Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What I Think of Bitcoin

bridgewater.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 209 posts

Re: What I Think of Bitcoin

#171

Post by CyberDildonics »

brendanmc6 wrote: post #126
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…

Totally false. Reduced mining power doesn't reduce the number of blocks being generated. Block mining PoW difficulty increases or decreases based on a running average of past block times[1]. This, given the block size limit, is the very mechanism that caps transaction throughput. Lower prices have always led to less transaction volume which has always made it cheaper and easier to get your own transaction confirmed.…

What I said is true, sudden drops in mining power mean the immediate effect is slower block creation:

> a sudden drop in price will mean a sudden drop in mining power, which will mean a sudden drop in blocks being generated, which will mean a sudden drop in throughput

Over time (and blocks) the proof of work difficulty adjusts, but that isn't what I was talking about, which is why I said "sudden" over and over.

It takes the generation of blocks to adjust the proof of work difficulty and if the price goes down, miners shut off and the blocks needed to adjust the proof of work will get generated more slowly. Less blocks on average means the adjustment skews into the future as the throughput goes down.

Two factors that go _against_ a death spiral is that transactions typically go down when the price goes down, and when the transaction throughput is low, people with actual balances on the chain can't get their btc off of it.

When the price goes up and mining power increases (sooner or later) this isn't a problem, because faster blocks aren't a problem - they just make calibrating back down to a 10 minute happen quicker.

> "don't invest in something you don't understand", can I ask that you don't spread FUD about something you don't understand?

Easy there, you can always ask questions instead of making bold assumptions like this.

Re: What I Think of Bitcoin

#172

Post by hootbootscoot »

What I think about bitcoin and crypocurrencies in general that are based upon a "proof of work" with no tangible production of anything useful in society?

They are a giant waste of electricity.

Even renewably-sourced electricity is in finite supply, even near large hydro-electric dams or geo-thermal plants, and thus this deprives the world of metal smelting or other energy-intensive activities we urgently NEED to adapt to electrically-driven processes.

I should expect to see intelligent folk like those in tech to understand the multiple environmental crises we are in, and how bitcoin and it's ilk are not aiding resolution of this in any way, and indeed can be shown to be hampering efforts.

Wasted CPU cycles have environmental costs. Proof of work is a giant waste of electricity that could be better spent.

Introduce a cryptocurrency that actually incentivizes goodness through it's creation instead of further destruction and spare me the hypotheticals. As currently implemented= BAD FOR PLANET EARTH and a diversion of resources to literal waste.

Imaginary money burning real joules of energy

Re: What I Think of Bitcoin

#173

Post by rspeele »

ballofrubber wrote: post #160
hjek wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. You don't decide whats a waste of energy or not. Whether or not it's a "waste", it's certainly a massive amount. More than all of Argentina or Netherlands[0], as was posted here on HN recently. As of 2020, every single Bitcoin transaction uses the equivalent of 15 full charges of a Tesla car battery[1]. Also: You don't decide whether I (or others) decide what's a waste of energy or not. [0]: https://cbeci.org/cb…

The energy costs of a block are not in relation with the amount of transactions in it. Just because you have two numbers, doesn‘t mean you should divide them. Short rant: The current settlement system is layers up on layers of legacy systems. How do international settlements exactly work? How long do they take? Where does money come from? Why should flawed metrics and corruptable humans decide when to issue currency?…

> The energy costs of a block are not in relation with the amount of transactions in it. Just because you have two numbers, doesn‘t mean you should divide them.

Right, they are unrelated. The energy costs are driven by how much Bitcoin is valued, so the more Bitcoin succeeds, the higher the energy costs go. The transaction rate does not increase, it stays around 400K/day, enough for everybody in Russia to make one transaction a year. Or for another example, for every business in the US to make 5 transactions a year. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

The solution to Bitcoin's extremely low capacity for transactions is for it to be only actually traded on-chain by the largest institutions, like gold moving between vaults in the old days of metal-backed currencies. But in that world, most companies and certainly most individuals would trade using layers upon layers of complex systems built on top of Bitcoin, not Bitcoin itself. Very likely those layers will involve some form of centralization. So what's the point of all this elegance?

Re: What I Think of Bitcoin

#174

Post by rspeele »

ballofrubber wrote: post #155
hjek wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. You don't decide whats a waste of energy or not. Whether or not it's a "waste", it's certainly a massive amount. More than all of Argentina or Netherlands[0], as was posted here on HN recently. As of 2020, every single Bitcoin transaction uses the equivalent of 15 full charges of a Tesla car battery[1]. Also: You don't decide whether I (or others) decide what's a waste of energy or not. [0]: https://cbeci.org/cb…

Exactly! Isn’t it awesome how secure the network is!

It's awesome, but it should get even more awesome as BTC gains mainstream acceptance. The energy usage should hopefully one day match that of the USA or at least India to be even more secure.

After all, if Bitcoin is going to become the global reserve currency a 51% attack should be absolutely impossible. Right now all the mining being done is rewarded with a measly ~$55 million per day. That's within the reach of some rich individuals to outspend, to say nothing of big businesses, hedge funds, or even nation states. I think spending about $1B a day on mining would be more appropriate in the long run.

