No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250 • Hacker News Board

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#451

Post by jki275 » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 4:35 PM UTC

singularity2001 wrote: post #221

simias wrote: post #20

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…

> breach $20k again This is so unreasonable for a piece of data which was worth $0.1 a decade ago and is easily cloneable (trivially if not for network effects and integration)

The entire concept of bitcoin requires the network effects and integration. Pretending the hash value of a block is useful in any way without them misses the entire point of its existence.

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#452

Post by jki275 » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 4:41 PM UTC

Ologn wrote: post #380

apo wrote: post #308

Having seen four of these major wipeouts over the years, here's the pattern for this highly cyclical spectacle: 1. Nobody cares about Bitcoin. If you tell anyone you bought it, they either shrug or laugh. 2. Bitcoin refuses to die. The long-predicted technology show-stoppers never happen and the network keeps chugging. A small but dedicated group of users continues using it on a regular basis. 3. Speculators who had…

The problem with this hypothesis is that step 9 kept having a higher and higher Bitcoin market cap, until it hit a ~$300 billion in January (and cryptocoins in general hit $800 billion market cap). It is like subprime mortgages or dot-bomb stocks or tulip bulbs or what have you, at some point it becomes significantly large enough for people like Charlie Munger to have to contemplate it and deem Bitcoin "rat poison".…

That's not really how market cap works. Market cap as calculated doesn't equal the amount of money put into the system.

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#453

Post by tacon » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 7:15 PM UTC

olivermarks wrote: post #237

aviv wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Saudis facing confiscation and raids back home dumped their cash into Bitcoin which fueled the rally to $20k. They are now pulling the money out.

The vast majority of cryptocurrency transactions are in Asia, meaning China, Singapore & Japan according to a sharespost webinar I tuned in to last week. Getting money out of China has been a driver of cryptocurrencies in 2017 and early 2018, with little utility other than moving money around to invest in safer havens.

I can see Chinese capital flight as a driver of transactional bitcoin. How does that lead to holding bitcoin as an investment?

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#454

Post by 52-6F-62 » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 8:08 PM UTC

tgb29 wrote: post #437

52-6F-62 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm generally with you— but the value in a public chain is probably just not having to set up the larger infrastructure yourself, and rather just tie into the existing network. Couldn't you say, why invest in companies that support the internet backbone rather than Cisco? Definitely couldn't answer why one is more valuable in dollars over another. There does seem to be more practical use and development of Ethereum o…

IBM, Microsoft, and AWS each have private Blockchain solutions that can be launched in under an hour. It’s not easy to build your own network, and it might not have a native currency, but I’ll use one of these solutions if the business case requires privacy and permission controls. Public Ethereum is an amazing invention for many reasons, but asking users to pay for their transactions is a tough sell from a UX perspe…

I definitely agree. Though I will say, even though I can't easily picture a use case—that fact hasn't entirely convinced me there isn't one.

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#455

Post by dang » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 9:56 PM UTC

kadendogthing wrote: post #448

dang wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't post any more flamewar comments to HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Satire and sarcasm are allowed here, yes?

It's a fine line. The guidelines ask you to eschew snark.

We don't have any problem with satire and sarcasm as such, but on a large public forum like HN, with everything a mile wide and an inch deep, they are nearly always associated with really low-quality discussion.

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#456

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Nov 22, 2018, 5:50 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #450

antidesitter wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. You have provided no reason at all to think that repealing KYC laws (which were introduced by the Patriot Act in the 2000s) would transform the US into Italy, which is frankly just silly. It also flatly contradicts the fact that the US didn’t lose 16% of its GDP to mafia activity before KYC laws were introduced.

Well I'm glad that after 4 comments, you've finally gotten to stating a point. Unfortunately, your point is shallow and dismissive, rather than engaging substantively. It obviously doesn't seem silly to me. If you're saying it seems silly to you, an anonymous rando, I can live with that. If next time you would like a writer's help in understanding what they've written, try asking succinctly and with at least a modicu…

[deleted]

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#457

Post by antidesitter » Thu, Nov 22, 2018, 5:54 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #450

antidesitter wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. You have provided no reason at all to think that repealing KYC laws (which were introduced by the Patriot Act in the 2000s) would transform the US into Italy, which is frankly just silly. It also flatly contradicts the fact that the US didn’t lose 16% of its GDP to mafia activity before KYC laws were introduced.

Well I'm glad that after 4 comments, you've finally gotten to stating a point. Unfortunately, your point is shallow and dismissive, rather than engaging substantively. It obviously doesn't seem silly to me. If you're saying it seems silly to you, an anonymous rando, I can live with that. If next time you would like a writer's help in understanding what they've written, try asking succinctly and with at least a modicu…

> Well I'm glad that after 4 comments, you've finally gotten to stating a point.

I stated my point quite clearly at the very beginning of this thread. Did you miss it?

> Unfortunately, your point is shallow and dismissive, rather than engaging substantively.

In what way is requesting evidence for an implausible extrapolation "shallow and dismissive"?

> If you're saying it seems silly to you, an anonymous rando, I can live with that.

Is "anonymous rando" supposed to be an insult of some sort? Is it relevant to the topic in some way, or just a plain ad hominem?

> try asking succinctly and with at least a modicum of respect

I did. You should do likewise.

> Because people generally have better things to do than spoon-feed anonymous jerks.

The only one being a jerk here is you, my friend. Take a deep breath and re-read the thread. And no, requesting evidence rather than accepting your assumptions at face value isn't "spoon-feeding". Frankly, your response (or lack thereof) gives the impression that you've been backed into a corner and have resorted to name-calling and "spoon-feeding" accusations to try to save face.

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#458

Post by CaptainZapp » Thu, Nov 22, 2018, 6:59 AM UTC

zeveb wrote: post #446

CaptainZapp wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide me with just one example why money laundring is supposed to be a good thing? And can you explain how the average person is inconvenienced in any way, shape or form by AML / KYC regulations? Sorry, but your argument, so far, is just libertarian drivel.

> Can you provide me with just one example why money laundring is supposed to be a good thing? Money laundering isn't good; the actions which are termed 'money laundering' in the law are neutral . > And can you explain how the average person is inconvenienced in any way, shape or form by AML / KYC regulations? https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/09/01/police-seiz... https://www.thestreet.com/story/12793654/1/f…

Money laundering isn't good;

Just a second, in your original post you say:

AML is bad because it makes a crime out of something which isn’t actually bad.

So which is it? You can't have it both ways.

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#459

Post by dang » Thu, Nov 22, 2018, 8:28 AM UTC

scient wrote: post #74

superkuh wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, KYC/AML is totally bad because of trying to actually prevent money being funnelled into crime organization etc. This is why I cant stand ignorant crypto-fans.

Please do not cross into incivility or stoop to name-calling in HN comments.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#460

Post by antidesitter » Thu, Nov 22, 2018, 3:00 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #430

antidesitter wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I misread your comment. What did you mean by "Given the US's $20 trillion GDP, that's quite a lot"? What is "that" in this sentence referring to?

That "that" refers to the implied product of 16% times $20 trillion. It's meant to provide an order-of-magnitude notion of what rampant organized crime could cost an economy, so that people who had previously read "costs of such bureaucratic monstrosities is in the range of hundreds of billions, whereas the benefit is a few orders of magnitude lower" could more usefully think about what the benefits of crime reductio…

Let's try this again: What makes you believe that repealing KYC laws (which were introduced by the Patriot Act in the 2000s) would lead to the same conditions as Italy? And how is this consistent with the fact that the US didn’t lose 16% of its GDP to mafia activity before such laws were introduced?