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Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

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Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#621

Post by blueblisters »

banachtarski wrote: post #567
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The forefront of the Bitcoin frenzy isn't even on the blockchain, it's at the exchanges. Hardcore tech people and those who don't (or can't) trust institutions with their Bitcoin will pay the transaction fees to get their money out of exchanges and into their own wallet. The average retail investor, however, doesn't want to be their own bank. They just want in on the price action, while letting the exchange manage th…

https://news.bitcoin.com/reddit-post-reporting-teslas-bitcoi... Title: Reddit Post Reporting Tesla's Bitcoin Purchase From a Month Ago Was a Hoax Reportedly, the person claiming to be a Tesla insider with intel on the bitcoin purchase was actually some political science major college student tripping on acid. Crazy how so many people ate this story up.

The post itself was a prank but the purchase is very real. It was self-reported by Tesla I believe.

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#622

Post by base698 »

incrudible wrote: post #360
disruptalot wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Relatively constant over a year" seems very loose don't you think? In the past year we've seen an unprecedented injection of money into the system. Presuming you're living in the U.S. have a look south of the border to find out how every national currency is always a few economic policies from throwing inflation targets out of the window.

Even countries that do have hyperinflation experience it at a somewhat predictable pace. With Bitcoin, you don't know if it's down 80% tomorrow, then up 200% the next day, then down 50% the day after. It's a huge tail risk.

In the Weimar republic eggs went from $0.5 to $500 pretty quickly and by 8 months eggs were $1,500,000. Happens quicker than you think and that's a hell of a tail risk.

Bitcoin has been pretty consistently up on any timeline over the last decade. I've been present every crash and my tolerance for keeping a small percentage of net worth in it increases each time.

You don't have to keep 100% of your cash in bitcoin. With the current pace of money printing I think not keeping something in it is basically negligence to your family.

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#623

Post by bluecalm »

phamilton wrote: post #487
incrudible wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a flat fee. The $18 may be the average currently, but it's on the high end. You'll probably be fine with $5. It all depends on how much you want the transaction to be in the next block. If you're sending $50,000 in BTC then you don't care about $18. If you're transferring smaller amounts, why are you using Bitcoin? Use Bitcoin Cash or Litecoin or one of these newfangled proof-of-stake currencies. Then it'll be a…

For reference, a wire transfer at a major bank like Wells Fargo is $34.

This is stunning to me. Wire transfers are free and fast in my country. I mean maybe some banks charge some people like 10c per transfer but they are mostly free. They are also very common way to transfer money to friends, paying someone, moving money around accounts etc.

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#624

Post by whoanow »

tsimionescu wrote: post #618
unnouinceput wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again with the energy point. The energy is insignificant compared with almost anything else. Wasn't some article that the sum of all standby electronics uses more energy than bitcoin and that's only in US? What are you, Apple? That gives no charger for "environmental reasons" while packaging its wireless headphones in a crapload of unnecessary plastics. If you are so energy consciousness then go bark at US military,…

Bitcoin consumes more electricity than entire countries - more than the Czech Republic for example. It consumes a third (or was it a fifth?) of all the electricity of all data centers in the world. It is by no means insignificant.

If bitcoins price continues to rise, miners will be greatly incentivized to further decrease power costs. I hope this leads to innovation in clean power tech, especially in developing nations.

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#625

Post by danans »

RapidFire wrote: post #498
tyre wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla's stock has never been a car manufacturer stock. That's why it has so much short-selling against it. If you value it as a car manufacturer and compare it's (underlying business numbers):(stock price) to anything else, it's insane. "at any company that made sense" is true, to a point. But the point of tesla has been, for a not-insignificant number of people, not meant to make sense. It's faith based. It's cult b…

>Elon Musk has strong parallels to Trump's appeal. Isn't that the strangest thing? If you watch videos of Elon he is no where near as charismatic as trump. I think it mostly stems from his success with SpaceX and earning accolades for being, "The Guy who does Impossible things". His having a car manufacturing company with an impossible share price just make sense.

