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Bitcoin Sees Wall Street Warm to Trading Virtual Currency

nytimes.com

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Re: Bitcoin Sees Wall Street Warm to Trading Virtual Currency

#21

Post by almostApatriot1 »

hndamien wrote: post #11
hudon wrote: post #9

This seems like good news for speculators (disclosure: I still hold Bitcoin and worked at a Bitcoin exchange). Having said that, "Wall Street" should be wary of enabling the use of a system that is using more electricity than the country of Switzerland [0] without any productive output. The energy consumption is rapidly rising too. Furthermore, Bitcoin's transaction throughput is dismally low compared to existing pay…

You are focusing on the wrong thing. Energy production is the issue, not energy use. There is an equilibrium to be found in the free market based on the value of BTC that is provided and the economic expenditure to mine it with the cost of electricity used to get there. Oh wait! I found the link in the causal economic chain! We don't put a price on carbon! Put your energy into yelling there and not at yelling at Bitc…

Chinese miners and other state subsidized miners will mine bitcoin at a loss to push out the competition and gain marketshare.

An obvious problem, sure, but no easy solution.

Re: Bitcoin Sees Wall Street Warm to Trading Virtual Currency

#22

Post by jonny_eh »

DINKDINK wrote: post #12
hudon wrote: post #9

This seems like good news for speculators (disclosure: I still hold Bitcoin and worked at a Bitcoin exchange). Having said that, "Wall Street" should be wary of enabling the use of a system that is using more electricity than the country of Switzerland [0] without any productive output. The energy consumption is rapidly rising too. Furthermore, Bitcoin's transaction throughput is dismally low compared to existing pay…

>I [...] worked as an engineer at a well-known Bitcoin company). >Having said that, "Wall Street" should be wary of enabling the use of a system that is using more electricity than the country of Switzerland [0] without any productive output You worked at a Bitcoin company and don't understand the value of proof of work? Being able to trustlessly settle shared stated across the entire globe is unproductive output? Th…

Has the growth in popularity of BTC affected the perceived value of gold? You seem to be asserting that crypto-coin popularity will save the planet by reducing gold mining, I'm very skeptical.

Re: Bitcoin Sees Wall Street Warm to Trading Virtual Currency

#23

Post by eof »

hudon wrote: post #9

This seems like good news for speculators (disclosure: I still hold Bitcoin and worked at a Bitcoin exchange). Having said that, "Wall Street" should be wary of enabling the use of a system that is using more electricity than the country of Switzerland [0] without any productive output. The energy consumption is rapidly rising too. Furthermore, Bitcoin's transaction throughput is dismally low compared to existing pay…

i have paid and been paid overseas in bitcoin. as have others.. how is this not valuable?

no one judge can take it away from me, and i value that as others do. i fail to see how a decentralized store of value and exchange is nil value

Re: Bitcoin Sees Wall Street Warm to Trading Virtual Currency

#24

Post by hudon »

mrb wrote: post #15
hudon wrote: post #9

This seems like good news for speculators (disclosure: I still hold Bitcoin and worked at a Bitcoin exchange). Having said that, "Wall Street" should be wary of enabling the use of a system that is using more electricity than the country of Switzerland [0] without any productive output. The energy consumption is rapidly rising too. Furthermore, Bitcoin's transaction throughput is dismally low compared to existing pay…

Don't refer to the Digiconomist BECI for electricity consumption figures. The author makes fundamentally flawed assumptions, causing him to overestimate the consumption by 1.5× to 2.8×, and likely by 2.2×. BECI starts with calculating average mining revenues based on a 439-day (variable) moving average of the Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash prices. Then BECI assumes a fixed 60% share of these revenues are spent on electrici…

He seems to support his 60% figure with a lot of evidence [0][1] and you have agreed in the past that if anything 60% is the number your model converges to as well...

Anyway, the discussion is a good one and I'm glad at least 2 people are concerned about this. This is exactly the kind of thing we should be truth-seeking on, as well as finding use cases... not if Wall Street is finally allowing people who don't know any better to keep fueling the beast.

