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

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

#351

Post by pedalpete »

How many people were buying Tesla's with bitcoin? Tesla hasn't sold their bitcoin, as far as I can tell, they are still holding a portion of their cash in BTC.

The hedge against inflation still exists. The future potential for international industrial payments in BTC for Tesla is still there.

I'm sure there are some accounting tricks there too. Plus, the tweet from Elon clearly states that they are looking at other crypto's with better carbon footprint...ETH moving to Proof-of-Stake (or any DeFi built on ETH) sounds like a good opportunity.

I musk be missing something here.

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

#352

Post by antpls »

orblivion wrote: post #156
sakopov wrote: 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…

I like to believe to that theory as well.

But there is probably a simpler explanation : crypto is still experimental and Elon is pragmatic as new informations arrive. Where Bitcoin is the graal for some people, for Tesla it was only another real scale experiment about a payment method.

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

#353

Post by Supermancho »

nprz wrote: post #255
worik wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not possible to clean up bitcoin. Even if it moved entirely to renewable energy it would still be a massive opportunity cost. There are productive uses that energy could be put to. Bitcoin is not productive. Using gigawatts to process a few transactions a second, when existing financial frameworks can process millions of transactions a seconds at a fraction of the energy input means that bitcoin is always a mas…

There is utility in the bitcoin network that is not found in existing financial systems (censorship-resistant, seizure-resistant, borderless, and pseudonymous). And If you are thinking about the energy consumption of btc on a per transaction basis you are misunderstanding that the btc network should be thought of as a settlement layer, rather than a payment layer. > Bitcoin is therefore best understood as a high-inte…

> There is utility in the bitcoin network that is not found in existing financial systems (censorship-resistant, seizure-resistant, borderless, and pseudonymous)

That utility exists in most of the crypto offerings. Bitcoin is horribly inefficient as a payment layer although that's exactly what people want. If it's not good for what people use it for, something better will replace it. It's not about who's first, but who's last.

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

#354

Post by api »

onion2k wrote: post #229
pkulak wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

SpaceX wins lots of space contracts with the help of Musk's "Occupy Mars" marketing. Tesla sells lots of cars on the promise of self-driving in the marketing. Musk bought BTC, single-handedly pumped the price of BTC, and then sold at a huge profit. I don't think he's a genius but Musk is definitely not stupid. He's just not playing the obvious game you think he's playing.

While I really dislike some of his behavior, this goal post moving to try to deny Musk credit for what he's accomplished annoys me.

Before Musk we had no economical reusable launch systems, economical space flight was sci-fi, and in the 2000s there were many people who thought modern civilization must inevitably grind to a halt as we deplete oil because oil is absolutely irreplaceable for modern transport.

SpaceX built the first economical to operate reusable space hardware at any scale, and Tesla validated the market for EVs. Even if Tesla fails, without them I highly doubt the EV revolution would be happening. Traditional car companies would never have cannibalized their ICE sales with EVs without a hard kick in the ass to do so.

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

#355

Post by api »

dylan604 wrote: post #308
onion2k wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX wins lots of space contracts with the help of Musk's "Occupy Mars" marketing. Tesla sells lots of cars on the promise of self-driving in the marketing. Musk bought BTC, single-handedly pumped the price of BTC, and then sold at a huge profit. I don't think he's a genius but Musk is definitely not stupid. He's just not playing the obvious game you think he's playing.

>Musk bought BTC, single-handedly pumped the price of BTC, and then sold at a huge profit. Doesn't this have legal ramifications when done in the stock market? If it is shady for that market, why is it acceptable in other markets? Oh, right, they're not regulated.

Cryptocurrency is almost completely unregulated, so no there are not likely to be ramifications. It's anarchy and just about anything goes. Buyer beware.

Also I didn't get the sense that Musk single-handedly pumped BTC. He jumped on the bandwagon about mid-way through the current pump. I am still foggy on what kicked off the current bull run.

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

#356

Post by ecpottinger »

tessierashpool wrote: post #230
slg wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is incredibly hard to imagine that the upside in Musk's personal Bitcoin stake, whatever it is, is anywhere close to approaching his personal stake in Tesla. Something like 70% of his net worth is Tesla stock. It would be unbelievably stupid to jeopardize the value of the Tesla stock to pump up the value of his Bitcoin holdings. Some of these anti-Musk conspiracy theories are truly crazy especially considering the…

It is incredibly hard to imagine that the upside in Musk's personal Bitcoin stake, whatever it is, is anywhere close to approaching his personal stake in Tesla. Something like 70% of his net worth is Tesla stock. It would be unbelievably stupid to jeopardize the value of the Tesla stock to pump up the value of his Bitcoin holdings. this is a good point, but if I held Tesla, I would probably prefer cash. it could be t…

You better sell your GM stock then since that seems mostly to be happening to Bolts lately. Second thought, if you think people are dying driving in cars you better sell all car stocks.

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

#357

Post by anonAndOn »

anonAndOn wrote: post #174
slg wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is incredibly hard to imagine that the upside in Musk's personal Bitcoin stake, whatever it is, is anywhere close to approaching his personal stake in Tesla. Something like 70% of his net worth is Tesla stock. It would be unbelievably stupid to jeopardize the value of the Tesla stock to pump up the value of his Bitcoin holdings. Some of these anti-Musk conspiracy theories are truly crazy especially considering the…

> Something like 70% of his net worth is Tesla stock. For now. Spacex is going to be the most valuable company on Earth and Mars.

...expanding a bit, Spacex could be the first company domiciled off of the planet if/when they build a private space station. What tax laws apply to artificial satellites used as "HQ" these days?

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

#358

Post by toephu2 »

pkulak wrote: post #220
sakopov wrote: 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…

> The dude thought covid would go away last May. > He's thought that full self driving was 6 months away for literally 4 years now.

He can't predict the future, so what?

>He thinks it's easier to make Mars habitable than it is to keep the Earth habitable.

He never said this.

> And he didn't really understand what Bitcoin was when he sank 1.5 billion into it.

How can you prove he doesn't understand what Bitcoin was?

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

#359

Post by tpmx »

dragontamer wrote: post #348
tpmx wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your nightmare scenario we're going to need terraforming tech for Earth. If all of humanity lives on Earth though, we're just one unlucky meteorite away from going extinct. Given this: let's develop the terraforming tech for Mars, and establish colonies there.

> In your nightmare scenario we're going to need terraforming tech both on Earth and Mars. The hypothetical technology to reduce Earth's temperature by 4-degrees Celsius is simply going to be fundamentally different from the hypothetical technology to increase Mars's temperature by 80-degrees Celsius.

(Sorry, you caught my post while I was editing it in the first two minutes.)

I don't see why shouldn't try to do both:

a) Lower the earth's surface temperature

b) Begin the process of building a backup of humanity on Mars

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

#360

Post by stuaxo »

pkulak wrote: post #220
sakopov wrote: 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…

Or it's that + some skin of the teeth grifting.
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