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$365B wiped off cryptocurrency market after Tesla stops accepting Bitcoin

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Re: $365B wiped off cryptocurrency market after Tesla stops accepting Bitcoin

#181
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DOGE's drop over the weekend also more or less coincided w/ Musk's appearance on SNL (where he called it a "hustle"). If you recall, the previous rise in BTC also followed closely on the tails of the news that Tesla was getting into BTC. Kinda insane that a single guy can make almost the entirety of the crypto market swing 10-20% every time they mention crypto.

How does this even work? Do people hear him saying "Dogecoin is a hustle" and immediately start selling their dogecoins? Where do they get buyers on-demand?

[deleted]

Re: $365B wiped off cryptocurrency market after Tesla stops accepting Bitcoin

#182
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla made $101M in Bitcoin profits in Q1, which was 1/6th of their operating profit.

Paper profits? Or did they sell their BTC?

They sold their BTC.

Re: $365B wiped off cryptocurrency market after Tesla stops accepting Bitcoin

#183
post #135

How long until he figures out that DOGE also wastes energy?

or that electric cars do not actually have zero carbon footprint while we're at it, don't rockets pollute too

Electric cars and rockets only profit from becoming more efficient. Almost everything does, actually.

Proof-of-work cryptocurrency does not. In fact, it counteracts efficiency, by design. If a new ASIC makes mining Bitcoins more efficient, difficulty is adjusted up.

Re: $365B wiped off cryptocurrency market after Tesla stops accepting Bitcoin

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s almost like crypto has very little actual value outside of speculation...

...and so, teaching us rubes that lesson was Elon's intended 3D chess move all along?

I think Musk just thought it would be funny to accept BTC, and didn't give any thought to the environmental concerns around BTC.

Eventually he either realized or had it pointed out that the environmental controversy would be problematic for an electric vehicle company.

Re: $365B wiped off cryptocurrency market after Tesla stops accepting Bitcoin

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks like a pump and dump scheme in its finest form. Nothing changed over last year in regards to energy consumption. There's no way that Elon or those in Tesla discussing this were not aware of this prior.

but in a pump and dump scheme the dump is the result of the orginal pumpers selling, not from the pumpers wanting to make the stock go down. It is in the interests of the pumpers to keep the stock price inflated as long as possible.

Ok, so what if Elon decided that Tesla's current Bitcoin holdings are too small, and is looking to depress price to buy even more BTC?

Re: $365B wiped off cryptocurrency market after Tesla stops accepting Bitcoin

#186
post #164

Musk blaming excessive energy use for withdrawing from BTC sounds like a ruse, considering that he of all people absolutely knew that going in. I smell Teslacoin in the works. A ostensibly green cryptocurrency, with his face on it.

He changed his mind because of this: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-f...

Re: $365B wiped off cryptocurrency market after Tesla stops accepting Bitcoin

#187
post #164

Musk blaming excessive energy use for withdrawing from BTC sounds like a ruse, considering that he of all people absolutely knew that going in. I smell Teslacoin in the works. A ostensibly green cryptocurrency, with his face on it.

I'm more cynical. It looks to me like basic manipulation of the market. Only possible due to 1. A lot of "dumb" money invested in crypto 2. Relatively small market compared to larger forex markets.

Wouldn't surprise me if Musk sold before making the tweet and bought after the drop.

Re: $365B wiped off cryptocurrency market after Tesla stops accepting Bitcoin

#189
post #31

Very perplexing behavior from Musk, I must say. Bitcoin's energy consumption has been front-and-center for a few years now and even more so when the bull market got hot. How does Musk decide to throw $1.5 billion worth of Tesla's cash into BTC without acknowledging this? I was expecting a little bit more due-diligence from him, but he's been absolutely consumed by crypto markets in general.

Okay, here's my Big Brain, 4D Chess take: Elon Musk wanted to adopt Bitcoin, but he knew there was this big problem with energy consumption. It's bad for his brand, and perhaps goes against his own ethics. Could he say "hey, get the energy consumption down and I'll go all-in with Tesla"? People wouldn't think much of it. Better option: Buy a huge stake in Bitcoin, announce that he'll be accepting bitcoin at Tesla, ge…

It's not that complicated: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-f...

Re: $365B wiped off cryptocurrency market after Tesla stops accepting Bitcoin

#190
post #151

Some of the major threads in this saga so far: Tesla Makes More Money Trading Bitcoin Than Selling Cars - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27142261 - May 2021 (171 comments) Elon Musk: Bitcoin's energy usage trend over the past few months is insane - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27141493 - May 2021 (41 comments) Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2…

This HN library work is so good. Thanks for these types of HN trees.

I've been thinking of offering to help your team with some tooling work. But if you needed help, you'd probably find it somewhere. So I'll just cheer you on here.

(A fella emailed me about Lumen the other day, asking what I thought about Scheme's (let ((a 1) (b 2)) ...) syntax. I said "If you want to, you can write a macro to implement Scheme. But Lumen's design got it right." So, thanks also if your early design conversations influenced how Lumen's LET turned out. Some days it feels I've written more (let ...) blocks than sentences.)

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