521–530 of 747 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eh, when does it really matter? The only time I care about speed is when buying something, and the more expensive that something is, the less fast it needs to be.
If you have a truck waiting to load at a warehouse somewhere waiting for your £200k payment to clear, then yes, the speed really really matters.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It effectively establishes a billion dollar bounty for any party who can rewrite enough blocks to erase it. To do what exactly? Nobody can redirect the transaction to themselves and the best they can do is erase it. 51% attacking the network will cost you a lot , and you won't actually win anything in your attack. Even if the owner of the coins is the attacker, you can only win by double-spending the transaction by…
If the liquidity is enough, 1) Short Bitcoin to the tune of several Billion dollars. 2) Do a 51% attack and essentially prove it's worthlessness. 3) Profit
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you now understand why we need something like Bitcoin? (Even if it's gonna a be a newer version of it in the future, or something even more private etc.)
Doesn't this just show that Bitcoin is worthless in comparison to a state-backed fiat currency? It doesn't matter if you have all the bitcoin in the world, the US government has more violence at its disposal than you could ever buy, and ultimately violence is the only thing that ensures the ownership of anything. If a government wanted something from you they could just take it, that's the real reason that the money…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
94EH and close to 50TH for top of the line equipment. Even if we were extremely generous would be a billion in hardware at the very least (I am assuming $500 manufacturing cost)
The Market Cap of Bitcoin is $184,000,000,000 Theoretically, I can spend that much to make it's value go to $0. (yes, there are liquidity and other concerns, but you get the point)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It effectively establishes a billion dollar bounty for any party who can rewrite enough blocks to erase it. To do what exactly? Nobody can redirect the transaction to themselves and the best they can do is erase it. 51% attacking the network will cost you a lot , and you won't actually win anything in your attack. Even if the owner of the coins is the attacker, you can only win by double-spending the transaction by…
If the liquidity is enough, 1) Short Bitcoin to the tune of several Billion dollars. 2) Do a 51% attack and essentially prove it's worthlessness. 3) Profit
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Try doing 100K in EUR/USD/GBP... It's likely not free (but probably not outrageous either)... Last time I did something like that the transaction cost was small ( On the flip side, I saw a payment go through for one our suppliers today. $50 invoice. > $25 processing fee because it was a european bank processing a USD transaction. :/
Bitcoin to bitcoin might be cheap, but the crypto exchanges seems to take quite a cut when you convert to national currency. Something like 1.5% in the case of Coinbase.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't this just show that Bitcoin is worthless in comparison to a state-backed fiat currency? It doesn't matter if you have all the bitcoin in the world, the US government has more violence at its disposal than you could ever buy, and ultimately violence is the only thing that ensures the ownership of anything. If a government wanted something from you they could just take it, that's the real reason that the money…
Fortunately those of us who live in the United States also have the protection of the U.S. Constitution, which provides a glimmer of hope that we can seek restitution when the government deploys its violence illegally. Who knows how much longer that will hold up though...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They could prevent you from spending the coins, though, by threatening anyone who accepts a transfer of the 'seized' coins.
Does the crypto community actually stop people from spending stolen coins? No, they send off alerts but the coins still get used.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hash rate is 90+m terahash and increasing, good luck R&Ding the chips and obtaining enough to achieve. Retail pricing is around 3k per 50 TH/s, and that is just for hardware.
There is a reason you are lurking in HN instead of working in a hedge fund. The theoretical maximum value one can gain from Bitcoin going to $0 is it's market cap ($184,000,000,000). If you take out the liquidity and risk, I can spend upto $184B to make the Bitcoin go to 0. If you are state actor, you can direct all the energy and all the computers to attack Bitcoin
And really, if you’re talking about limiting cases, you’re bounded by what your counterparties are good for, and by what your relevant regulators will let you get away with (or, depending on who your counterparties are, how far you can go before you end up in a ditch somewhere)