Bitcoin is basically the bond market replacement now.
Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
661–670 of 1001 posts
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#662Earlier quoted context omitted.
Western Union has been doing this for > 150 years.
Western Union is a nightmare to use. You need send and pickup in a physical location, sometimes the recipient needs specific forms of ID, and the fees are insane. I once sent $100 to someone in South America and it cost me $13. WU is a relic that targets and takes advantage of the less fortunate and those in 3rd world countries.
I just looked up the cost of doing a regular money transfer, and that adds up to that amount as well - plus extra for collection. International money transfer is expensive.
I just looked it up, for BTC you currently pay a transfer fee equivalent to $11, with spikes to $17 in the past month.
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#663Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many of us have been around crypto for a long time (meaning since 2010-2011) and have not seen any progress in positive terms. Most of crypto growth has been pure speculation/ crypto2crytpo related services/morally questionable uses. Positives * ... Sort of positive/sort of negative: Evading capital controls Being your own bank.. Big Negatives: * POW energy use - huge one * POS stakeholder issue * Hard to use for Joe…
What are the positive sides of "Evading capital controls"? Also, does POS here mean "piece of shit"?
Point of Sale maybe ...
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#664Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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. And this is reason enough to replace all other currencies with btc ? Because it's fast ? If people thought a little…
> Because it's fast ?
Not that fast: for most purposes you have to wait about an hour. Not as fast as centralised fast systems.
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#665Oh noes, if this starts a trend, becomes widespread, and businesses start hoarding crypto tokens instead of investing in building stuff, it could cause a great depression pretty much the same way gold hoarding caused the economy to collapse in 1929. When people, businesses and banks start hording tokens instead of investing in building and maintaining the production capacity of consumables, the ratio of value of toke…
> the same way gold hoarding caused the economy to collapse in 1929.
You state this is if it was a fact, but it's not. There are some theories that puts the blame on the gold standard, but there are many others and there's no consensus in the economic community on which is more correct.
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#666Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does that work?
Quantum computers can't find preimages of crypto hash functions, but potentially can recover private key if public key was disclosured. Your address is the hash of public key. When you reveal your address, you don't reveal your key. However, you do reveal your public key when making transfer from the address. So if you change BTC address every time you receive a tx, you will reveal only obsolete public keys which poi…
If you have this super powerful quantum computer, you can still front-run transactions.
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#667Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> There is not a single alternative service in the world that would have made this possible. Apart from any "send money to your relatives back home" service, sms banking in entire continents, or Hawala. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala
Thank you for sharing, I never knew that was a thing. If you don't take the comment at face value there's obviously differences between the two systems:
Bitcoin is well known globally whereas Hawala in a subset of countries.
In OP's example he has to trust the Bitcoin ATM whereas for Hawala you'd have to trust the honour system (thus at least 2 parties).
Bitcoin is digital whereas Hawala requires exchange of money in person. In OP's example this gives him the flexibility of not having to prearrange a transaction.
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#668Earlier quoted context omitted.
Western Union has been doing this for > 150 years.
Western Union is a nightmare to use. You need send and pickup in a physical location, sometimes the recipient needs specific forms of ID, and the fees are insane. I once sent $100 to someone in South America and it cost me $13. WU is a relic that targets and takes advantage of the less fortunate and those in 3rd world countries.
I once under estimated how much cash I needed in Germany. The easiest way I could find to fix that was to use WU to send myself cash. It was far easier than dealing with my own bank to fix the ATM card. Bitcoin was a non-starter.
I just don't get the Western Union hate.
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#669I don't understand all the Crypto hate on this site. Since when have hackers become the luddites to new ways of finance?
> I don't understand all the Crypto hate on this site. Since when have hackers become the luddites to new ways of finance? For me, it's because nobody can explain what the value offering of Bitcoin is - mainly the question 'what can I actualy do with a bitcoin?' . It's a bad currency because it is slow to exchange and costs lots of money to exchange - I can't use it to buy my coffee in the morning. It's a bad non-spe…
> mainly the question 'what can I actually do with a bitcoin?'
If we're talking about cryptocurrencies in general, then start here: https://whycryptocurrencies.com/eli5.html
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#670Bitcoin 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…
>You know what would be revolutionary? Getting rid of currency altogether. I agree. The future is not keeping track. If someone needs something they should have it. The only reason that hasn't happened is scarcity and logistics, which I believe we will solve in the not so distant future.
>>>If someone needs something they should have it.
What mechanism will exist to validate conflicting "needs" of different people in the not-so-distant future? Extreme example: we can't give everyone their own mansion with a beachfront view in order to prevent triggering them.