I think the similarity is less their personalities, and more in their use social media for shock value and attention, and the quasi-religious devotion of many of their supporters.

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#626

Post by Wowfunhappy »

atweiden wrote: post #544
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of other stores of trust. You could buy index funds or government bonds or any number of other things, and the price will be less volatile than Bitcoin to boot. I know a lot of Bitcoin enthusiasts are skeptical of traditional institutions, but really, if all the world's governments go bankrupt you're going to have bigger problems. Heck, if you must use a cryptocurrency, at least pick one of the newer…

> There are plenty of other stores of trust. You could buy index funds or government bonds or any number of other things, and the price will be less volatile than Bitcoin to boot The point is Bitcoin created a store of trust sans institutions, one which is capable of being transacted across the internet without trusted third parties.

Yes, but is the practical use of that ability worth destroying the planet for?

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#627

Post by 6nf »

rohitb91 wrote: post #569
6nf wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every minute, there are thousands of bitcoin transactions happening at dozens of exchanges, and it's happening instantly with very low cost. Because it's off-chain. That's what you're missing here, not everything needs to be on-chain to be valuable. Exchanges and businesses and services can aggregate.

The whole point of bitcoin was to be decentralized. If bitcoin transactions are loaded up on an app like robinhood, then it’s no different than robinhoodbux

You don't have to use the aggregators, it's just more expensive without them.

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#628

Post by selestify »

ralusek wrote: post #505
Imnimo wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a way, putting your transactions on a public ledger is like voluntarily adding yourself to a watch list. The government (and everyone else) can then come and inspect your financial history at their leisure in the future.

It's just a public/private key generated. How would they ever find out who you are?

Many/most people go through online exchanges to buy their bitcoin instead of meeting with people locally. These online exchanges perform KYC and will readily provide the government with which addresses you sent your bitcoin to.

Even if the government didn't have that, they might still be able to deanonymize you via your transactions. Pseudonymity is not anonymity. If a single merchant identifies you as the buyer in a transaction, the government might be able to figure out the rest of your transactions in that chain.

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#629

Post by hndamien »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #433
azinman2 wrote: post #120

So it sounds like lemming group think. It seems like someone one should hold “just in case,” but no real valid reason to do so yet (that I’ve heard). We know transactions are slow and expensive, so it’s not a good replacement for ordinary commerce. It can be used to transfer across borders, but there often is asymmetry in capital movement that makes this difficult in the places you need it most (poor countries with r…

When "the market" does something that somebody considers to be irrational, the explanation is almost certainly that they either simply don't understand it, or that they do understand it and they're just being judgemental about the motives at play. The reason it has value is because people have demand for it. People have demand for it for a variety of reasons. I think it's reasonable to presume that a non-trivial port…

I believe that is one of the desirable features!

Re: Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto

#630

Post by solveit »

SomewhatLikely wrote: post #428
MarkPNeyer wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but no real valid reason to do so yet (that I’ve heard). I hold because i expect us to continue approaching the game-theoretic attractor. I've held for years and will keep holding. Every year, i see more and more people coming around to my perspective. How many years can you watch the price keep going up before you'll eventually consider that you might be missing something? > We know transactions are slow and expen…

> They can make doing so a crime, but don't have the technical ability to, say, freeze funds. If the governments of the world made it a crime for miners to include transactions involving certain blacklisted addresses in their blocks that could be a big step towards a freeze.

That would make it profitable to become an outlaw miner who doesn't care where the transactions are coming from. Then they will outcompete the above-board miners, because they will be able to spend more money to buy ASICs while remaining profitable, ensuring that control of the blockchain will be in the hands of criminals. The only way to prevent that is go nuclear and control the production and trade of silicon chips like we do with munitions.

And even this is a very low-probability scenario. The most likely outcome is that the US and a few European countries try to do this, China laughs and does nothing, and Bitcoin belongs to China pretty soon (if it doesn't already).

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