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Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

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Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#591

The strong anti-Bitcoin sentiment on HN is still amusing. It goes way back - 13 years or more. Having read many of these negative comments, I think part of this sentiment boils down to the commenter seeing no point to Bitcoin. Just this thread has examples. It must be more than a little annoying to feel very strongly that Bitcoin is pointless, but to also notice that it's still here. Year after year. If that shoe wer…

Hacker News was pro-crypto circa 2015 when Coinbase launched. The change of the tone here is mainly because of the changed audience. Hacker News was originally a forum for founders and hackers. Now it is a general forum for salarymen software developers.

I didn’t know that the hacker news demographic had changed so much. Are there any stats on this anywhere or is it a general feeling that you have?

And if so then where do all the hackers hang out now?

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#592
post #558
post #531

My prediction is that Bitcoin will become fully institutionalized within twenty years, to the point that the “Bitcoin” held by investors are entirely disconnected from the theoretical blockchain. A similar thing happened with stocks. Not so long ago they used to be physical pieces of paper. You could trade shares peer-to-peer and even anonymously by handing over the share certificate to someone in person. For dividen…

The possibility of change exists, but one of the hardest promises Bitcoin makes is that you can't change the rules mid-game like what happened with stocks. That is one of the most attractive things about this asset class - if the US regulators want to change how a crypto is traded ... tough biscuits. They have to convince the market participants, globally, to trade the new way. The bar might be orders of magnitude hi…

> but one of the hardest promises Bitcoin makes is that you can't change the rules mid-game

Am I misremembering or did the other blockchain do exactly that in response to the DAO hack?

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#593

Looks like these are the 11 tickers? Bitwise (BITB) ARK Invest/21Shares (ARKB) Invesco Galaxy Bitcoin ETF (BTCO) iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) VanEck Bitcoin Trust (HODL) Franklin Bitcoin ETF (EZBC) Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust (FBTC) WisdomTree Bitcoin Trust (BTCW) Valkyrie Bitcoin Fund (BRRR) Hashdex Bitcoin Futures ETF (DEFI) Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC)

Most of then operate in Europe already. I am personally holding some already (3 for an extra risk split). Most of these old ones seem to be listed in Germany and Paris.

"3 for an extra risk split"

I guess in the end they are all fully dependent on Coinbase.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#594
post #578

Earlier 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…

The popularity of these scammy exchanges despite the massive red flags shows that this is actually what customers want. They don't want the theoretical advantages of permissionless blockchains and private keys, they just want penny stocks that trade 24/7 and are called "crypto" because it sounds cool. So institutions will take advantage of that desire for convenience and work with regulators to turn "crypto" into jus…

> They don't want the theoretical advantages

Surely only a fool would want advantages that were theoretical only?

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#595
post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just going to point out that if that is your concern luckily the world is going over to renewables so that particular objection will be gone soon anyway. This is dangerously missing the peril of the current situation. The problem with our current energy makeup is not "there's not enough renewables". The problem with our current energy makeup is "there are too many carbon emissions". As a first-order effect, it does…

> Please trust me when I say that I do not give a damn about the price of bitcoin. What I care about is stopping runaway energy consumption, and from that perspective proof-of-work is the biggest existential threat to humanity since the atom bomb. Mate, this is ridiculous. Global energy usage was 179000 Twh (terawatt hours) in 2022. ( https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption ) Bitcoin energy usage was…

> Bitcoin energy usage accounted for 0.11% of global energy usage and you think it is the biggest threat to humanity since the A-Bomb? Bitcoin is entirely irrelevant to the grand scheme of things re climate emissions.

GP already explained why he thinks that and you did not spend a word addressing that. Here is what GP said:

> 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 increases the price, which incentivizes mining, which costs more energy, and so on in a vicious cycle.

Basically, for BTC to "go to the moon" its energy consumption must also "go to the moon".

