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Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures

bloomberg.com

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Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures

#261

Post by billfeng »

Frogolocalypse wrote: post #249
pryelluw wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you are clearly very well informed (no sarcasm intended), do you mind helping me with something Ive been struggling with? In your opinion, what is the intrinsic value of Bitcoin?

> In your opinion, what is the intrinsic value of Bitcoin? I use the 1:10000 rule ( https://xkcd.com/1053/ ) for this argument. It is my opinion that the intrinsic value of bitcoin is far far greater than anyone really comprehends. People generally are too focused on people just buying and selling the asset, but not about the cryptographic proof, and incentive structure that perpetuates the network functioning. So wh…

Isn't the intrinsic value of Bitcoin the fact that it is decentralized and that no government or other entity has direct control over it?

Sure it's cryptographically secure, but what is the difference between that and a regular bank using encryption on their money transfer network?

I think the reason it's hard to say whether or not Bitcoin is worthwhile is that there has never been a decentralized currency at this scale before, and for all we know, unless it can serve some kind of purpose that a regular currency issued by a country cannot serve, it's not that useful. This is why Bitcoin is used a lot by people from countries were their own currency is struggling.

But with the central banks of many first-world countries printing money uncontrollably, some even bringing about negative interest rates, many fear the collapse of large economies in the near future. If that happens, Bitcoin will be a way to store your wealth and prevent all your money from becoming worthless pieces of paper.

Other ways of doing the same would be buying gold or some other form of valuable goods and storing it in your house or have someone else store it for you somewhere, but obviously the fact that Bitcoin is digital makes it a much easier to use and viable option.

But, we don't know if that will ever happen. Bitcoin itself also has so many problems. It's also arbitrary as to which digital currency to use since there are so many to invest in, some more popular than others, some have evolved to fix problems with previous versions, so it's really hard to say if all of this will amount to something useful.

Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures

#262

Post by jcoffland »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #240
Frogolocalypse wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't get it. No you don't, which is why you're still talking about it the way you are. > you have failed to mention any counterexample. What we have now. Inflation debasing your money. This is actually a game theory problem. There are three groups in bitcoin. The users, the holders, and the miners. To understand the way that relationship works, you have to understand what keeps everyone separated and honest. T…

Bitcoin, like gold, does not stop inflation. Once again, what is a problem that Bitcoin solves that isn't solved better by another system? See the original paper on The Byzantine Generals Problem by Lamport et al, where the authors present multiple solutions. Many more solutions have been successfully used in production. People who need to solve that problem do not need to hold any Bitcoin, so the Byzantine Generals…

What is the problem that email solves that regular mail does not already solve? The answer to that is also the answer to your question about Bitcoin.

Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures

#263

Post by _9rq6 »

hendzen wrote: post #24
Kiro wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One difference is that NASDAQ is a name everyone in the world knows while CME is fairly anonymous. Yes, I know they are bigger but I can assure you that if you ask random people in my country most would know NASDAQ while very few would know CME. Seeing NASDAQ is adding it will add to the hype.

"CME is fairly anonymous". What planet do you live on?

Indian here, never heard of CME before. NASDAQ yes.

Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures

#264

Post by antonios »

mads wrote: post #35

Man, 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…

Lots of things to be improved, but even if nothing changes and Bitcoin is frozen exactly as it is right now, it would provide the best store of value we have for years. This "honeybadger" resilience attribute is rather an advantage for a store of value. Especially now that the big players will get in the game (CME, Nasdaq etc.)

Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures

#265

Post by antonios »

chmpgne wrote: post #55
varbo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to send $700 in bitcoin to purchase something. It's going to cost me $65 to buy the coins and several hours of time. Of course, I am banned from Coinbase for an innocous bank mistake. There's literally no other options to buy coins at 1-2% in the US.

