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Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

cointelegraph.com

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Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#491

Post by markburns »

TillE wrote: post #481
tekchip wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This global warming rhetoric against bitcoin is nonsense right? The current financial system doesn't run off as many or more computers in datacenters around the globe? I don't have objective numbers but I'd lay money credit card processing alone dwarfs bitcoin by a pretty good margin.

The global financial system can handle considerably more than three (3) transactions per second.

There's not really a problematic upper bound for global transaction volume on transactions per second with the lightning network. There are other problems in terms of adoption and infrastructure etc, but the actual potential for humankind to have a single currency global low-barrier payment system is there. But this is more like the early days of the internet. The internet seemed pointless to most people even as late as the 90's.

A future global system could have settlement on the blockchain. Like the current system does at far less regular intervals than the processing power of non-settled transactions.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#492

Post by JeffSnazz »

david_shi wrote: post #354

Bitcoin exists to solve the principal-agent problem that comes with delegating control of the money supply to singular institutions. If you look at the history of empires, from the Romans to the Han, it is littered with instances of societal decline as a direct result of inflation and overspending. This unilateral currency debasement is much harder if the collective (and global) definition of money is determined by d…

> If you look at the history of empires, from the Romans to the Han, it is littered with instances of societal decline as a direct result of inflation and overspending.

There is little evidence to support this. There is an abundance of evidence of empires responding to the crisis of a population overburdened by debt by cancellation, though, if we're going by history to dictate what our current state should do....

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#493

Post by fearface »

0raymond0 wrote: post #489
david_shi wrote: post #354

Bitcoin exists to solve the principal-agent problem that comes with delegating control of the money supply to singular institutions. If you look at the history of empires, from the Romans to the Han, it is littered with instances of societal decline as a direct result of inflation and overspending. This unilateral currency debasement is much harder if the collective (and global) definition of money is determined by d…

When I learned about the limited supply of Bitcoin, I thought, "Great, no more rampant currency printing!" But then they developed the fork technology, which can split one Bitcoin into countless pieces. I guess I underestimated the extent of human greed. Thankfully, it's all digital and our math can handle it.

No, weird that you’re comment is so high up, but shows how little crypto knowledge is around in HN. A Bitcoin is a Bitcoin, but it consists of smaller units called Satoshis. Like Dollar and Cents. Since the beginning of Bitcoin. A fork is a copy of the underlying source code of Bitcoin, which in itself has no value at all. You would also need to find people who run nodes for your fork and start convincing exchanges that your fork should be supported too…so no, this is not splitting Bitcoin

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#494

Post by dghlsakjg »

toenail wrote: post #470
dghlsakjg wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really what it comes down to. I really didn't mind bitcoin before the price exploded, it was a curiosity and interesting experiment. Since then, it has been used to transfer a lot of wealth using outright fraud, cons, and other criminal means. I get paid a lot of money (fiat) to program digital payment systems, and have spent time understanding the underlying technology, as well as a holding a degree in econo…

> For every bitcoin millionaire, there's someone that pumped real dollars into the system Are you blaming bitcoin for gambling addiction and bad investing now? That's funny. There more of that with the USD, by several orders of magnitude.

> Are you blaming bitcoin for gambling addiction and bad investing now?

No. I’m explicitly not blaming bitcoin. I’m blaming the humans that take advantage of others using the technical complexity of the crypto ecosystem to convince people that it is something that it isn’t.

The fact that you can wreck your life in Vegas or day-trading on Robinhood using dollars isn’t something I like either.

The whole point of the sentence you quoted is that bitcoin isn’t some magical wealth creator as it is frequently sold as. It’s to point out that it is a zero sum game; for every dollar someone has gotten out of the system, someone else has put a dollar in.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#495

Post by Ekaros »

toenail wrote: post #485
cortesoft wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the OPPOSITE of the truth. Boom and bust cycles were much worst in the pre-central bank world.

Are you saying the global financial crisis was MUCH smaller than previous busts?

I would say that... Sure stock values and other over valued assets dropped. But how many people actually starved to death?

