Bitcoin surpasses $50K as major companies jump into crypto • Hacker News Board

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

#731

Post by vmception » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

ohgodplsno wrote: post #654

whoanow wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right. 60% of the hashrate in China, where 60% of the power comes from coal, to mine a useless coin. If miners could burn cyanide to mine, they would. They don't give a single shit about clean energy, just cheap energy

so upwards of ~36% of Bitcoin mining is coal powered. yes, that fits all the estimates that Bitcoin mining is almost a supermajority using renewable energy at some plants and and curbing pollution as a sustainability solution at other plants.

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

#732

Post by codehalo » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

graeme wrote: post #562

kerng wrote: post #336

Bitcoin has been around for a while now and it has been down talked quite a bit on HN whenever it comes up. It now has a larger market cap as Facebook - so the market sees more value in Bitcoin than Facebook. The sentiment on HN seem still be mostly against it whenever it comes up. I wonder why that is? I'd imagine 10 years from now Bitcoin will still be around and likely much larger than today - I'm less positive ab…

Bitcoin was actually enormously popular on hacker news in the early years. Its popularity has soured here over time but it started popular. I think the opinion changed from favourable to skeptical as no use cases emerged.

I've been on HN since bitcoins inception. There was NEVER an instance where this site had a favorable opinion of bitcoin. NEVER.

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

#733

Post by sobellian » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 2:58 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #696

sobellian wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The demand for USD, as with most things, does fluctuate regularly. The value of USD is stable because there is a more-or-less omnipotent central bank that can alter the money supply to match demand and target 2% annual inflation. The way we pay taxes does not matter nearly as much as the Fed. By design, BTC can never have such a central entity that ensures price stability, so its price is practically doomed to swing…

>The way we pay taxes does not matter nearly as much as the Fed. It matters, in the sense that the government could just adopt a foreign countries' currency and thus the value of that foreign currency would benefit from the power of the USA. The USD would lose its value as a result. I can run my own central bank and mint the hacker news dollar and the currency would still be worthless because of a lack of government…

If, say, the government abolished the IRS and demand plummeted for USD, the Fed would respond by taking money out of circulation. The Fed creates an elastic money supply. You cannot reason about the dollar's value by studying demand for USD in isolation.

As for your "HND" hypothetical, it's very plausible that you could mint your own currency and control its value. You would not be able to control the total value of all HND in circulation. In aggregate HND would probably be a relatively worthless currency but so long as you are willing to constrain supply very tightly you will ultimately end up with a market for the few weirdos who are willing to part with $1 to obtain 1 HND. That may be a total of $1000 or less in the end, a laughable sum, but the unit price would still be controlled.

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

#734

Post by dogman144 » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 3:04 PM UTC

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…

> What am I missing?

> We know transactions are slow and expensive

^ You're missing this.

* Cross-border transactions which would take days for Swift are instant

* Expensive: no not really. In the filled mempool days, yes prices shot up, but that was a few years ago. Fees are incredibly low now.

* Non-int transactions are still just about the same speed as a Visa cc/debit swipe. Again, when the mempool is going insane (hasn't happened in some time), yes TXs could take time vs. fees. However, nowadays it's just about as quick to reach a "basically verified" TX as it whatever risk mgmt balancing Visa is doing in the background. This time, instead of Visa's fraud department doing some checks, it's 1 or 2 blocks to very likely confirmed, 6 blocks to definite. Just different ways of skinning the same cat.

You're correct on this

> also lacks a lot of the controls that traditional banks have for good reasons,

But you're blending some arguments that are counterfactual if taken together as something cohesive. It's fast because it doesn't have these controls, for instance.

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

#735

Post by dogman144 » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 3:07 PM UTC

frankenst1 wrote: post #705

peteretep wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I'm aware of the 21 million maximum BTC cap” Better thought of as a configuration value set by people with most of the mining power, which last time I checked was PRC

The 51% attack you are thinking of applies only to transaction ordering and inclusion in blocks and does not apply to consensus rules (like the 21M limit). Anyone (one miner, 5%, 51%, 80%, ...) who decides to change these rules is free to do so and will split off in a new coin. These splits have already happened multiple times (Bitcoin Gold, SV, ABC, Cash) and most claim to be "the real Bitcoin". They are all either…

yup yup yup. we're back in the era where large, hand-wavy criticisms get sent up w/o any understanding of the previous proof of concepts btc has gone through that quite exactly address the claims. it's getting to a similar point as if "the internet, won't work, too slow" criticisms were just thrown around and given credence after ebay was in operations for a few years.