Bitcoin itself is being harmed by the core developers who refuse to do anything to address the insane fees: bitcoin needs more bandwidth and throughput in its blocks, classic supply and demand. Bitcoin cash or something like etherium are worth a look at. Bitcoin cash, as the name implies, holds the value that bitcoin should be able to be used as electronic cash.

All you bcash advocates should go learn a thing about the infeasibility of solving a (hyper)exponential scaling problem with linear "solutions" (aka block size increase). Alternatively, leave these matters to the engineers.

Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures

#266

Post by sah2ed »

j_s wrote: post #234
alextheparrot wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number mentioned for the record is wrong: Coinbase has added 100k users in a day, it is not adding 100k users per day [0]. That’s not evening considering the number of users who may be fraudulent, they are hiring [1]. [0] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NgvD2kFT69mSXuJPzPDu... [1] https://www.coinbase.com/careers/923993

They are hiring and getting flagged off Who's Hiring (did they do this to themselves? never seen anything else like it) for mentioning MongoDB: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14902743

@jessepollak [0] wrote in the thread you linked to saying: "NOTE: A spammer posted this same post below, not sure why. ".

It was a spammer's post that was flagged not Coinbase.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14903400

Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures

#267

Post by perl4ever »

sjcsjc wrote: post #94
0xBABAD00C wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's called 'hedging' and is literally all hedge funds do. Uhhh, no

Yeah the term hedge fund seems something of a misnomer nowadays. For anyone interested: The term "hedge fund" originated from the paired long and short positions that the first of these funds used to hedge market risk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedge_fund

For practical purposes, these days, I believe a "hedge fund" is basically defined by its high fees (2&20), lack of regulation and disclosure compared to a mutual fund, and its restriction to "qualified investors" who are supposed to be wealthy enough to absorb losses. Certainly quite a few so-called hedge funds get a lot of publicity for the opposite of hedging - making wildly risky bets to try to beat benchmarks.

Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures

#268

Post by runeks »

bochoh wrote: post #163

So here's a scheme that could be used to wildly profit in the fiat market. If you're what is considered a bitcoin "whale" holding millions worth of the currency you would just setup a short on bitcoin futures. Then you initiate a large sell from a well known whale wallet. This would trigger a large sell as stop losses are triggered. Profit then re-buy the dip.

So, free money? I welcome them to try. If anything, this would reveal the problem of trading with leverage.

There’s no guarantee that the market won’t start buying into the whale’s sell, because the market thinks the price is low. But if it works, it’s the leveraged traders who have a problem, and they deserve to be wiped out, in my opinion.

Furthermore, it’s already possible to go short on several exchanges, so if this worked like magic it would be happening right now.

Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures

#269

Post by lern_too_spel »

Frogolocalypse wrote: post #245
lern_too_spel wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin, like gold, does not stop inflation. Once again, what is a problem that Bitcoin solves that isn't solved better by another system? See the original paper on The Byzantine Generals Problem by Lamport et al, where the authors present multiple solutions. Many more solutions have been successfully used in production. People who need to solve that problem do not need to hold any Bitcoin, so the Byzantine Generals…

> does not stop inflation Not interested in arguing with strawmen. I've been clear enough.

Straight from the frog's mouth: "Inflation debasing your money."

This was your sole example of a problem that Bitcoin solves better than any other. If you now disavow that example, do you concede that Bitcoin solves no useful problem better than other systems?

Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures

#270

Post by lern_too_spel »

jcoffland wrote: post #262
lern_too_spel wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin, like gold, does not stop inflation. Once again, what is a problem that Bitcoin solves that isn't solved better by another system? See the original paper on The Byzantine Generals Problem by Lamport et al, where the authors present multiple solutions. Many more solutions have been successfully used in production. People who need to solve that problem do not need to hold any Bitcoin, so the Byzantine Generals…

What is the problem that email solves that regular mail does not already solve? The answer to that is also the answer to your question about Bitcoin.

Email sends messages faster and more cheaply than regular mail. Bitcoin sends money slower and more expensively than existing payment systems.
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