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#496

Post by lottin »

toenail wrote: post #461
democracy wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...another fairytale about people in poor countries using crypto )))) Nothing beats good old USD or EURO as an asset if you live in a country with hyperinflation.

Did the USD or EURO gain +7000% in the last decade? Didn't think so.

If it did, your salary must have shrunk by 87.5% (or the company that you work for would have gone out of business).

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#497

Post by imjonse »

david_shi wrote: post #354

Bitcoin exists to solve the principal-agent problem that comes with delegating control of the money supply to singular institutions. If you look at the history of empires, from the Romans to the Han, it is littered with instances of societal decline as a direct result of inflation and overspending. This unilateral currency debasement is much harder if the collective (and global) definition of money is determined by d…

Are you saying all those talented individuals who were crypto experts and became LLM/AI experts overnight and promoted both with the same zeal are actually concerned about societal decline and not just schemers? Faith in humanity restored.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#498

Post by throw101010 »

shock-value wrote: post #403
david_shi wrote: post #354

Bitcoin exists to solve the principal-agent problem that comes with delegating control of the money supply to singular institutions. If you look at the history of empires, from the Romans to the Han, it is littered with instances of societal decline as a direct result of inflation and overspending. This unilateral currency debasement is much harder if the collective (and global) definition of money is determined by d…

Speaking of Bitcoin specifically, if this is your view then you should take some time to understand the severe societal and economic problems that come with persistent deflation. And more generally, determining the optimal level of the money supply to match the needs of a dynamic economy is not trivial — there is no simple formula involving straightforwardly measurable variables that I am aware of.

Bitcoin is not a deflationary asset yet. It is a disinflationary asset until around year 2140 (with the rate decreasing every ~4 years and trending towards 0, at which point it will be deflationary).

For now its supply still inflates by ~1.7% a year.

Neither you, nor I will live to see that moment when the last bitcoin will be mined (as long as miners keep mining in our lifetime).

Bitcoin exists as an option to a lot of very inflationary assets (currencies which not that long ago almost reached 2 digit inflation rates) and having different kind of assets should be welcomed in my opinion, as it seems like a good way to diversify the risk you can't "straightforwardly measure".

I like to hold at least one asset for which I can almost guarantee a supply/emission won't change... better yet I can trustlessly verify it. If these propositions are not attractive to you or others, they don't have to acquire this asset either, it is completely opt-in, unlike the fiat money which your government forces you to acquire to pay their taxes.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#499

Post by wesapien »

fearface wrote: post #493
0raymond0 wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I learned about the limited supply of Bitcoin, I thought, "Great, no more rampant currency printing!" But then they developed the fork technology, which can split one Bitcoin into countless pieces. I guess I underestimated the extent of human greed. Thankfully, it's all digital and our math can handle it.

No, weird that you’re comment is so high up, but shows how little crypto knowledge is around in HN. A Bitcoin is a Bitcoin, but it consists of smaller units called Satoshis. Like Dollar and Cents. Since the beginning of Bitcoin. A fork is a copy of the underlying source code of Bitcoin, which in itself has no value at all. You would also need to find people who run nodes for your fork and start convincing exchanges t…

I thought it was the reverse. Satoshi is the unit at the code level and Bitcoin is just a representation for UX reasons.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#500

Post by the_gastropod »

dcolkitt wrote: post #410
lmm wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are memecoins a scam? I would say they're more like a massively multiplayer form of gambling. They're practically indistinguishable from penny-stock scams, and they almost always involve a bunch of outright lies in their promotional materials; the only reason you can argue that many buyers aren't deceived is because lying is so rampant and expected in that space that people take it as given that the claims are goin…

> All of which still fails to add up to anything actually working and useful, 15 years in. The first packet switched network came online in 1969. Fifteen years by 1984 almost all the use cases were hobby, and it'd be another ten years before the Internet really started changing life. Decentralized consensus is a fundamentally new computing primitive, similar to packet switched networks. Developing applications on top…

This is comically ahistorical
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