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How Texas is becoming a Bitcoin mining hub

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71–80 of 91 posts

Re: How Texas is becoming a Bitcoin mining hub

#71
post #9

I'm genuinely curious when the fat lady will stop singing in regards to Bitcoin. I sort-of understand the allure of ETH and its derivatives ("programmable money" does bring something new to the table), but BTC is supposed to be a "value store" yet is down 30% from November; or it's supposed to be a "currency" but you can't use it as one; or it's supposed to be "decentralized" but mining is monopolized by a handful of…

I'm part of that not so smart crowd also. I was naive and easily scammed, I bought some Bitcoin around 2013 or so, I think it was $100 for a Bitcoin then. Where do you think I should have stored my value instead?

Re: How Texas is becoming a Bitcoin mining hub

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the piece of paper that is GOOG stock has nothing to do with servers. You can't go to Google give them GOOG stock and say "give me some servers for that, please".

If you've got enough, yeah you can

No, you can't because Larry Page can step in, wave the golden action in your face and say "nope".

Re: How Texas is becoming a Bitcoin mining hub

#73
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"When you can consume 20% of your electricity on site and sell roughly 80% back into the grid" That would make sense if the mining made you more money than the grid and you had excess power, but what would be the point of selling your juice to the grid if that is the case? Seems to me like powering as many miners as you can with your supply of installed power would have to be the goal at all times and the grid would…

the return on electricity probably doesn't feature the potential explosive growth the same way bitc mining does. This is gambling on bitc but hedging using electricity sales.

Ok, that could be a win for consumers if bitcoin takes a dive. But for sure consumers should have to subsidize bitcoin operations like this who could also put a strain on the grid at times.

There needs to be regulation on those kinds of uses. The grid has to allocated to people and production of real goods and services first. Using it to mine bitcoin needs to be taxed when any of that power comes from public funded accesses to it.

Re: How Texas is becoming a Bitcoin mining hub

#74
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has assets (both physical like servers and virtual like user data) and revenue, the liquidation of which can make the shareholders whole. With BTC, there’s no underlying asset.

> With BTC, there’s no underlying asset. lolwut BTC defines computation/energy as a tradable asset -- that's literally the whole point of it.

To clarify the point the parent is making; if BTC goes belly-up, how will you get those “computation/energy assets” returned to the coinholders?

Parent is just pointing out a fundamental difference on how the underlying assets actually relate to the security.

Re: How Texas is becoming a Bitcoin mining hub

#75
post #9

I'm genuinely curious when the fat lady will stop singing in regards to Bitcoin. I sort-of understand the allure of ETH and its derivatives ("programmable money" does bring something new to the table), but BTC is supposed to be a "value store" yet is down 30% from November; or it's supposed to be a "currency" but you can't use it as one; or it's supposed to be "decentralized" but mining is monopolized by a handful of…

> BTC is supposed to be a "value store" yet is down 30% from November It certainly would be hard to argue against the fact that gold and silver are stores of value. (Even if you don't invest in them, it's pretty clear that the vast majority of market demand for precious metals comes from store of value.) Yet silver is currently 55% off its peak, just a few years ago gold was 40% off its peak. Store of value doesn't i…

Why is it hard to argue gold and silver aren't a good store of value? I've never considered them a good store of value, and I don't think I know anyone in my circle that hold silver/gold as a store of value. If one really wants to avoid investing in equities and estates, T notes are much less volatile and a better store of value than gold/silver.

Re: How Texas is becoming a Bitcoin mining hub

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> BTC is supposed to be a "value store" yet is down 30% from November It certainly would be hard to argue against the fact that gold and silver are stores of value. (Even if you don't invest in them, it's pretty clear that the vast majority of market demand for precious metals comes from store of value.) Yet silver is currently 55% off its peak, just a few years ago gold was 40% off its peak. Store of value doesn't i…

Why is it hard to argue gold and silver aren't a good store of value? I've never considered them a good store of value, and I don't think I know anyone in my circle that hold silver/gold as a store of value. If one really wants to avoid investing in equities and estates, T notes are much less volatile and a better store of value than gold/silver.

T notes don't store value wrt inflation, which is what precious metals are supposed to hedge against. Earlier chat about metals holding value when equities/bonds are selling off is misleading, imo.

Re: How Texas is becoming a Bitcoin mining hub

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> …down 30% from November… And up over 300,000% over its lifetime…your point in measuring from November arbitrarily? This statement doesn’t seem like “genuine curiosity” to me and more like your mind has already been made up.

With figures like that, are you really disproving his point (that it's a speculative financial instrument, not a value store)?

I don’t recall trying to disprove the point at all

Re: How Texas is becoming a Bitcoin mining hub

#78
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it doesn't. It's just a lie. BTC provides demand for cheap energy not for renewable. And it consumes the demand. It doesn't create this demand for others.

Cheapest energy is when renewables production peaks. Then it can be worth less than zero.

Part of renewable is short term storage.

You use that peak energy to create heat, charge a battery or do similar things.

You can easily create hydrogen.

But using it for searching for a hash is the worst idea.

If you would be able to use the heat output sure that could work but let's someone do that first

Until then doing anything else with this energy is critit!

Re: How Texas is becoming a Bitcoin mining hub

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google often buys back stock, so that's money going to investors that comes out of Google's revenues. That's positive-sum for investors. (The amount of money so far isn't nearly enough to justify their market cap, but presumably more will come over the years.) For Bitcoin, by design, the only possible source of revenue is other investors buying in later. This is zero sum in the long run for investors, and negative su…

Isn't Google buying back stock is just another inverstor willing to gamble on value of GOOG stock? I wonder why corporations buying back their stock is even legal. Isn't it quintessential insider trading?

No, you're confused. Google isn't like other investors because they control the supply of stock. They don't need to buy stock since they can create it. Google owning its own shares doesn't do anything just like writing an IOU to yourself doesn't do anything.

This is a way of returning money to shareholders, like paying a dividend. It's taxed differently because it increases the price of the stock, so it's capital gains.

Re: How Texas is becoming a Bitcoin mining hub

#80
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> BTC is supposed to be a "value store" yet is down 30% from November It certainly would be hard to argue against the fact that gold and silver are stores of value. (Even if you don't invest in them, it's pretty clear that the vast majority of market demand for precious metals comes from store of value.) Yet silver is currently 55% off its peak, just a few years ago gold was 40% off its peak. Store of value doesn't i…

> It certainly would be hard to argue against the fact that gold and silver are stores of value. I don't think gold and silver are stores of value, but (certain) Rolexes and Ferraris are. And so is real estate. > The dollar is a currency, but the majority of dollar owners live in foreign countries where you can't pay for things in dollars. Not sure if you've done much traveling, but the USD is basically usable everyw…

> I think this is a solution looking for a problem. It's extremely rare that a bank will freeze an account for non-legitimate reasons. But I mean, sure, you're technically correct: there's a non-zero probability BofA will freeze your account.

It’s lucky I guess that you don’t hold any unpopular political views. Let’s hope for your sake it stays that way. If you for example wanted to donate to Wikileaks or Julian Assange’s defense or the Canadian Truckers - the banks would very likely want to censor those transactions. Or imagine you held political views that called into question the validity of the big banks or you if you wanted to get in the business of sex toys or some other ‘immoral’ industry, suddenly censorship resistance matters quite a bit.

Just because Bitcoin’s censorship-resistant properties haven’t benefited you personally yet, doesn’t mean they don’t offer the world value by means of freedom to engage in commerce - even if the bankers would prefer you didn’t.

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