecoin like USDC.

But according to you there is no real liquidity in BTC/USDC, it's all in BTC/USDT.

When you do that kind of buying, you need to go to the most liquid exchange (Binance), and that uses Tether.

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