Live data from Hacker News

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

cnbc.com

241–250 of 758 posts

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

#241
post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shrug... did some quick Googling and found this: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1392938133163888640 He might be right.

So reviving old power plants was the final straw for Musk? If that hadn't happened, he'd continue to support Bitcoin even with this incredible energy usage? I don't know. It seems very convenient to list them as reasons now.

I don't know either. But he did the right thing in the end.

Could also be some other person, like his wife or kids who pushed him to do this. Or other members of Tesla management worrying about the brand damage.

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

#242
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just keep in mind that those who move to the coins that pump during a dump tend to put stop losses. So these coins end up dumping harder later on.

I think people are switching to Cardano because it has lower environmental impact (proof of stake) than others. The Tesla announcement was about the environmental cost of Bitcoin after all.

I'd say this observation might be correct, on the basis that the Tesla announcement also sent the lesser-known NANO currency up by about 60-80%, which uses PoS as well.

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

#243
post #220
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.

Cus he's not that bright. Isn't this the elephant in the room that no one wants to consider? Why do we have to start with the assumption that Musk is a genius, then work back from that? The dude thought covid would go away last May. He thinks it's easier to make Mars habitable than it is to keep the Earth habitable. He's thought that full self driving was 6 months away for literally 4 years now. And he didn't really…

I mean you will see people here on this forum argue that bitcoin mostly uses up peak energy and unused capacity and such bullshit nonsense - it's frankly not that hard to spin a narrative that could sound plausable.

But then when you see people firing up coal plants in your back yard just to mine BTC (as opposed to China) reality suddenly kicks in and it's hard to spin bullshit arround that. Regulators are really dropping the ball on crypto - corporate entities should not be allowed to fuel this shit.

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

#245
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…

Some interesting timing [0].

[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/exclus...

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

#246
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.

He could have done that by continuing to tweet random meme nonsense and not run afoul of the SEC. Getting Tesla to pile in on BTC makes it a potential regulatory issue.

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

#247

My hot-take having watched the culling from an invested position follows. Disclaimer: i hold both BTC and ETH. While the market in general is down, the major losses in this crash were Bitcoin, Doge and Shiba. Bitcoin is an obvious result given the news. Doge and Shiba have had pretty spectacular gains over the last ~30d and seeing them lose considerable value is unsurprising if you follow crypto markets much. Seeming…

> While the market in general is down, the major losses in this crash were Bitcoin, Doge and Shiba. Bitcoin is an obvious result given the news. Doge and Shiba have had pretty spectacular gains over the last ~30d and seeing them lose considerable value is unsurprising if you follow crypto markets much. the interesting thing is that all those 3 coin crashes were again due to Elon Musk. He has been spreading the FUD al…

Pump and dump schemes are illegal for the stock market. These regulations don’t apply to cryptocurrencies.

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

#248
post #220
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.

Cus he's not that bright. Isn't this the elephant in the room that no one wants to consider? Why do we have to start with the assumption that Musk is a genius, then work back from that? The dude thought covid would go away last May. He thinks it's easier to make Mars habitable than it is to keep the Earth habitable. He's thought that full self driving was 6 months away for literally 4 years now. And he didn't really…

I think it's ok for him to change his mind after further consideration.

...and it would give me hope that we might get round steering wheels and individual non-touchscreen controls for critical driving functions.

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

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shrug... did some quick Googling and found this: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1392938133163888640 He might be right.

I refuse to accept someone in his position (and with his net worth) did not know their environmental impact _before_ moving into cryptocurrencies.

I'm not defending Musk, though ignorance doesn't necessarily diminish with growing wealth even if there are more opportunities to learn.

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

#250
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…

The energy consumption is the only security mechanism Bitcoin has. It's impossible to drive it down.

PoS would be a completely different fork, and it's not clear how secure/censorship-proof it would be.

Post reply on HN