Re: What I Think of Bitcoin

#175

Post by RIMR »

coinward wrote: post #131
dandanua wrote: post #42

I think it's time to put Bitcoin on the ignore list. You will never learn anything new about it, only the same stories: 1. It's a disastrous waste of energy resources. 2. HODLers like to compare it with gold and use it as a store of value. Because of this, they will constantly make a noise about it to raise its price. 3. No one will ever use it as an ordinary currency to buy simple things. Oh, you could buy Tesla wit…

Have fun staying poor. Ignoring technology that is disrupting money, one of the primary tools driving human progress, is foolish at best.

If your serious take on this is "If you don't invest in Bitcoin, you deserve to be poor", then I honestly don't see a single reason to listen to what you think in regards to economics...

Re: What I Think of Bitcoin

#176

Post by carleverett »

ballofrubber wrote: post #148
carleverett wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you could ever find the "true price" of a pure store of value asset like Bitcoin. Gold has been around for thousands of years and is still volatile enough that no one would want to use it for daily transactions. The characteristics of a great store of value are different than that of a great currency - it seems naive to me to think that Bitcoin would ever act like a fiat currency that way.

It's because the currency gold is priced in is going down year by year. Why should you spend your gold if your fiat is worth less tomorrow? That's besides the point that gold is practically unusable as a currency for convenience reasons (divisibility, verification, storage, transportation). A great currency is a currency that preserves your value over time, as currency is what you earn for spending your time and skil…

"Store of Value" and "medium of exchange" are 2 separate functions of currency that shouldn't be served by the same asset.

Re: What I Think of Bitcoin

#177

Post by jeffreyrogers »

hjek wrote: post #152
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at Bridgewater, and while there are things I disliked about it, this piece is not at all fair and does not capture what it is actually like to work there. Nathan Robinson, who is a self described socialist, is not someone I would go to for an objective assessment of a hedge fund's working conditions.

> Nathan Robinson, who is a self described socialist, is not someone I would go to for an objective assessment of a hedge fund's working conditions. I'm glad you didn't have a bad time working there. Yes, of course you can disagree with NR's conclusions, yet the article is mainly a review of Dalio's book alongside some quotes from employees. This "public hangings" statement is picked straight out of his Principles bo…

The quoted material is accurate as far as I can tell, in that it really does say that stuff, but NR is interpreting it in an uncharitable way.

There was a test on the principles as part of the new hire orientation, but it didn't really matter how you did on it, and my manager didn't seem to place any weight on it, others might've been different. It is definitely not a daily thing that you're graded on. Dots is just an app you use to give feedback to people on how they are applying the principles, but it's mostly just used to rate if people did something well or poorly. Like if you shipped a feature on time or gave a good presentation on something you'd get a lot of positive dots and if you broke something in production you'd get a bunch of negative dots.

Other people at the company can see the feedback you got, that's part of what the baseball card is. It's really just a more transparent form of the evaluation system any company would have.

My criticism of the principles is that there are so many of them and some of them are contradictory (e.g. fight every battle vs choose your battles are two I remember) that people mostly just use them to justify what they were going to do anyways.

On the positive side, Ray and the other senior people really do care about the employees and Ray in particular is very generous towards them.

Re: What I Think of Bitcoin

#178

Post by ballofrubber »

carleverett wrote: post #176
ballofrubber wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because the currency gold is priced in is going down year by year. Why should you spend your gold if your fiat is worth less tomorrow? That's besides the point that gold is practically unusable as a currency for convenience reasons (divisibility, verification, storage, transportation). A great currency is a currency that preserves your value over time, as currency is what you earn for spending your time and skil…

"Store of Value" and "medium of exchange" are 2 separate functions of currency that shouldn't be served by the same asset.

Care to elaborate?

I don't see why it shouldn't. I will always want the best SoV in exchange for my services, why would I want something else? If I need to exchange the currency for a SoV everytime, I might get the SoV from the get-go.

Re: What I Think of Bitcoin

#179

Post by ballofrubber »

rspeele wrote: post #173
ballofrubber wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The energy costs of a block are not in relation with the amount of transactions in it. Just because you have two numbers, doesn‘t mean you should divide them. Short rant: The current settlement system is layers up on layers of legacy systems. How do international settlements exactly work? How long do they take? Where does money come from? Why should flawed metrics and corruptable humans decide when to issue currency?…

> The energy costs of a block are not in relation with the amount of transactions in it. Just because you have two numbers, doesn‘t mean you should divide them. Right, they are unrelated. The energy costs are driven by how much Bitcoin is valued, so the more Bitcoin succeeds, the higher the energy costs go. The transaction rate does not increase, it stays around 400K/day, enough for everybody in Russia to make one tr…

Because the base layer can be audited and not meddled with by third parties.

Everyone can build their own layers on top. There is no permission needed.

It's the peoples money.

Re: What I Think of Bitcoin

#180

Post by ballofrubber »

rspeele wrote: post #174
ballofrubber wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! Isn’t it awesome how secure the network is!

It's awesome, but it should get even more awesome as BTC gains mainstream acceptance. The energy usage should hopefully one day match that of the USA or at least India to be even more secure. After all, if Bitcoin is going to become the global reserve currency a 51% attack should be absolutely impossible. Right now all the mining being done is rewarded with a measly ~$55 million per day. That's within the reach of so…

Even at the current state you wouldn't be able to source all the asics needed for a 51% attack.
Post reply on HN