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also if you want to attribute the decline of Rome to any monetary policy, deflation is much more likely. Periods of deflation in the 4th and 5th centuries led to hoarding and burying of coins rather than productive use of wealth, leading to declines and further deflation. Rome never escaped from this deflationary trap and many of these coin hoards were never dug up. Ironically bitcoin attempts to replicate this faile…

Explain how Bitcoin, which for the next 100 years will continue to print new coins, is attempting to replicate deflation. Maybe inadvertently, by people losing access to their Bitcoins for various reasons, but the design itself certainly isn't deflationary. Not even in its final form, the supply will merely be constant. Also I find it humorus when people complain about deflation, which pretty much is the natural cond…

> for the next 100 years will continue to print new coins

The new coin supply (block subsidy) is reducing at an exponential rate and will soon not be able to even compensate for the rate of lost coins.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#597
post #558
post #531

My prediction is that Bitcoin will become fully institutionalized within twenty years, to the point that the “Bitcoin” held by investors are entirely disconnected from the theoretical blockchain. A similar thing happened with stocks. Not so long ago they used to be physical pieces of paper. You could trade shares peer-to-peer and even anonymously by handing over the share certificate to someone in person. For dividen…

The possibility of change exists, but one of the hardest promises Bitcoin makes is that you can't change the rules mid-game like what happened with stocks. That is one of the most attractive things about this asset class - if the US regulators want to change how a crypto is traded ... tough biscuits. They have to convince the market participants, globally, to trade the new way. The bar might be orders of magnitude hi…

this assumes USD hegemony is a distant memory. does bitcoin have the largest weapons cache and standing military in the history of humanity?

best of luck to your imagined future; but it reads very naive to me.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#598

The strong anti-Bitcoin sentiment on HN is still amusing. It goes way back - 13 years or more. Having read many of these negative comments, I think part of this sentiment boils down to the commenter seeing no point to Bitcoin. Just this thread has examples. It must be more than a little annoying to feel very strongly that Bitcoin is pointless, but to also notice that it's still here. Year after year. If that shoe wer…

My struggle with it is mainly that it doesn’t seem to accomplish any of its goals very well, while having really big downsides. A few examples:

It’s difficult to use it for circumventing government controls, since so many of the on and off ramps are subject to regulation and it’s difficult (and expensive) to transact truly anonymously.

It sucks as a store of value since it’s so volatile.

Similar to the point above, it’s increasing subject to government regulation (namely the US) in a de facto sense.

The UX sucks, and mistakes can be super punishing. If you make a mistake then you have no recourse and everyone will applaud the code working as intended, unless the mistake is really big in which case the “code as law” folks will fork the network to rollback the mistake.

In the same vein as the item above, scams are rampart and there is very little recourse once scammed. As a result, it’s tough to see actual widespread adoption as a currency (and not just a speculative asset sitting in a brokerage account somewhere) since the level of technical sophistication needed to use it as a currency without risking wiping yourself out puts it way out of reach of most people.

It sucks for transactions, since the fees are so high and make small transactions bit feasible.

Proof of work sucks and is super wasteful.

There are probably plenty of other ways it misses the mark I’m missing as well. It frustrates me because it feels so fatally flawed, but people take it so seriously. If popular sentiment was that BTC was just a fun thing to speculate on, in the same realm as TSLA or buying short dated calls on the VIX, I would be totally on board! But trying to act like it’s a serious currency that can compete with USD or whatever just seems somewhat delusional. I think blockchain and ETH style smart contracts are super cool tech, and could have super productive applications that legitimately make the world a better, more efficient place, but BTC in its current form doesn’t check that box for me.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For every boomer retiree there's a young person pumping new money into the S&P and social security

That’s not how stocks work outside of daytrading/short term holding. My ownership of a stock is a claim on a portion of a company’s assets and future productive addition to the economy. The stock market is a positive sum game. If I buy a share of ABC Gold mining company, it’s because I expect them to dig some actual gold out of the ground and expanding the economy. They can distribute a dividend to me after then sell…

Same applies to bitcoin - no more net value needs to be invested into bitcoin and the USD price will continue to increase at ~7%, which is the rate at which the USD is being devalued through supply inflation over the last 100 years.

If I lent my bitcoin to ABC Gold Mining like you have, then I could expect to additionally receive interest on my loan.

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