641–650 of 1001 posts
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Western Union has been doing this for > 150 years.
Have you ever tried to use Western Union while in a foreign country? I did it in Vietnam. Everything was a barrier. Language, paperwork, carrying cash around safely, time and finally most importantly, fees. No thanks.
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I don't get why bitcoin is worth so much.Bitcoin is called a store of value like gold, but gold has inherent uses. If the price of gold went to zero then you could still use it to make jewellery or use it for electrical conductivity. If the price of bitcoin goes to zero then it's worthless. It's also not environmentally friendly and bitcoin mining uses up 0.21% of the world's power supply. And all of this energy is u…
Yeah this confused me for a long time as well. I then realized that there is tremendous value in something that acts as a reliable store of value. For example, rich people are known to buy expensive art and then lock it away in a warehouse. Why do this? You're not getting any value out of the piece. The reason is that the sole purpose of the art piece is to be a reliable store of value. You're paying a lot for someth…
I don't understand all the Crypto hate on this site. Since when have hackers become the luddites to new ways of finance?
I'm tired of always hearing from Crypto. It's just money, and it doesn't solve any problem. It's beyond boring honestly.
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“The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.” -Satoshi Nakamoto Feb. 2009 If this isn’t resonating with you after the past year, I don’t know. I was forced to watch my government bungle a pandemic in the worst possible way and then asked t…
You should also rescind your right to streets and other public services. You don’t get to pick and choose which part of your countries debt you get to keep and which you can avoid.
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Let me explain bitcoin in a way that hackers will understand. Bitcoin is javascript. Hackers don't like javascript. It's got a lot of terrible quirks. There are so many languages better than javascript. But that doesn't matter. Javascript is ubiquitous, and you can't avoid it. Bitcoin is the same. Either you accept it as the way things are and profit from it, or you keep pounding your head against the wall.
Yeah but Javascript can actually be used to create a blockchain or any number of applications. I bet SpaceX could land a Falcon-9 with Javascript if they wanted nightmare difficulty. Bitcoin's main purpose for everyone I know is to buy drugs and treat as an 'investment'.
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You will never be able to price anything in Bitcoin, ever. It's volatile because deflationary currencies are inherently volatile. The future of finance is in some future crypto that provides for economic-growth-based inflation/deflation of the money supply. The Fed does this manually, and that's what keeps USD more-or-less stable.
FWIW, there's plenty of volatile fiat currencies that things are priced in today. Stability has never been required for pricing.
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I don't get why bitcoin is worth so much.Bitcoin is called a store of value like gold, but gold has inherent uses. If the price of gold went to zero then you could still use it to make jewellery or use it for electrical conductivity. If the price of bitcoin goes to zero then it's worthless. It's also not environmentally friendly and bitcoin mining uses up 0.21% of the world's power supply. And all of this energy is u…
Gold's inherent value represents less than 1% of its total value. The rest is monetary premium. Bitcoin is 100% monetary premium, ie. inter-subjective value. Another thing to consider is that people buy gold jewellery as a store of value. You don't spend $30k on a watch if you don't think it will keep its value.
Yes you do. You’ll almost never get the retail value out of a piece of jewelry if you try to resell it.
I am embarrassed by the industry. How many of our generation's best and brightest minds are doing crypto and day trading? Imagine if these minds were focused on societal problems -- energy, health, food. I know multiple Harvard CS graduates who went right into the crypto space. What a waste.
Says the "Product Manager at a mid size fortune 500 tech company", how much of your day consists on focusing 100% on societal problems really? Besides shitting on other peoples choices, why don't you try to reach out to the graduates and ask them why they work in the cryptocurrency space? Most of the people I know, including myself, have "improving the world" as the reason for working on cryptocurrencies. Even though…
No
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While away on vacation, I once sent $1000 in cold hard cash, on a Sunday, to an unbanked person in Los Angeles, in less than 1 hour, thanks to bitcoin and the recipient withdrawing it for cash at a Bitcoin ATM. There is not a single alternative service in the world that would have made this possible. If people thought a little beyond their personal use cases, they would understand the utility of Bitcoin/crypto for ma…
Do you really think this is a technical limitation of the current banking systems and a missing "feature"? Or is it the Bitcoin technology that "solves" this? The whole reason that it is not allowed to send money to an anonymous person is... Well don't actually know where to start explaining it. Anti money laundering? Counter-terrorism financing? Financial transaction reporting?
Bitcoin is a mystery to me. Somehow it's hailed as revolutionising the economy, by replacing currency with a worse kind of currency. It feels like this is where all the "how to get rich quick" book writers and other hustle bros went and created one giant financial pyramid, which works in quite simple way: - buy bitcoin - tell everyone around how revolutionary it is, so they buy it and what you holding increases in va…
While away on vacation, I once sent $1000 in cold hard cash, on a Sunday, to an unbanked person in Los Angeles, in less than 1 hour, thanks to bitcoin and the recipient withdrawing it for cash at a Bitcoin ATM. There is not a single alternative service in the world that would have made this possible. If people thought a little beyond their personal use cases, they would understand the utility of Bitcoin/crypto for ma…
As a currency it's dreadful, suffering from tens of thousands of percent in deflation (= value increased relative to the cost of goods).
As a trade product it's terrible, suffering from a lack of oversight from e.g. the SEC, opening it up to price manipulation (see MtGox creating artificial demand, the Tether money printer, the smaller crypto's being fucked around with by traders who have enough money to throw around to influence the price, and the meme coins being influenced by Elon Musk making a tweet about it (although afaik he can't be accused of manipulation directly, this time).