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Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

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Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#191

Post by TeMPOraL »

api wrote: post #164
Pyramus wrote: post #77

2020 has completely changed my perception of Tesla and Musk. I had this image of a benevolent genius who is sometimes misunderstood ("funding secured", "pedo guy", "Autopilot"). Came across Teslacharts' podcast [1] (now the Chartcast) and oh boy was I wrong. This is only the latest in a long series of red flags around Tesla/Musk and however it ends, it will not end well. [1] https://thechartcast.com/

If he succeeds with SpaceX, I don't care if he's a lunatic. We must have a frontier. Also: The last round of space innovation was funded by two nuclear armed superpowers competing to show off while simultaneously threatening each other with a war of planetary annihilation. Before that the first rocket capable of reaching space was funded by Hitler. Going from blood soaked warlords to nutty manic billionaires is moral…

Also the devil is in the details, and at least in some of these cases, Musk doesn't come off that bad if you actually care for the context.

That said, what surprised me here is how dangerous this is: Musk's Twitter is probably world's number 1 place for peddling Bitcoin scams. Anyone reasonable would of course immediately recognize the scams because there's no way Musk would have anything to do with cryptocurrency. But now, I predict a lot of folks will get scammed.

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#192

Post by Closi »

fasteddie31003 wrote: post #88

I don't understand all the Crypto hate on this site. Since when have hackers become the luddites to new ways of finance?

> I don't understand all the Crypto hate on this site. Since when have hackers become the luddites to new ways of finance?

For me, it's because nobody can explain what the value offering of Bitcoin is - mainly the question 'what can I actualy do with a bitcoin?'.

It's a bad currency because it is slow to exchange and costs lots of money to exchange - I can't use it to buy my coffee in the morning.

It's a bad non-speculative asset, because it can't produce anything to deliver returns.

But it's performed well as a highly-speculative asset - i.e. it's good because its value is rising. But other than the fact it's price is going up, what's good about it? Like where are the funamentals? If it's price was stable, why would people want to hold it? Is it's value just that it's value is rising?

And if the answer to the question 'what can i do with a bitcoin?' is 'Wait until it is valuable, and then you can turn it into a currency you can actually spend' then it's not actually fulfilling what it set out to achieve.

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#195

Post by gonzo41 »

grey-area wrote: post #143
iujjkfjdkkdkf wrote: post #35

This is going to be one of those events that everyone points back to after the crash to show we had reached peak bubble. Like AOL buying Time Warner etc.

Yep. GME, SPACs, creative accounting, prices disconnected from earnings. There are so many signs now that we’re living through a bubble, and it may get much worse before it implodes.

I'm not creative enough, and I don't think it'd be well received here, but really wish I could just pull of some WSB type YOLO meme comment about buying tesla shares.

But, I see a bubble. Electric cars aren't magic, and I'm more expect Tesla to be outflanked by the East (Toyota) and then the Germans (VW Audi Group). Whilst they may be still doing hybrids, they've got years and years of Auto building experience. Also, Musk's persona is cult of personality that make's me wonder.

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#196

Post by zaarn »

tomtomtom777 wrote: post #178
Hamuko wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index gives a much higher estimate (78 TWh vs. 117 TWh), which makes it about the same as the annual electricity usage of United Arab Emirates (pop. 9.9 million). https://www.cbeci.org/

It seems really weird to compare the energy consumption to that of a country. "The total energy usage for the production of cars/yachts/fitness machines/musical instruments/toilets equals that of country X" What does it even mean? How do you interpret it? It seems more sensible to compare to total worldwide energy consumption of which Bitcoin takes roughly 0.05%

Considering you're talking worldwide energy consumption, 0.05% is a lot of energy. Just because the number is small doesn't mean it's not large by comparison.

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#197

Post by Fischinn »

tomtomtom777 wrote: post #178
Hamuko wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index gives a much higher estimate (78 TWh vs. 117 TWh), which makes it about the same as the annual electricity usage of United Arab Emirates (pop. 9.9 million). https://www.cbeci.org/

It seems really weird to compare the energy consumption to that of a country. "The total energy usage for the production of cars/yachts/fitness machines/musical instruments/toilets equals that of country X" What does it even mean? How do you interpret it? It seems more sensible to compare to total worldwide energy consumption of which Bitcoin takes roughly 0.05%

bitcoin was just an idea a few years/a decade ago and is now here.

Its existing directly consumes as much energy as a whole fucking country.

I find that a very visible and easy comparision.

If i would invent something and it would consume that much energy just for transactions, i would consider this a gigantic issue.

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#198

Post by kissiel »

knuthsat wrote: post #157
exabrial wrote: post #3

Legitimizing Bitcoin more than offsets the environmental benefits of electric vehicles.

Our biggest environmental footprints as individuals are heating and cooling. Having an electric car is nothing compared to it. Take one intercontinental flight and again, having a fossil fuel car for a year does not exceed the emissions of that flight. http://www.withouthotair.com/ Legitimizing Bitcoin has nothing to do with the environment in the large scale of things. It's like saying that you need to optimize fast…

> having a fossil fuel car for a year does not exceed the emissions of that flight.

That's true (-ish).

Here are the numbers:

Modern pure-ICE cars don't got below 100g/km of CO2. Round trip NYC-LHR yields 1 ton of CO2. So the above comment is true-ish for cars that do less than 10k km annually.

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#199

Post by ath92 »

exabrial wrote: post #3

Legitimizing Bitcoin more than offsets the environmental benefits of electric vehicles.

Tesla's mission is to accelerate the adoption of renewable energy sources. This doesn't directly counter that. In fact you could argue that pushing the world to rely on massively energy-inefficient proof-of-work rather than a centralized authority for trust in the financial system is going to make the need for renewables even greater.

If (and it's a big if) we can get to 10% renewable energy in the next decades, Bitcoin's energy consumption will be much less of an issue.

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#200

Post by randomsearch »

Tepix wrote: post #112
cies wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla is not about being good for the env. It's about making money. Same thing with SpaceX not being about going to Mars. It's about making money too! The going to Mars/ good for env stories are to get some public goodwill behind them from a certain crowd.

Both companies were unlikely to succeed (and nearly failed). To me that is a strong indicator that profit is not the primary objective.

I absolutely agree, it’s pretty much unarguable evidence that Musk is not primarily motivated by profit wrt SpaceX and Tesla. Yet still people hate or try to find a what about argument. Doing good is hard because other people don’t want you to.
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