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Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

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Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#451

Post by colinmorelli »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #371
rzodkiew wrote: post #338

Bitcoin is a mystery to me. Somehow it's hailed as revolutionising the economy, by replacing currency with a worse kind of currency. It feels like this is where all the "how to get rich quick" book writers and other hustle bros went and created one giant financial pyramid, which works in quite simple way: - buy bitcoin - tell everyone around how revolutionary it is, so they buy it and what you holding increases in va…

“The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.” -Satoshi Nakamoto Feb. 2009 If this isn’t resonating with you after the past year, I don’t know. I was forced to watch my government bungle a pandemic in the worst possible way and then asked t…

Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't the history of Bitcoin also exposed issues with not having a central bank? Theft that can't be reversed, digital wallets that can't be unlocked, value that can't be insured, etc.

Currency fundamentally requires trust - at the very least it requires trust that the asset you are receiving is roughly equivalent in worth to the asset you're giving as part of the transaction. In the case of centralized banks, you have to trust the bank to help ensure the value of the currency. In the case of bitcoin, you have to trust the network, its participants, the exchanges, etc. Knowing that your transaction itself is secure is only a part of the actual, practical issue. You also have to be confident you can then use that asset to purchase an item of equivalent worth in the near term future. Trust doesn't stop, it simply moves. Centralized banks have made mistakes most certainly. They have also been around for hundreds of years. Bitcoin has perhaps fewer disappointments (although certainly not zero). It has also been around for a tiny fraction of that. How much of the extra confidence in Bitcoin is purely attributed to its otherwise relatively limited history as a store or exchange of value?

I won't opine on which one is "better" (if such a description even makes sense). However, it does seem at times that people rail against central banks while turning a convenient blind eye to the challenges of decentralized banks. Is it the case that only decentralized banking problems can be solved, and centralized banking problems cannot?

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#452

Post by ddtaylor »

alexmingoia wrote: post #271
remontoire wrote: post #244

Pretty disappointing to see the reaction this has received in this thread.

Keep in mind there are a lot of sour grapes when it comes to Bitcoin. Critics have had so many chances to buy in, and Bitcoin price and popularity continues to grow.

I get people being upset about speculation events, and I'm fine with that. What I find upsetting is the FUD that is spread. Inferring that people who use it are criminals and such.

It's interesting because if a congressional bill comes up to ban encryption and uses FUD about "save the children" and "anyone who uses encryption is a criminal" HN is quick to notice and call bullshit. But then in other situations, like this one, many resort to the same rhetoric =/

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#453

Post by Pyramus »

eloff wrote: post #397
RasputinsBro wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"pedo guy" was the thing that broke the camel's back for me. When you have millions of followers and billions of airtime on you, it's absolutely inexcusable to call a random guy a pedo. When he did that my view of him went from a "fake it till you make it" type, to a dishonest and malicious person.

Agreed, it was inexcusable. However, we all have our moments where we do dumb things. If you expect anyone to be perfect, you're in for a rude surprise. One has to look at the whole picture, and that incident was an anomaly. I've noticed a tendency for people to jump on one thing someone says or does and try to ruin them over it and de-platform them, as if that one mistake defines their whole life. I think it's uncha…

I completely agree with you.

> One has to look at the whole picture, and that incident was an anomaly.

My point is that this episode was not an anomaly. There are dozens of examples, where Elon personally tries to "take revenge" on whistleblowers, critics, and journalists.

E.g. Elon called and threatened the boss of the (at the time) anonymous critic Montana Skeptic. He was going through the facebook history of journalist Linnette Lopez and taking screengrabs that he shared on Twitter to defame her. His lawsuit against whistle-blower Skabooshka is currently ongoing.

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#454

Post by SigmundA »

speeder wrote: post #432
neilwilson wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Bitcoin is a way for me to step outside that debt I did not want or deserve" Try paying your taxes in Bitcoin. Then you'll find that it has nothing to do with trust and everything to do with avoiding having your assets stripped by the IRS. You want to live in a jurisdiction, then you pony up the tokens that jurisdiction demands. Or you lose your liberty and everything you own.

What about when people DON'T want to live in a jurisdiction? So far even attempts are seastading failed due to traditional countries destroying them militarily (one italian attempt for example was just bombed until nothing remained, and an attempt the pacific resulted in nearby countries landing troops on the built islands and kicking people out)

Because thats whats happens when you don't have a government, either one will come in and become your government through force, or you become a government with enough force to prevent take over.

