Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the price of putting someone else into starvation which you ignored…
Markets are not zero sum. Value is "created* in a growing market.
Except Bitcoin market is zero sum. No value is being created.
Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC
581–590 of 1001 posts
Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC
#582Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reason that bitcoin's energy usage is a philosophical nightmare is because it's a system where energy consumption is the product. As opposed to industries which are "merely" energy-intensive, let's take aluminum refining for example, spending more energy to refine aluminum does not create more demand for aluminum, but spending more energy on bitcoin increases the price of bitcoin, which induces more demand, which…
The main problem here is that you're looking at the energy use as a waste. It's absolutely not, but in order to understand why, you need to understand what's wrong with the current monetary system and the terrible effects it is having on the world. You're also missing that bitcoin's game theory means that it will ultimately only use unwanted/wasted energy. Bitcoin miners can mine anywhere in the world and those tryin…
> The main problem here is that you're looking at the energy use as a waste. It's absolutely not
It is. Mining is literally bruteforcing…
Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC
#583Actual document: https://www.sec.gov/files/rules/sro/nysearca/2024/34-99306.p... and archived one, just in case you receive 404: https://twitter.com/coinfabrik/status/1745192170942800341
HODL and BRRR... Nice.
Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC
#584I can't help thinking that Bitcoin ETFs could mark "Peak Bitcoin". When lots of people are trading it at their high street broker in their regular account, Bitcoin becomes just a number in a box - a crypto currency without crypto - with nothing underlying it.
"Nothing underlying it" is a pretty good description of crypto tokens in general.
Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC
#585Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually a huge amount of Bitcoin that people bought from large institutions over the last 5 - 10 years was already not on the blockchain. (1) a customer would go to an exchange’s website and purchase 1 Bitcoin (2) the exchange would add 1 to an internal counter representing the Bitcoin balance for that customer on their internal SQL database (3) the exchange would use / trade that money sent by the customer to try t…
That’s not at all fractional banking. That’s called a bucket shop.
Yes you’re right, “fractional banking” may have been a bad choice of words on my part. The point I was trying to get across was that assets given to a crypto exchange would be lent out and used, instead of custodied.
This is the same as a bank. When you give them money they lend it out and use it for other purposes which is why “bank runs” exist if everyone asks for their money back at the same time
In fact the US regulators have been very hostile in recent years to banks where you give them money and they just custody it for you safely, even for a fee
Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC
#586The only thing I am concerned about is "paper bitcoin" and rehypothecation. Is there anything published about how ETF entities might prove they have custody of the amount of bitcoin they claim (in other words, proof of reserves)?
This is described in the every prospectus that was approved today. Prospectuses are public.
Can you quote the relevant parts then, since you have apparently read all the prospectuses? I am wondering the same thing. Will they publish the custody addresses?
Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC
#587Earlier quoted context omitted.
With ETFs, you don't need to be concerned with reserves. I can buy the ETF, go to the market-makers, and ask them to exchange the ETF for either bitcoin, or a cash equivalent. If they can't deliver, they're in trouble. There's a two way arb in ETFs which keeps the price tracking accurate: - if the ETF trades higher than bitcoin on crypto exchanges: the market makers can simply buy bitcoin on exchange, sell the ETF on…
> I can just buy the ETF, ask to redeem to bitcoin and pocket the difference. Can only redeem to cash. https://www.etfcentral.com/news/two-important-things-need-kn...
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Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC
#588Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Unlike every other attempt at electronic cash that came before it, Bitcoin also doesn't need the approval of any person, police force, legislative body, military, or government. But then can't you see the irony of writing that sentence when the article title is literally "Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC ". That's the thing that's so baffling to me - if you're saying BTC is so great that it…
This is circular reasoning. It doesn't need the approval, what it shows is official capitulation to a "distributed, trustless currency". That's the big news.
On the contrary... bitcoin desperately needs this approval. The current (and future) price of BTC is absolutely predicated upon the greater fool theory.
The network is dependent on miners. Miners earn bitcoin but spend dollars to create it. They're dependent on price appreciation to provide the liquidity that sustains their business. Without this approval, who is going to continue to pay more for bitcoin?
Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC
#589Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yes this is accurate, satoshi is the unit and Bitcoin is more of a UX thing
Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC
#590Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some people are just like that. The same thing happens on the other side of the fence alarmingly often, where someone will claim Bitcoin is the second coming of Christ and sell their home before knowing basic technical details about the network. Or people who fully understand the system, and deliberately lie about a coin's functionality for petty gain. On either side there are people promoting altruistic regulation a…
> Very plainly, you're risking normal money on a venture that doesn't promote anything other than greed and black market transactions. You could quite say the same about any privacy or encryption or really anything that protects you from a centralized entity taking your rights/property. It’s a bit absurd that people are really that blind that they think this is all there is to crypto. Your same logic would apply to d…
How do bitcoins protect you from centralization when they are mostly used via coinbase and the likes?