261–270 of 463 posts
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Bitcoin mining has been custom ASIC dominated for years now. Almost all miners (in terms of hash power) are custom purpose built machines. So no, they really can only do sha256 hashing on payloads of comparable size to bitcoin blocks.
Which might make them harshly powerful password crackers for anyone daft enough to use SHA256 as a password.
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This is also the result of the federal governments of the world, the US in particular, choking off all the fiat crypto exchanges with their expanded and draconian know your customer laws. As an anecdote, I didn't buy my monthly bitcoin purchase early this month because I've been (and still am) locked out of my ~5 year old coinbase account I use constantly because they are being required to require new forms of ID and…
Ignoring the debate about whether these regulations are a good or a bad thing, don't you think that the fact that "the federal governments of the world" (not sure what you meant exactly by that) are capable of chocking exchanges and harming cryptocurrencies in the process prove that the dream of a decentralized, unregulated currency is out of reach? Even though the bitcoin network itself is censorship-resistant clear…
To a certain extent it is up to us to chose what the "real world" will be, and preferring cryptocurrencies over existing objects seems consistent with many contemporary trends and aspirations (decentralized, auditable...).
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I discussed the things that happened specifically on November 14th in my Quora answer: https://www.quora.com/Why-did-the-price-of-Bitcoin-plummet-d... It's very very likely because of the Bitcoin Cash fork. It has become a pissing contest between Roger Ver (Bitcoin ABC) and Craig Wright (Bitcoin SV). While Craig trolls and threatens the Bitcoin ABC side by "bleeding them dry" in a hash war. Jihan Wu, founder of Bitma…
I think it's fascinating that this is 100% different than what Bitcoin was sold as. The theory of Bitcoin was basically "money without people". You wouldn't have to worry about governments and politics; value would be sent and stored in pure pieces of math. Mere governments couldn't possibly do as well as the glorious algorithms wisely fixed in advance by, etc, etc. But if you're right, Bitcoin has way more politics…
And still, even on HN, the discussion of cryptocurrency is oscillating between totally different axioms? Some of us speak as prophetic market analysts and bring up "nails in coffins" and other crystal ball bull shit, and some of us wonder about the technology itself and understand that the price against the dollar only matters to gamblers.
This is pretty silly. There is no technology to bet. Nobody bet money on Linux or Android. They just happened. These things are not money problems... They are people problems: greed, stupidity and thinking they are better than the average Joe or Jane.
Bitcoin still has a $77B market cap. This is bigger than many well-known and long-living companies. Let's be real - Bitcoin still has a long way to drop.
Since the article states "the trigger for the latest sell-off is unclear" I'm really curious if somebody here could venture a guess about the reasons for the sudden drop. The Bitcoin Cash fork seems suspiciously correlated but is it big enough news to cause such a turmoil? Being a cryptocurrency-skeptic I won't pretend that I don't experience a little bit of schadenfreude when I see CC crash, however if I'm trying to…
To me, it’s obvious that the Bitcoin Cash “hash war” has been what’s triggered the fall of the 5K support level (and to me, it’s telling that 200 messages in, no one has really even mentioned it). The contentious fork has been very disruptive, causing BCH trading to be halted and lowering trading volume across the board. At the same time you have a huge redeployment in mining resources, up to 4exa on the Bitcoin.com…
And still, even on HN, the discussion of cryptocurrency is oscillating between totally different axioms? Some of us speak as prophetic market analysts and bring up "nails in coffins" and other crystal ball bull shit, and some of us wonder about the technology itself and understand that the price against the dollar only matters to gamblers.
Has anyone come up with a use case for blockchains yet, that isn't buying illegal drugs or money laundering? I keep seeing pie in the sky hypotheticals like "supply chain trust" from people who think farmers are etching their cucumbers with serial numbers, but I've yet to see any use case presented for a blockchain that has real utility and isn't better solved by existing processes or systems.
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I perhaps downplayed the flippancy in my previous comment. I'm aware of the theory and impact to the cryptocurrency world of a 51% attack. I honestly believe that the electricity usage - and therefore climate-change impact - of cryptocurrencies to far outweigh the benefits they bring. I think that the "value... march towards zero" is a good thing because "wasting electricity perpetually" is a bad thing. I don't think…
I don’t know who to root for between the people who don’t care bitcoin is a massive waste in power but engage with it anyhow because I enjoy the hypocrisy and sight of their surface level convictions - or - the people who want tech to crash and people to be burned by that. I guess the latter as future techs could be made less wasteful.
Since the article states "the trigger for the latest sell-off is unclear" I'm really curious if somebody here could venture a guess about the reasons for the sudden drop. The Bitcoin Cash fork seems suspiciously correlated but is it big enough news to cause such a turmoil? Being a cryptocurrency-skeptic I won't pretend that I don't experience a little bit of schadenfreude when I see CC crash, however if I'm trying to…
Since the article states "the trigger for the latest sell-off is unclear" I'm really curious if somebody here could venture a guess about the reasons for the sudden drop. The Bitcoin Cash fork seems suspiciously correlated but is it big enough news to cause such a turmoil? Being a cryptocurrency-skeptic I won't pretend that I don't experience a little bit of schadenfreude when I see CC crash, however if I'm trying to…