Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bitcoin breaks above $20k

nasdaq.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 473 posts

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#371

Post by Torwald »

NoOneNew wrote: post #346
mywittyname wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's useful for moving money from countries with capital restrictions into USA dollars. I know a few people from SEA who use BTC for exactly this purpose.

You do understand the underlying principle as to why cross country capital transfer investigations are done... right? As a hint, look up cocaine cowboys and miami banks (particularly suntrust). While I get it's beneficial for average citizens looking to save a bit on tax/duty fees... it's a lot like wearing a condom when both of you dont care to know each other's name. You have that practice for a reason.

In a country where the local regime is the party engaging in unethical, unlawful conduct, some factors change their algebraic sign.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#372

Post by yunesj »

rodiger wrote: post #173
batmanthehorse wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the energy consumption is my biggest criticism, so the answer is "no" (even though you try to sidestep that). buying a pack of gum with bitcoin could power a whole house for 2 months, that's awful and irresponsible.

How much energy do you think the current financial system consumes? Eg paying for a pack of gum with your Mastercard Edit: This wasn't intended to be a hypothetical- I agree BTC uses significantly more per transaction, but I'm curious how it compares to the entirety of a system like Mastercard divided by number of transactions (including all employee/office space/commute/etc energy consumption). There are clearer/few…

> I'm curious how it compares to the entirety of a system like Mastercard

You should also include the cost of running all of the world's central banks.

US Federal Reserve budget is about $5B. Assuming 328.5k BTC mined per year, no tx fees, $20k BTC value, and mining at break even, mining energy costs are about $6.57B. It seems like they're on the same order of magnitude.

I am more concerned about the misaligned incentives for PoW, and to a lesser extent for PoS.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#373

Post by three_seagrass »

itsdsmurrell wrote: post #184
nwah1 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With bitcoin you can send funds peer to peer. No trusted intermediaries. Routing through a network of exchanges is more like routing through SWIFT or ACH.

For a large fee and with a lot of uncertainty on if it will make it into a block. Try the fork of Bitcoin that still operates like Bitcoin used to up until 2016: Bitcoin Cash.

Bitcoin cash is just another alt coin at this point. Transactions have been dwindling and it hasn't even had a reason to flex it's larger block size yet (which is why it was created).

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#374

Post by lifty »

three_seagrass wrote: post #353
Taek wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"By design, any changes to update the Bitcoin protocol need to be accepted by the miners with the majority of computing power - a.k.a. a hard fork." This is incorrect and a common misunderstanding about Bitcoin. Hard forks require users to update, and it doesn't matter what the miners do. It also doesn't require a majority of users to upgrade, anyone who does upgrade will be on the new network, and anyone who does no…

Semantics. Any hard fork that majority of miners do not accept and support becomes it's own branch and a separate crypto. This is why I reference the bitcoin block size debacle. Bitcoin Cash was created as a hard fork that miners ultimately did not accept and is now just a dwindling alt coin.

As far as I remember miners favored the block increase while a critical mass of validating users didn’t.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#375

Post by intotheabyss »

3pt14159 wrote: post #137
joshuakelly wrote: post #105

Let's pay tribute to the very first Hacker News thread about Bitcoin back in May, 2009 with this classic comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852 > Well this is an exceptionally cute idea, but there is absolutely no way that anyone is going to have any faith in this currency.

I mean, as soon as I read through the whitepaper I knew it was going to be valuable at least for a time. My primary reason for selling most of my Bitcoins at $200 a coin was that I thought it was obvious that the US would ban it. I made out like a bandit, don't get me wrong, but the fact that it's an accepted investment still boggles my mind. They shutdown eGold but not Bitcoin?! Crazypants. In retrospect, I think th…

I mean, eGold needed an intermediary so it was centralized. Pretty easy to shut down eGold. Not so for Bitcoin. Maybe the fact that it's still running is a testament to its decentralization?

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#376

Post by three_seagrass »

koonsolo wrote: post #367
three_seagrass wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A decade latter and it's still a hobby currency. Price is not a sole indicator of faith in a currency.

Go compare the market cap of bitcoin with the money supply of some countries. Is it still a hobby currency then?

Assets != Currencies

APPL's market cap is $2 trillion and so by that logic it should be an excellent currency.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#377

Post by mrlala »

tempsy wrote: post #120
mrlala wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh. I 100% understand what you are saying but I also 100% disagree with it. This is all greed with no substance. Wealthy people and those who desire to be wealthy are doing everything they can to arbitrarily prop up something which does not really have value. And they seem to be winning- which is everything that is wrong with the world right now.

you can say the same thing about gold - it’s just a shiny rock. it’s an inflation protected asset, perhaps even more so than gold since there’s a known quantity of it that will never change.

(I tried to post this response hours ago but HN is so annoying with how often you can comment sometimes...)

I don't understand why you make this comparison?

Gold is a physical item with real-world use cases. Gold is rare and has physical applications which is why it's valuable. We can't magically create more gold.

Now you are going to say bitcoin is fixed as well. Fine, but it has basically no use case. Also, it can be replicated a billion times over with any other cryptocurrency. So I would even say it's debatable to call it 'rare' or 'fixed', even though I know what you mean.

The amount of gold which has been mined in the entire human history is about a 20m cube. That's it. Gold is used in very useful in many industries around the world and is visually appealing. THAT is why it has value.

If Gold was "rare" but looked like garbage and had no physical application then it would NOT be valuable. I don't get how you are trying to make this argument.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#378

Post by mam2 »

drcross wrote: post #230
mam2 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is useless for any legal activity. change my mind with an actual existing application that's not done by anything else.

Transferring international remittance on a weekend. good enough for you?

not bad but omg the fees. who does that except 4 nerds in morroco

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#379

Post by brink »

mmastrac wrote: post #117
joshuakelly wrote: post #105

Let's pay tribute to the very first Hacker News thread about Bitcoin back in May, 2009 with this classic comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852 > Well this is an exceptionally cute idea, but there is absolutely no way that anyone is going to have any faith in this currency.

In fairness, it's 10 years later and sentiment still swings back and forth.

I mean if full negative sentiment is at three thousand dollars a coin, it's really not that bad.

Re: Bitcoin breaks above $20k

#380

Post by flyGuyOnTheSly »

webinvest wrote: post #362
flyGuyOnTheSly wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price of Eggs is up 50% in my neck of the woods over the past 6 months. House prices are up 20-30% over the same time frame. The stock market is up close to 50% over the same time frame... This is not happening because the economy is booming. It is happening because the limits on printing money have been completely erased. >In light of the shift to an ample reserves regime, the Board has reduced reserve requireme…

Yes I agree with everything you said. I have a few questions for you if you don’t mind. A) In an environment where banks can lend every penny they have, is there a way to see how much of the money outstanding is loan money and vs how much is hard money? With a 10% reserve ratio, the theoretical max was $10 of loan money for every $1 of hard money. Therefore the ratio could be as high as 10:1. 2) What would happen if…

The premise of A is incorrect.

(Banks cannot only lend out ONLY every penny they have...)

Banks have (until March 2020) been able to lend out 10x the amount of pennies they have... aka assets listed on their books.

Now they are able to lend out an infinite amount of pennies they have.

Theoretically all money is "loan money". That's how money is primary created through fractional reserve banking, through loans.

I own a house that is worth $1m.

Somebody buys my house with $100k downpayment and $900k in loaned money from a bank in the form of a mortgage.

Now I have $1m, the bank has $1m worth of assets listed on their books, and (until March 2020) the same bank would be able to loan out another $9m in money from the $1m in hard assets they have just added to their books.

Post reply on HN