Live data from Hacker News

Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

cointelegraph.com

691–700 of 1001 posts

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don't want the theoretical advantages Surely only a fool would want advantages that were theoretical only?

But they are not theoretical, users who have their own crypto wallets have been unaffected by all the failed exchanges (MtGox, FTX, etc.) There are other actual advantages that some people today benefit from, like avoiding confiscation and uncensorable transactions ( which would have been appreciated by the Canadian truckers when they were debanked), or protection against high inflation (like many Venezuelans and Arg…

You're absolutely right, though I took the parent's main point to be that it's incredible how little people seem to care about these actually-very-practical advantages. (The advantages must seem purely theoretical to people so willing to throw them away.)

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#692
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they diverge, an arbitrage opportunity will appear which market participants will jump on.

A trade like this (partly) is what blew up 3AC. Borrowing has cost and if futures funding premium turns against you and your perceived arb, along with a further divergence against you, it’s game over. Funnily enough that GBTC gap basically closed today; it was a >30% discount when 3AC died. Very nice if you get paid to hedge! Not so nice when you’re paying 0.1% in hourly funding premium.

You don't need futures to arb this. You can demand a payout in cash if the ETF price is higher than the Bitcoin price. There will be market makers jumping on that.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#693
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…

My prediction: it'll do a Gamestop. Huge initial interest, followed by a gradual fade. Regulating out the gambling and the exchanges cheating customers makes it less volatile, and therefore less interesting.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#694
post #659
post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The main problem here is that you're looking at the energy use as a waste. It's absolutely not It is. Mining is literally bruteforcing…

It's an abstraction of work. All sound money requires equivalent value work to produce. And the work done is stored as protective "walls" in the blockchain, one on top of each block, piled higher and higher as time goes on, to become impenetrable. It's quite beautiful.

It's literally doing busywork just to assign a value to the mining. It's beautiful if you're a business major who has no regard to real world.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#695
post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i can't parse your comment, but it seems to presuppose that the roman empire fell on one particular day; there seem to be a lot of candidates, though. which one do you mean

There are several days that could be candidates for the day Rome fell. There are several reasons we could argue that the Roman Catholic Church is the continuation of Rome and so Rome never truly fell. That is what I was trying to say in the previous comment.

it probably makes more sense to argue that the byzantine empire is the continuation of rome, but in a broader sense, all of human civilization is the continuation of the indus valley civilization

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#696
post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simple fact that there's no societies left using shells, beads, Rai stones, etc. Only the hardest money survived - gold. However although gold is hard, it fair to say that it was beaten somewhat by soft fiat money, simply due to the overwhelmingly better other monetary qualities of fiat (e.g. portability and divisibility) especially in the digital age. Bitcoin is a hard money that takes the best monetary qualitie…

What does it means that a society "wins"? Gold isn't money - it's a commodity. It isn't even a great store of value over that last thousand years or so.

> What does it means that a society "wins"?

It grows stronger/more efficient compared to others.

> Gold isn't money - it's a commodity. It isn't even a great store of value over that last thousand years or so.

I don't want to argue semantics, but yes gold certainly isn't great at storing value - its supply doubles every 40 years and over the last 100+ years has been slowly demonetised as economic value moved into fiat.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#697
post #599

With quantum computing growing rapidly, aren't all blockchains in danger of being decrypted and drained in the future?

I'm not concerned about quantum computers becoming a threat to cryptocurrencies for several reasons:

- No timeline for working quantum computers of the necessary size yet.

- Blockchains can and will upgrade to newer quantum-resistant cryptographic primitives when needed.

- Bitcoin addresses are only part of the public key, the full public key is only published when a transaction is made. This increases the search space tremendously, as you don't even know the public key you are trying to crack. This is another reason why it is best practice to not reuse Bitcoin addresses, always move coins to fresh ones.

This page in the Bitcoin Wiki [0] has more details about quantum computing threats to Bitcoin.

[0] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Quantum_computing_and_Bitcoin

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#698
post #599

With quantum computing growing rapidly, aren't all blockchains in danger of being decrypted and drained in the future?

If it happens, it won't happen overnight and chains could migrate to different algorithms. IIRC, Monero switched hashing algos, even for unrelated reasons.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Constant supply creates deflation because population/usage increases. You're right that products will cost less - which is exactly what deflation is. The reason it's because taboo in modern times is ostensibly because it creates a disincentive to investment. Why invest in something that might return 5% with some risk, if your money will be worth an almost guaranteed 5% more in a year anyhow? IMO the "real" reason is…

If by creating a "disincentive to investment" you mean a disincentive to gamble their hard earned money on the stock market, then yes. The current situation where (at least before interest rate was somewhat high) the average man had to spend time and effort by going to the stock market with their money is not healthy. You shouldn't have to gamble your money just so it doesn't lose value by merely holding it. Investments will of course still exist, it will just be of a higher quality/yield. Because now there's actually an alternative to "investing" on stocks.

Re: Spot Bitcoin ETF receives official approval from the SEC

#700
post #668
post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decentralised exchanges provide a solution, but if a country tries to stifle bitcoin like this, then the bitcoiners can just leave and live somewhere else, taking their wealth with them as 12 words in their head. History shows that societies with the hardest money win.

> just leave and live somewhere else, taking their wealth with Wealth can't really use to purchase anything with is not real wealth. If you can't convert bitcoin to $/€ it becomes effectively worthless > History shows that societies with the hardest money win. Objectively not true. Look at what happened with Britain after 1918 when tried doing everything they could to stick with "hard" money and avoid devaluation/dro…

You can always convert bitcoin to fiat and vice versa. Other countries/currencies exist and regardless, we have decentralised exchanges like Bisq.

> Look at what happened with Britain after 1918 when tried doing everything they could to stick with "hard" money and avoid devaluation/dropping the gold standard.

Soft money wins in the short term. Hard money wins in the long term.

Post reply on HN