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Bitcoin is over $100k

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Re: Bitcoin is over $100k

#271

Post by audleman »

Mithriil wrote: post #114
TheBruceHimself wrote: post #75

I just don't understand why you'd choose Bitcoin over gold. Gold, like Bitcoin, was criticized for just being a stupid store of value, but that wasn't completely true as it undoubtedly had some utility in the economy. Worst case comes and the market crashes, you know there's at least someone somewhere buying. What does Bitcoin get you over gold? The same "it's scarce and therefore valuable" narrative so you can store…

To follow up on the idea. It HAS a physical tie: it is the energy spent to run the chain, which is, however, backward to gold being a material. And it's not to the advantage of the owners, but of the miners. I can easily see a catastrophic scenario out of this: a downward spiral of value happens for XY reason, and then a halving happens. That makes the mining of it suddenly highly costly, which makes it uninteresting…

You're forgetting about difficulty adjustment. Every time mining gets more expensive large number of miners drop out. This causes the difficulty target to drop. The remaining miners then start mining more blocks and profits rise. As a system it has built-in economic incentives to keep in in homeostasis.

Re: Bitcoin is over $100k

#272

Post by tasuki »

benchmarkist wrote: post #254
fixprix wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that it is not physical makes Bitcoin more valuable. Why? Because I can store millions of it in my pocket. I can move millions around the world in less than an hour. 24/7. No banks or approvals or intermediaries required. I can keep it in my own custody safety. It is easy and fast to exchange. It is easy to validate its authenticity. The supply is fixed and near impossible to dilute. Etc.. Etc.. that is why…

Well, with toilet paper I can wipe my ass. Even a dollar bill will do the trick but I'm not sure what I can do with a number in a database disconnected from the spinning magnets that make it functional. I'm not here to convince you that bitcoin is worthless because clearly there are enough people who think it is worth more than $100k so you'd be better off convincing those people to offer you services in exchange for…

> Well, with toilet paper I can wipe my ass. Even a dollar bill will do the trick

Wait, are you saying dollars are good because you can wipe with them? I think you're in full agreement with the person you're replying to!

Re: Bitcoin is over $100k

#273

Post by thrance »

robjan wrote: post #190
thrance wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember that this is a zero-sum game, for every winner that made it big, they are thousands more that had to pay up for their success.

Markets are not a zero sum game. When the price goes up, it goes up for all holders.

And when you sell, it goes down for everyone. I don't consider you richer until you cash out your bitcoins for real money.

Re: Bitcoin is over $100k

#274

Post by ArtTimeInvestor »

nicholasbraker wrote: post #270
ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the mantra of "Bitcoin is the future of money" that's being pushed I don't see that mantra used in the context of Bitcoin's market cap. In the concept of value, the aspects of Bitcoin that are relevant is that it has a broad ownership strucure, is finite in supply, is easy to store, validate and transfer.

The whole "BTC is the future of money" ship has sailed a long time.

I wouldn't say so.

As the financial system is set up right now, Bitcoin has a lot of potential to reduce friction. For cross-country payments as well as for buying coffee:

Speed, fees, finality.

But the lightning network will have to mature first. We will see if the global financial system evolves faster than the Bitcoin ecosystem. I would expect Bitcoin's ecosystem to evolve faster.

Re: Bitcoin is over $100k

#275

Post by piva00 »

huijzer wrote: post #216
deanmoriarty wrote: post #8

I couldn’t care less about crypto, but just for fun I bought 1 BTC in 2016. Still own it, and likely will never sell, but boy I wish I bought a lot more instead of my index funds, skipping one monthly contribution in VTI back then would have mostly set me up for life instead of just having a nice but inconsequential $100k bonus in my portfolio :-) Congrats to the people who held through thick and thin, I speculate (m…

> inconsequential $100k bonus in my portfolio It seems we are truly ducking poor here in the EU. My parents have been running a farm for 40 years in the Netherlands and they’re doing well financially. Still, $100k is not inconsequential for them!

HN is a bubble of very rich folks compared to the vast majority of the global population. It's easy to fall into the trap of how people here talk about money, like a US$ 150k salary is too low, or like having less than US$ 300k in savings makes you poor.

Just remind yourself this place is an extreme outlier whenever you hear someone here treating life-changing sums of money for 90-95% of the global population as "inconsequential".

Re: Bitcoin is over $100k

#276

Post by piva00 »

theshrike79 wrote: post #268
sandos wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cry every time I think about the fact that I managed to CPU-mine 50 btc, and sold it for nothing. Still, I did get a payout from the mtgox disaster and its a decent amount really, considering I put in less than 100$ from the start. Just far from life-changing amount, more like "ok, this gets us a nice vacation trip!"-money.

I mined a bit over 2 BTC, sold them when it hit $200. Bought a pair of headphones that broke in 3-4 years. If I had saved them, I could pay off my mortgage now.

I mined 12 BTC from my gaming computer dual-booting between Linux/Windows that I also used for SETI@Home and Folding@Home, I ran the miner just for fun as I thought it was another distributed system doing computations and was fascinated by that concept at the time.

They were lost when I had to re-install Windows to play games and formatted the whole hard drive. I don't think much about it because it's so long ago but I'd have enough money to start realistically considering to retire...

Re: Bitcoin is over $100k

#277

Post by Ekaros »

xyzzy4747 wrote: post #95
paulryanrogers wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems reductive. Things do get more abstract, yet there is a spectrum of naunce: oil, vehicles, clothing, etc.

For countless millennia, humans didn't need anything more except food, some very basic tools, a place to live, and other humans. You could argue that everything since then is layers and layers of bullshit. Bitcoin is just another one.

Humans did also need fuel(wood mostly). Often this was reasonably easy to get. But still involved labour. As such storage of energy that can be released at will do have value think of coal, oil and gas. These as such are not "bullshit".

Water might be other one. But now that is cheap enough, even with desalination.

Re: Bitcoin is over $100k

#278

Post by Ekaros »

thrance wrote: post #39
deadbabe wrote: post #12

Why hell does this keep going up? Can you pretty much just buy at any point in time and be guaranteed a 10x return?

Remember that this is a zero-sum game, for every winner that made it big, they are thousands more that had to pay up for their success.

It is really negative sum game. As there is constant drain from mining, in buying and then operating equipment. Lot of that is not recovable and do not actually improve anything.

Re: Bitcoin is over $100k

#279

Post by Ekaros »

genghisjahn wrote: post #19

It’s way higher than I ever thought it’d be. I sold mine at $800 so maybe I’ve got some sour grapes here, but all this reminds me of the book “Devil Take The Hindmost.”

I got something like 30k XRP for free. Then I traded that for one BTC and got 300. I could now have 100k, but oh well I never was true believer. And I am still too sceptical even with stock market...

Re: Bitcoin is over $100k

#280

Post by ConspiracyFact »

benchmarkist wrote: post #246
fixprix wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of our assets are denominated with depreciating dollars. It’s nice because our assets always look like they’re going up. Of course a big part of that is just the dollar going down.

Money is a meme, there is no value it can measure other than whatever delusion people collectively agree to call "value".

The US Dollar is quite the meme! If you’re a US citizen and you have an income in any currency whatever, you have to acquire US Dollars to pay taxes with, or else you’ll eventually wind up in jail :)
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