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The first Bitcoin post on HN

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#161

Post by SwellJoe »

gibybo wrote: post #117
jeffasinger wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was posted in May 2009. On October 5th, 2009, $1 = 1,309.03 BTC [1], so you'd have bought about 1.3 million bitcoin. Which means you'd have over $500M dollars in Bitcoin. I bet that spending $1000 back then would have considerably changed the exchange rate though, and selling $500M now would definitely aversely affect the economy. 1: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/History

Block 24400 ( http://blockchain.info/block-height/24400 ) was created on October 5th, 2009. It created the 1,220,000th Bitcoin. So not only would you have a hard time finding people to sell you Bitcoin, there wouldn't even be enough in existence to buy $1000 worth at that price.

People were giving Bitcoins away at that point, as a way to spread the idea of the currency (people still do, just in smaller divisions of coins). But, no one was giving away, or selling, all of their coins because it would have destroyed the economy before it started. At that stage, the goal was to grow, spread awareness, and test the concept...not get rich.

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#162

Post by ericb »

Steko wrote: post #147
ericb wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fluctuations are a result of it's size. Currently the monetary base hasn't expanded enough to even cover the market cap of a single company the size of Tesla. At scale, things gain stability. If a newborn loses a pound, that's 10% of their weight. If I do, it is .5% of mine.

I'm sure there are currencies with a similarly sized monetary base but which are far more stable. Bitcoin's track record as a currency is pretty laughable but just big enough to provide a nice bullet point for the Bitcoin investment vehicle/get rich quick scheme sales pitch.

Perhaps similar in size, but not in newness (the market needs to sort out fair value), untested exchanges, difficulty of moving money in and out. These are early adopter challenges, but they are also sources of volatility.

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#163

Post by brucehart »

rms wrote: post #146
pg wrote: post #75

How much money would you have made if you'd bought $1000 worth of bitcoin on that day?

Corollary: how many bitcoins would you have mined if you'd bought $1000 worth of the best mining GPUs on that day?

I'm still kicking myself because when I first heard about Bitcoin (in 2010) I was working on a research project that required three GPU clusters (each costing between $15k and $20k). The contract for the project was delayed and I seriously thought about "benchmarking" the hardware by Bitcoin mining until work on the project could continue. I never actually did any mining and the hardware sat idle in our lab for a couple of months. I don't have the stomach to calculate what the Bitcoins that hardware was capable of generating would be worth today.

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#164

Post by Nursie »

digitailor wrote: post #106
this_user wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is different in that is the purest form of a fiat currency in the sense that it is backed by nothing and thus has no intrinsic value whatsoever. Traditional currencies, on the other hand, are at least fractionally backed by (usually) gold and government bonds which in itself are backed by a government's ability to tax its citizens. There is also a second problem in that BTC is deflationary by design. Deflatio…

>> Bitcoin is different in that is the purest form of a fiat currency in the sense that it is backed by nothing and thus has no intrinsic value whatsoever. It's backed by the tremendous amount of electricity required to run the transaction processing network (ie. "mining"). Remember this is the world's largest distributed supercomputer. BTC is a proxy for electricity, that's why mining equipment ended up at ASICs so…

>> It's backed by the tremendous amount of electricity required to run the transaction processing network (ie. "mining").

That's not a backing, that's gone.

>> Remember this is the world's largest distributed supercomputer.

Doing make-work to protect itself against other supercomputers.

BTC is no different from anything else.

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#165

Post by Nursie »

digitailor wrote: post #127
jk4930 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The costs of producing BTC or USD are not their backings. You can't exchange your BTC back into electricity. The USD (and usually most other currencies) aims to be indirectly backed by the corresponding amount of goods they represent within the currency zone and their legal status. BTC isn't even indirectly backed. It just exists. And that's okay for its purpose.

Re your comment about currency production costs: A spike in electricity costs would directly effect existing bitcoins' value. A spike in cloth paper prices would not cause a meaningful change in the value of already-printed dollars. And the price of the dollar would spike with electricity costs indirectly . They're not the same, it's an invalid comparison that neatly evades their inherent technological and conceptual…

>> A spike in electricity costs would directly effect existing bitcoins' value

How?

Please explain?

It makes mining more expensive, and some people may be switched off mining as a result, but the same number of BTC will be made.

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#166

Post by brucehart »

rybosome wrote: post #137
pg wrote: post #75

How much money would you have made if you'd bought $1000 worth of bitcoin on that day?

I'm curious what the legal/tax consequences would have been, assuming someone had the luck or foresight to be aware of the money they could have made. There's no way someone could have just gotten away with making hundreds of millions of dollars on this, right?

I would think it would be taxed as capital gains just like any other commodity that rises in value.

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#167

Post by fragsworth »

redblacktree wrote: post #154
crassus wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin could revolutionize the foundation of the world's economy with a piece of software some guy wrote in a few months. You'd figure that would be the kind of thing that hackers would get excited about, as opposed to social-sharing startups (which are just a replacement for reality TV)

I think it's just that most folks can't yet imagine that Bitcoin is really going to revolutionize anything. For now, it's interesting speculation. It's really hard to see, for example, getting paid in BTC, or buying gas in BTC.

But I think it's easy to see paying for something in USD, and using BTC as the means of transfer.

Customer USD -> Customer BTC -> transfer -> Vendor BTC -> Vendor USD

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#168

Post by potency »

brucehart wrote: post #163
rms wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corollary: how many bitcoins would you have mined if you'd bought $1000 worth of the best mining GPUs on that day?

I'm still kicking myself because when I first heard about Bitcoin (in 2010) I was working on a research project that required three GPU clusters (each costing between $15k and $20k). The contract for the project was delayed and I seriously thought about "benchmarking" the hardware by Bitcoin mining until work on the project could continue. I never actually did any mining and the hardware sat idle in our lab for a cou…

Bitcoin has had the ability to make nearly everyone look foolish at one point or another. Try not to kick yourself too hard over it.

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#169

Post by Nursie »

crassus wrote: post #84
vinhboy wrote: post #18

It's really not fair to dig these things up and call people haters for doubting it. I bet the list of failed companies and "haters" who called it accurately is much much bigger. Although I do like the nostalgic value of these posts.

Bitcoin could revolutionize the foundation of the world's economy with a piece of software some guy wrote in a few months. You'd figure that would be the kind of thing that hackers would get excited about, as opposed to social-sharing startups (which are just a replacement for reality TV)

I, for one, will be very sad if it does revolutionise the foundation of any economies, because deflation is bad and creating a new aristocracy from a few BTC hoarders is also not something I consider useful.

Crypto-currency good. Bitcoin not so much.

Re: The first Bitcoin post on HN

#170

Post by DevX101 »

pearjuice wrote: post #119

"Why did you buy a bitcoin?" "Because I don't want to enter too late!" The absolute problem with bitcoin is, is that it cannot be used as a currency. If one bitcoin can buy you one "x" today, two "x" tomorrow and in a week only half an "x", what is the point of spending it? Its value fluctuates way too much and that's why so many people are getting on board. They want to be in the elevation towards another all time h…

When don't you spend all of your USD money today since inflation will make it worth less tomorrow?
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