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Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

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Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#151

Post by analog31 »

notch656a wrote: post #122
politician wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue the opposite, if the US government ceased to exist, the electrical grids in North America would collapse shortly thereafter, followed by the Internet and Bitcoin. Without the rule of law and threat of prosecution, a massive surge in usage due to theft would overwhelm systems. Without the nuclear status quo and the threat of retaliation, NA would either be glassed or invaded.

They would probably be collapsed in the short term and eventually be replaced by something, if not decentralized power generation. >Without the rule of law and threat of prosecution, a massive surge in usage due to theft would overwhelm systems. I used both internet and electricity in Northern Syria circa 2015, provided by private providers, and it seemed to work just fine then. Why you think rule of law is so import…

Sounds like the next startup mecca. Now, before bitcoin, where did smart people put their savings? Probably, any money that wasn't needed for immediate liquidity went into dollars or euro or securities denominated in those currencies.

The present state of the art is that cryptocurrency is an arbitrage that converts subsidized electricity into value that can be transported out of the country.

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#152

Post by notch656a »

cft wrote: post #120
Guvante wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't believe the lies they say about fiat currencies in crypto circles. Currency is way more complicated than they lead you to believe. After all fractional reserve banking has existed since before currency did. And if you have fractional reserve banking you aren't "back up by something" unless you count the credit of the bank as something. Given that is the literal definition of fiat currency (backed by the full fa…

My statement was that the currency (in this example, USD) until 1971 has always been at least partially backed up by something beyond control of any single government (gold). That was the whole reason of Nixon's speech and abolishing gold convertibility on August 15, 1971 [1]. This regime existed since at least Ancient Greece, but probably longer. I have no empirical reason to believe that the currency system of last…

Switzerland's currency was linked to gold all the way up to like '99

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#153

Post by squarefoot »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #139
Yuioup wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing bitcoin apologists saying "Bitcoin is environmentally unfriendly but... check this out" as if that would solve the record temperatures we're having at the moment. How about we stop using cryptocurrency completely. Time for the UN to get together and get this banned.

Cryptocurrency's not responsible for even 1% of global energy consumption. > How about we stop using cryptocurrency completely. > Time for the UN to get together and get this banned. How about we get the developed nations to stop trading with China instead? How about we get them to stop burning fossil fuels? They're the ones ruining this world. Cryptocurrency is merely a little raindrop compared to that ocean.

> Cryptocurrency's not responsible for even 1% of global energy consumption.

1% is huge, especially considering the trend: Bitcoin alone tripled their energy consumption during last year. Source: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/

Why shouldn't I think that 5 years from it could become 25% or more?

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#154

Post by beaconstudios »

notch656a wrote: post #132
beaconstudios wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mainly just want to ensure the earth doesn't burn. Yes people should ideally not be overheating their home (could easily be done using smart meters if electric companies weren't incentivised to ignore it) and many other things like reducing fossil fuel usage. Bitcoin consumes massive amounts of energy for basically no benefit except pure money wonkery, which is no benefit at all. It's a net negative in every possib…

>Bitcoin consumes massive amounts of energy for basically no benefit except pure money wonkery, which is no benefit at all. It's a net negative in every possible way. Well I disagree here. It provides benefit for many people. The example I continually use for me personally is buying precious metals with I think we're in agreement we would do well to be as efficient as we can with our resources. It would be great to f…

Are you buying precious metals in the abstract, commodities market sense or are you manufacturing? Because if its the former, I still don't think that's a net positive.

I do think it has some small benefits like transferring money where there are no other options. But the vast majority of the network's use is in purely financial use and justified by HODLers and libertarian types. Its existence is largely a downside on its own even without the huge energy costs.

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#155

Post by classified »

camjohnson26 wrote: post #43

For all the hate Bitcoin gets because it’s obviously in a bubble market, can we at least agree that it is an astounding engineering achievement that an anonymous individual and a small group of researchers were able to build a network capable of transacting billions of dollars of value with only 2 service incidents in 14 years? All without any meaningful service costs and no hacking of the network, despite huge incen…

Nuclear weapons are a great technical achievement, too. And not one has been misfired yet. /s

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#156

Post by 1270018080 »

krzyk wrote: post #113
Darmody wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using more energy than many many countries with populations of millions isn't meaningful?

Bitcoin mining can be easily checked for energy usage and that's the problem. But do you know how much energy is used for printing money? Or for agriculture (take into account production of equipment and fertilizer), car production, getting oil from ground into cars? Or by all ACs in the world (which are just a nice-to-have, just like bitcoin)?

No need to whataboutism this issue. Bitcoin uses over .5% of the world's electricity just to prop up a pyramid scheme and illicit markets. It's an abject disaster.

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#157

Post by paulryanrogers »

notch656a wrote: post #106
brokencode wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course we could live at 60 degrees in the winter, but most people would agree that their lives are meaningfully improved by increasing the temperature to closer to 70-72. On the other hand, Bitcoin provides no meaningful benefit to society compared to other currency. The only real benefits of Bitcoin are that it makes ransomware easier to accomplish (which is bad for most people) and that it has made some people a…

Crypto provides extraordinary meaning to many people in society compared to other currency. Argentinian freelancers use it to get paid, for instance due to systemic issues with financial transaction in their country. One big one to me is buying precious metals online with >lives are meaningfully improved by increasing the temperature to closer to 70-72. Well I could say "nuh uh" and then you could say about bitcoin "…

Citizens of Kazakhstan or Iran suffering from brown outs or people near recently restarted coal plants may prefer argentinians seek other ways to work around currency and corruption problems.

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#158

Post by recursive »

vmception wrote: post #50
flatiron wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy goods and materials with visa though. Not sure people want to wait 30 minutes to buy a cup of coffee with bitcoin.

2016 called and wants its arguments back

Is the argument less valid because someone made it in 2016?

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#159

Post by OnlineGladiator »

dan-robertson wrote: post #144
OnlineGladiator wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't necessarily agree with it, but market cap is essentially the standard metric for how we measure value in our economy. If Apple goes down 10% people care because they're worth trillions and lots of people lose money. If a mid-size company goes down 10% a lot fewer people care.

I understand what market cap is but I don’t understand why it is relevant to your point. Apple is the same order of magnitude as bitcoin but you claim the media would care about a 10% move in the former but not the latter. Firstly it doesn’t make sense to me because bitcoin isn’t a company, nor is it made of them so this doesn’t feel like a like-for-like comparison. Secondly it doesn’t make sense to me because I don’…

I was saying Apple is the S&P 500 and Bitcoin is a random midsize company - it was an analogy. No analogy is perfect though, and you can certainly poke holes in mine (as you have).

> Secondly it doesn’t make sense to me because I don’t understand why market cap should be related to media reactions to volatility.

Because larger amounts of money matter more than smaller amounts of money. That's all. Penny stocks can fluctuate 1000x in a day but nobody cares.

Re: Is Bitcoin Down or Just Me?

#160

Post by paulryanrogers »

krzyk wrote: post #113
Darmody wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using more energy than many many countries with populations of millions isn't meaningful?

Bitcoin mining can be easily checked for energy usage and that's the problem. But do you know how much energy is used for printing money? Or for agriculture (take into account production of equipment and fertilizer), car production, getting oil from ground into cars? Or by all ACs in the world (which are just a nice-to-have, just like bitcoin)?

Food is required to survive, AC to live in many parts of the world. Money printing gets cheaper the more digital centralized fiat becomes.
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