Bitcoin is speculative, and will die a speculative death.
Until it is backed by something e.g. mandatory taxation like the USD, then its value is only as good as the next financial misinformation campaign. and here comes the btc boys.
Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record
61–70 of 263 posts
Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record
#62Bitcoin and other compute-intensive cryptocurrencies should be banned or taxed so heavily that it's financially infeasible to use them. The amount of energy being wasted (reportedly more than seven nuclear power plants worth) on what is essentially an unproductive project is quite absurd. In a world where we should all be increasingly concerned about the looming climate catastrophe, it's wholly irresponsible for Bitc…
> The amount of energy being wasted (reportedly more than seven nuclear power plants worth) on what is essentially an unproductive project is quite absurd. Orders of magnitude less than the amount of energy being "wasted" sustaining the millions of employees of the banking industry. I use scare quotes because the energy is being spent , not wasted. > I mean what would be left except for just buying into the pyramid s…
I think most people would agree that finance is too large in most developed countries, but it is also important. It's not like the large companies that pay investment banks to help them with their IPOs or with issuing bonds just want to waste money.
Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record
#63Cryptocurrency is still a misunderstood concept for many ppl in the financial world. As use and integration increases, btc will likely stabilise. Meanwhile, we get interesting volatility.
Like what? What economic value do cryptocurrencies provide over our traditional banking system?
- being deflationary is not a feature, it's a bug. An inflationary currency incentivises you to invest it, otherwise you lose real purchasing power. With a deflationary currency, you can just stuff it anywhere and see gains. You steal from tomorrow. As the material wealth of the world increases, our money supply should increase to match. AFAIK there isn't any popular crypto that can easily adjust how many tokens are mined each year.
- almost every crypto's transaction throughput is ~4 orders of magnitude below what Amex/Mastercard/Visa can process.
- most of the ease of using crypto is only because it bypasses AML/KYC laws. Venmo and Zelle would be far more convenient otherwise.
I can't see it as anything other than speculation.
Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record
#64Bitcoin and other compute-intensive cryptocurrencies should be banned or taxed so heavily that it's financially infeasible to use them. The amount of energy being wasted (reportedly more than seven nuclear power plants worth) on what is essentially an unproductive project is quite absurd. In a world where we should all be increasingly concerned about the looming climate catastrophe, it's wholly irresponsible for Bitc…
The resources consumed by Bitcoin should be compared with those consumed by other transaction-clearing and store-of-value methods. Credit-card companies consume a few percent of revenue for a large chunk of consumer transactions. Gold mining is an environmental catastrophe [1]. Bitcoin is far from perfect, but it is important to place it in context with other systems that achieve the same ends. As bitcoin-mining tech…
Energy consumption in the classical model is substantially lower because if you scaled up Bitcoin to the size of Visa alone it would exceed the amount of energy generated on earth a few times over and the amount of ewaste generated on earth too.
This is a classic pro Bitcoin argument that’s trivially falsifiable.
The fact folks here think their transactions in the online economy should heat their homes is so bananas to me. What is this, the industrial revolution? I mean, I know we’ve got our plague doctor masks on but that’s not intentional.
Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record
#65While the market is likely driven by fomo and manipulation, cryptocurrencies do have valuable use-cases. See this book[0] for a list of some and an explanation of how Bitcoin works. [0]: https://whycryptocurrencies.com/
There is not a single use case better solved by cryptocurrencies or blockchain than by a classical solution. Name one, I’ll wait. When there is I’ll eat my, err, hat.
there are many problems better solved by bitcoin than classical solutions. one example is as a bank account in a low trust society with high inflation (there are many such countries). creating a bitcoin wallet is extraordinarily easy and once you've acquired the bitcoin it's uncensorable and unconfiscatable. this is better than the classical solution, right?
Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record
#66Bitcoin and other compute-intensive cryptocurrencies should be banned or taxed so heavily that it's financially infeasible to use them. The amount of energy being wasted (reportedly more than seven nuclear power plants worth) on what is essentially an unproductive project is quite absurd. In a world where we should all be increasingly concerned about the looming climate catastrophe, it's wholly irresponsible for Bitc…
We should tax/price externalities in general, there is no need to single out cryptocurrency.
Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record
#67Cryptocurrency is still a misunderstood concept for many ppl in the financial world. As use and integration increases, btc will likely stabilise. Meanwhile, we get interesting volatility.
> Meanwhile, we get interesting volatility.
Rather than an attempt at designing a currency with really desirable properties, it seems like intent behind bitcoin was to take the WORST aspects of currency: scarcity, extreme volatility, unground it from reality, and computerize all that to make it even faster and more reckless.
Economic crashes devaste the working class when inflation skyrockets or goes into manic up-down bulimic cycles that seem to benefit only financiers. ... Yet this is what people have made as a _CENTRAL_ feature of cryptocurrency?
Bitcoin/crypto-currency makes me question even the most fundamental notions of what money "is". Whatever it becomes, I wish that crypto-currency was just a way to exchange goods and services with some useful features rather than a thrill-toy for wealthy speculators. I guess that would be too boring for people?
Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record
#68Would be great to short-sell right now, but that's almost impossible to do the last I checked.
You can short crypto at many places, with 100x leverage. See Poloniex, Binance, Bitmex, etc.
Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
You would love Eth 2.0 then! The idea of proof of stake is to remove waste from the equation
Proof of stake does not have the same security properties as proof of work. The arguments are too complicated for me to usefully communicate them in a short HN post, but as a heuristic just keep in mind that most cryptocurrencies haven't adopted PoS despite it facially seeming better/"less wasteful".
My favorite argument: "it's too complicated for me to explain!"
Re: Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is not a single use case better solved by cryptocurrencies or blockchain than by a classical solution. Name one, I’ll wait. When there is I’ll eat my, err, hat.
The permissionless nature does enable some use cases where the overhead associated with the classical solutions makes them impractical. With Bitcoin, anyone can start a cash-to-bitcoin/bitcoin-to-cash office. All you need is a phone with Internet. Could Western Union solve the same problem? In theory, yes, in practice, the overhead cost of joining the network means the guy with a phone in some remote village isn't go…
The remote African Village use case is already solved by mobile money solutions like M-Pesa, which are cheap and easy to use via SMS or low-end feature phones. The cost of buying a smartphone with data plan to use a BTC wallet is prohibitively expensive for most people in developing countries.