Earlier quoted context omitted.
Something that consumes an unbounded amount of electricity is hardly a "non-physical thing."
TIL electricity is a physical thing.
What class do you learn about electricity in, in school?
Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures
211–220 of 368 posts
Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
ok, so I had an upsight, to borrow Neil Stephenson's terminology. Speficifcally, that POW coins are inherently flawed. There is no fundamental reason to own one of them. POS coins on the other hand, are a different animal. If you own a POS coin, you get paid transaction fees for helping verify transactions. Thus, POS coins make fundamental sense, can be valued accordingly and create a reason to actually own the coin…
Try this article from Paul Sztorc: http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest/ Definitely not ELI5 material though.
ok, I skimmed through it. I admit, I didn't get it. However, I don't think it addresses my fundamental point: there is no reason beyond speculation to own a POW coin. There is a reason, independent of speculation, to own a POS coin.
Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures
#213Eek. Add leverage to BTC? Now fortunes can be made and lost on micro movements.
Prefer buy and ignore for a decade. Still a trade rather than an investment but at least you can only lose what you put in.
BTC moved 20% down in the last 24 hours. That's like a market crash in old money. Leverage that and life will get exciting, fast.
Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
Holding any commodity comes with a huge amount of risk (what do I do with these oil barrels? ... livestock? ... crops?). Settling futures would involve moving these things from place to place. But whither bitcoin, you say? Moving those is easy! Yes, but holding them is hard. Who wants Your Favorite Mutual Fund to hold bitcoins? Not them, that's for sure. There's much more risk there than necessary.
In what way is holding Bitcoin hard? That's the point of it. It's a store of value that's easy to hold directly.
If you hold it, you own the risk of securing it. If I were a mutual fund, I'd much rather pay a premium to someone with expertise (like an exchange or some agent of the exchange).
Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures
#215Man, this is just weird. I just bought 0.05 Bitcoins (you know FOMO and all that) and it just feels so much more empty than back in the days when I mined them myself with my brand new dual Xeon CPU and later on was thinking grand thoughts and building little projects with epaper ink displays to display QR codes on small devices that would work on low bandwidth connections and maybe offline. Lots of problems to be sol…
I've always been a negative detractor of bitcoin. But then I realized the problem was it was marketed wrong. As a currency, it's a nightmare of a creation. But as a store of value, it's actually pretty good. As long as you don't buy in at one of the speculative bubbles (which admittedly is when the majority of people get in), it's been pretty good at more or less maintaining its value. As a non-physical thing, it's a…
I like the concept, but it’s rate of change and lengthy transaction period and confusing transaction fees make it inhospitable for goods and services that I’d use it for.
Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
No one is interested in the centralized bcash. It is a crypto in name only.
Bitcoin is Bitcoin Cash. We immediately restored the ability for Bitcoin to be adopted with low fees and fast confirmations by using 8 MB blocks. The median income for the world is $6/day. High fees are unaffordable and unadoptable. The Core team has done Bitcoin an enormous disservice; like setting autopilot into the terrain.
8MB blocks don't solve the longterm scalability problem. I agree that high fees are unacceptable, but I'd rather wait for a solution that allows order a transaction increase of several orders of magnitude rather than scaling it linearly (and therefore reducing the number of people that can actually use it).
Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I move a rock from my left to my right does the rock weight more? Just because a physical thing changes state doesn't mean it weights more.
> If I move a rock from my left to my right does the rock weight more? It does to your left and your right. If I have a piece of paper with a one on it, and another one with a zero on it, and I exchange them. Do they weigh differently? Its a bit surprising that I'm being downvoted on a tech forum for asserting that information doesn't have weight.
Of course information has non-zero weight. Whether on a harddrive, or in your brain, it is a physical state, which has non-zero weight by definition. Why do you think information can exist that does not consist of matter?
Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
Physically settled allows the future to better match the price of the underlying since you can take or give delivery in it.
That's not correct. They still have to pick a settlement price. Physically settled futures makes sense when customers are interested in the commodity itself and cash settled makes more sense for pure speculation.
There are many products that are settled both ways, and some financial futures that are physically settled.
Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures
#219Tulip bulbs anyone?
Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
The very same reasons they have delays right now. Institutions are able to move money pretty quickly and cheaply between themselves. The reason you don’t get that as an end user is because of compliance, fraud, etc.
I'd argue that Bitcoin would eliminate the fraud aspect (users can not 'fake' deposits), but compliance could certainly remain as an issue.
In some cases, the financial institutions could be slowing things down so they can segment the market and have paid versions of similar but quicker services.
Could be an interesting aspect to look into?