Some entity (state) has to have the monopoly on violence to enforce laws or there are no enforceable laws.

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#455

Post by charcircuit »

koheripbal wrote: post #370
ed25519FUUU wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ll notice that even if they accept Bitcoin as payment, they’ll never price anything in Bitcoin. Nobody does that. They always price it in dollars and accept Bitcoin at the market rate. When people start pricing things I’m Bitcoin without doing some daily calculation, that’s when you know it’s serious.

You will never be able to price anything in Bitcoin, ever. It's volatile because deflationary currencies are inherently volatile. The future of finance is in some future crypto that provides for economic-growth-based inflation/deflation of the money supply. The Fed does this manually, and that's what keeps USD more-or-less stable.

There are already multiple stable coins that exist that are pegged to the dollar.

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#456

Post by ctdonath »

rzodkiew wrote: post #338

Bitcoin is a mystery to me. Somehow it's hailed as revolutionising the economy, by replacing currency with a worse kind of currency. It feels like this is where all the "how to get rich quick" book writers and other hustle bros went and created one giant financial pyramid, which works in quite simple way: - buy bitcoin - tell everyone around how revolutionary it is, so they buy it and what you holding increases in va…

Somehow it's hailed as revolutionising the economy, by replacing currency with a worse kind of currency.

“Bad money drives out good.” Best money is a compact, moderate/high value, easily verified, inherently useful/desirable, fungible, divisible/mergeable, stable material of a generally agreed on value. Worse money scrapes away these factors as a matter of convenience & opportunism. We’re now reduced to verbal anonymous confirmation that user X is agreed owner of number B, with a market value of V - there is no physical manifestation.

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#457

Post by pelliphant »

DennisP wrote: post #315
Closi wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand all the Crypto hate on this site. Since when have hackers become the luddites to new ways of finance? For me, it's because nobody can explain what the value offering of Bitcoin is - mainly the question 'what can I actualy do with a bitcoin?' . It's a bad currency because it is slow to exchange and costs lots of money to exchange - I can't use it to buy my coffee in the morning. It's a bad non-spe…

If another cryptocurrency fixed the scaling problem so it could be used as a currency, would you have a different view?

Not OP, but I wouldn't.

I consider the tools available to central banks to be actually usefull. Example: The ability to print more or less money depending on what is needed.

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#458

Post by peter_d_sherman »

Observation: Any large company that accepts a given digital currency as payment -- validates that digital currency...

(In other words, newly released digital currencies -- will not have the same degree of acceptance/validation -- without a large corporate backer/sponsor/entity-that-accepts-payments-in-that-digital-currency, etc.)

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#459

Post by michaelsbradley »

kevingadd wrote: post #131
dylkil wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hes legitimizing crypto in general. PoS will be proven to be more efficient in almost every way, people will gravitate towards that. Bitcoin has the network effects of being the first mover right now. Ethereum is surpassing it on many metrics, txs/day, $ volume processed per day, etc [1]. [1] https://www.blockchaincenter.net/flippening/

"PoS will be proven to be more efficient in almost every way" We've already known PoS is more efficient for like a decade haven't we? When will it become real and actually start to supplant Bitcoin, 2030? It's a very interesting theoretical point but I don't see how it's relevant when we're talking about the environmental impact Bitcoin has been having for years while Tesla is dumping money into it.

The Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain mainnet launched on 01 Dec 2020; you can track its operation with e.g. BeaconScan[1] and beaconha.in[2].

Ethereum 2.0 (proof of stake) is currently a hybrid, with the beacon chain operating in conjunction with Ethereum 1.0 (proof of work).

The plan[3] is to merge Eth1 and Eth2 by 2022, though it's an admittedly ambitious plan. My bet is that it will happen before 2024.

[1] https://beaconscan.com/

[2] https://beaconcha.in/

[3] https://ethereum.org/en/eth2/docking/

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#460

Post by robjan »

vntok wrote: post #427
robjan wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has bitcoin actually solved that problem though?

Yes it has, anyone in the world can open their own "current account"/"deposit account" for free, right now. Barring hacking you, no government or authority can access it without your consent. None can prevent you from receiving money in it from someone else, or from transferring money out of it to someone else.

I can receive bitcoins but I cant buy food with bitcoins or pay my staff with bitcoins. At some point I need to convert these coins to fiat and that's subject to the same controls that GP noted.
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