[0] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption#validati... [1] https://digiconomist.net/re-serious-faults-in-beci

Re: Bitcoin Sees Wall Street Warm to Trading Virtual Currency

#26

Post by hudon »

hndamien wrote: post #11
hudon wrote: post #9

This seems like good news for speculators (disclosure: I still hold Bitcoin and worked at a Bitcoin exchange). Having said that, "Wall Street" should be wary of enabling the use of a system that is using more electricity than the country of Switzerland [0] without any productive output. The energy consumption is rapidly rising too. Furthermore, Bitcoin's transaction throughput is dismally low compared to existing pay…

You are focusing on the wrong thing. Energy production is the issue, not energy use. There is an equilibrium to be found in the free market based on the value of BTC that is provided and the economic expenditure to mine it with the cost of electricity used to get there. Oh wait! I found the link in the causal economic chain! We don't put a price on carbon! Put your energy into yelling there and not at yelling at Bitc…

Nations and corporations already compete at finding means of cheap or sustainable energy production. How does Bitcoin provide an efficiency here?

Furthermore, if we can't find a stable use case for the blockchain and there are no more greater fools investing--the bubble collapses and all the ASICs end up in landfills--does society suddenly stop innovating in energy production?

Can you point me to any good literature on this? I don't understand the point.

Re: Bitcoin Sees Wall Street Warm to Trading Virtual Currency

#28

Post by hudon »

eof wrote: post #23
hudon wrote: post #9

This seems like good news for speculators (disclosure: I still hold Bitcoin and worked at a Bitcoin exchange). Having said that, "Wall Street" should be wary of enabling the use of a system that is using more electricity than the country of Switzerland [0] without any productive output. The energy consumption is rapidly rising too. Furthermore, Bitcoin's transaction throughput is dismally low compared to existing pay…

i have paid and been paid overseas in bitcoin. as have others.. how is this not valuable? no one judge can take it away from me, and i value that as others do. i fail to see how a decentralized store of value and exchange is nil value

I think you're arguing for the remittance use case but this has been shown to be inefficient compared to other methods [0][1][2]. Maybe lightning network will change that but again, it is just a wild guess from crypto-fans right now... and that's my point: why are we spending so much on hunches? Why aren't we building this thing responsibly if we know it costs so much in electricity?

[0] https://www.coindesk.com/why-bitcoins-remittance-disruption-... [1] https://medium.com/cryptonight/bitcoin-doesn-t-make-remittan... [2] https://www.saveonsend.com/blog/bitcoin-blockchain-money-tra...

Re: Bitcoin Sees Wall Street Warm to Trading Virtual Currency

#29

Post by DINKDINK »

jonny_eh wrote: post #22
DINKDINK wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I [...] worked as an engineer at a well-known Bitcoin company). >Having said that, "Wall Street" should be wary of enabling the use of a system that is using more electricity than the country of Switzerland [0] without any productive output You worked at a Bitcoin company and don't understand the value of proof of work? Being able to trustlessly settle shared stated across the entire globe is unproductive output? Th…

Has the growth in popularity of BTC affected the perceived value of gold? You seem to be asserting that crypto-coin popularity will save the planet by reducing gold mining, I'm very skeptical.

Advantages of gold over bitcoin:

If there's a total internet && computer && electricity apocalypse, a physical barter exchange with gold is more trustless than bitcoin. You can still transact bitcoin but there's trust involved.

Advantages of Bitcoin over gold:

No trusted third party (If you're moving sizable sums of gold, you're doing it with a trusted third party[TTP))

99.99226%[1] transaction uptime (Your TTP keep business hours)

No countries win the gold-geography lottery (Your country that has no gold reserves can still accumulate)

Instantly assay the value (gold takes time)

You can use latent renewable energy to mine bitcoin (the way that miners remain profitable is by using cheap hydro power that would be wasted if not consumed) No need to blow up mountains to sift for gold.

Bitcoin is programmable value (People in places without functioning judicial/commercial systems can create contracts with each other)

You cannot practically bring more bitcoin to market if the price increases (The price of gold dictates which gold fields are profitable to produce)

Most importantly, it separates money that citizens use and the onus of financial obligations that the oligopoly (Banker's bailout 2008) and political class (Endless war) place on citizens.

[1]http://bitcoinuptime.com/

Re: Bitcoin Sees Wall Street Warm to Trading Virtual Currency

#30

Post by hndamien »

xor1 wrote: post #16
hndamien wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that HOLDers won't sell.

What makes you say that? I would be surprised if anyone who has sat on more than $10 million USD of crypto at any point in the past few years didn't cash out a substantial portion of it.

This much is true. I agree.
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