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Bitcoin is over $100k

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Re: Bitcoin is over $100k

#191

Post by YZF »

Mithriil wrote: post #68
thrance wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember that this is a zero-sum game, for every winner that made it big, they are thousands more that had to pay up for their success.

I don't believe it is zero-sum.. Or at least, not rigourously. I feel the Market Capitalization of BTC must have been bootstrapped at some extent. It seems impossible to me that the sum total of what people have paid to have their BTCs to be more than $2.02T. In other words, the value the market gives it has given value to BTC out of nowhere.

Each transaction has a buyer and a seller. So in that sense it is a zero sum game. However the total market cap can go up and down and create value out of nothing (just like stocks).

Re: Bitcoin is over $100k

#192

Post by robjan »

some-guy wrote: post #14

Is there way to quantify how much of the economy these days is "bullshit" (purely speculative assets), and if we are at peak bullshit now as a percentage of total economic activity?

For traditional stocks, you can use the PE ratio and other fundamentals to see how detached the market is from reality

e.g. https://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-pe-ratio

Re: Bitcoin is over $100k

#193

Post by polotics »

ajkdhcb2 wrote: post #157
aryan14 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did it fail at being P2P e-cash? You can use bitcoin completely/as anonymously as cash if you wanted to, the same way you’d have to put in a bit of effort to have a completely anonymous cash transaction. Monero (XMR) which is a fork of bitcoin, is much closer to actual cash

Monero is fine. But how can you even use bitcoin anonymously now? Even wasabi and samourai wallet are shut down as far as i know. Seems highly risky to use any tool like that since i dont know what the consequences will be in the future. Joinmarket? I'm sure it is possible but it is error-prone, takes so much effort, time and fees that i see it as a failure

well you can use Bisq right?

Re: Bitcoin is over $100k

#194

Post by puzzlingcaptcha »

LightHugger wrote: post #188
nadermx wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just struggle to see it's utility

There is a lot of utility in bypassing the credit card company cartel which have been abusing their position to create a pseudo government to shut down or kill the value of (maybe to make them easier to buy out?) targeted businesses. Or in some cases impose the christian ideology of the owners upon entire countries, most recently japan.

Ah yes, I remember when BTC was going to supplant Visa/Mastercard... 12 years ago.

Re: Bitcoin is over $100k

#195

Post by atlgator »

paxys wrote: post #10

Important to remember that while income and wealth inequality is at record highs, the trillions of dollars injected into the economy are still floating around among the top. People are getting more and more creative with investments (see luxury watches, sneakers, trading cards, collectibles, meme stocks all seeing a significant bump in value in recent years). Bitcoin's price is simply another symptom of this. What I…

An important point, whichever way you want to interpret it, is that you can now buy Bitcoin exposure via ETFs like IBIT. Those didn't exist in the last run. The upside is they enable more liquid investment, especially to non-native investors (e.g. those that don't know what a crypto wallet is). The downside is it could drive speculation or allow manipulation by big banks and hedge funds.

Re: Bitcoin is over $100k

#196

Post by cypherpunks01 »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #70

If you are feeling regret, don't. Very few people anticipated such a significant increase. Any profit is a good profit. Even investments that seem highly promising can end up in bankruptcy. This is one of the few that managed to succeed.

Bitcoin's not had to file for bankruptcy so far. And CEO never assassinated. But you never know, crazier things have happened.

Re: Bitcoin is over $100k

#197

Post by dlubarov »

wyldfire wrote: post #179
Empact wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps most importantly, unlike cash, it can't be printed, and unlike gold, its supply is not responsive to price.

> it can't be printed New coins are minted with every block. But perhaps you mean to suggest that it's "stable" or "predictable." The emission rate of bitcoin is predictable - but this is predicated on the stability/predictability of the community of miners/stakers. It seems extremely irrational now, but if something were to change such that the community decided to drastically increase or decrease the block reward,…

Well, not just predictable but hard capped at 21M, about 19.8M (or ~94%) of which have already been mined. So in some sense, inflation tax can't exceed ~6% over all time.

(I don't think it's a sustainable model, as security essentially decays over time, unless fees become extremely high which doesn't seem like a great outcome either. But that's another matter...)

Re: Bitcoin is over $100k

#198

Post by [deleted] »

deadbabe wrote: post #119
Mithriil wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A part of the valuation comes from miners who gets their returns cut by half every ~4 years. They have an interest in having the price (at least) double by then.

So how do they do it? How do they just keep doubling the price?

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin is over $100k

#199

Post by jaredklewis »

zahlman wrote: post #125

Nothing ever seems to come of discussing this topic on HN - just the usual cycle of people arguing with each other over whether BTC "ought to" (by what ontological principles?) be worth what it is (or, for that matter, anything at all), or what social impacts it has, etc. None of that has anything at all to do with the current spot price. That's just an excuse to "debate" the topic again by pulling out the same old a…

Well I mean, is there anything to discuss about the spot price itself? Stocks, bonds, and other assets also regularly reach round, base 10 values, and I can't think of any substance in these events generally worth discussing. Bringing out the usual flame wars seems as good a move as any.

Re: Bitcoin is over $100k

#200

Post by cypherpunks01 »

Gigachad wrote: post #128
nadermx wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just struggle to see it's utility

There’s “utility” in enabling crime and being able to move massive amounts of wealth fairly easily.

There's utility in being able to move both small and large amounts of value fairly easily. Moving value has high utility for criminals and non-criminals alike. There's utility in remittances, in protecting value from unlawful seizure, and protecting value from incompetent bureaucrats hyper-inflating your national currency.
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