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

#736

Post by banannaise » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 3:18 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #669

whoanow wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>If bitcoins price continues to rise, miners will be greatly incentivized to further decrease power costs. That's not how bitcoin works. The price of bitcoin is the budget you can spend on mining a single coin. If the price is higher, you can afford to run more miners. If the cost of electricity goes down, you can afford to run more miners. If the efficiency goes up, you can afford to run more miners. Running more mi…

If bitcoin is worth $50k, people will destroy MORE than $50k of energy to acquire bitcoin, using resources that are subsidized either intentionally or unintentionally.

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

#737

Post by jmcqk6 » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 3:18 PM UTC

aphextron wrote: post #374

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My opinion of Bitcoin will change when it stops using more electricity than entire countries, for something Visa can do for comparatively nothing. I would hold the same opinion of any technology which used so much energy when there was a less wasteful alternative. I also happen to be skeptical of Bitcoin's long-term outlook, but that's not why I'm actively against it as a technology. If it wasn't for the planet, I'd…

>My opinion of Bitcoin will change when it stops using more electricity than entire countries, for something Visa can do for comparatively nothing. To be fair, Bitcoin does not do what Visa does. Visa uses trust in existing institutions to accomplish transactions. Bitcoin mining creates trust out of electricity. And trust is a valuable resource, no different than any other form of value creation.

I really don't understand this usage of the word "trust".

Especially when one of the actual primary uses of bitcoin as currency (and not speculative investing) so far has been to pay off ransomware.

Who exactly am I trusting? The person I'm transacting with - a transaction that I have no hope of reversing if something goes wrong?

Please, if you can be specific about exactly what is meant by "trust" here, I would greatly appreciate it.

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

#738

Post by incrudible » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 3:21 PM UTC

dlubarov wrote: post #586

incrudible wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because our government just printed a LOT of money. That may be true, but the broader money supply hasn't really changed much: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/money-supply-m2 It's also not really clear how it would. Banks aren't out there giving out loans like candy to everyone for anything. The little bit of helicopter money doesn't even cancel out the lack of spending due to COVID layoffs. You just can…

> broader money supply hasn't really changed much Did you zoom out? M2 money supply increased 25.6% in the past year. Might be easier to see at https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2

A modest change, considering that M1 has almost doubled.

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

#739

Post by incrudible » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 3:30 PM UTC

base698 wrote: post #622

incrudible wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Wi…

> Happens quicker than you think and that's a hell of a tail risk.

It's not a tail risk. If you see prices increase exponentially over the span of months, you will have had plenty of time to react. Inflation is mostly a problem of the wage earners who don't have cash savings in the first place. Otherwise, if you have significant life savings all in cash, you're financially illiterate and cryptocurrency is the last thing you should put your money into.

> Bitcoin has been pretty consistently up on any timeline over the last decade.

Bitcoin also has been consistently down 50% from the previous high most of the time. It has pump-and-dump penny stock levels of volatility.

Bitcoin is fine as a speculative asset, as an inflation hedge it's just completely asinine. There is virtually no correlation between actual inflation and the value of Bitcoin. There may be some correlation to the level of panic about hyperinflation among the uninformed public. If you want to ride that wave, go for it.

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

#740

Post by Supermancho » Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 3:31 PM UTC

whoanow wrote: post #719

imtringued wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If bitcoins price continues to rise, miners will be greatly incentivized to further decrease power costs. That's not how bitcoin works. The price of bitcoin is the budget you can spend on mining a single coin. If the price is higher, you can afford to run more miners. If the cost of electricity goes down, you can afford to run more miners. If the efficiency goes up, you can afford to run more miners. Running more mi…

Miners are motivated by profit, if your cost of electricity is lower, your profit is higher. I’m not sure why you are trying to obfuscate that simple fact.

Miners are motivated by simple profit calculation, not R&D into energy generation. R&D has an unbounded capital risk, while bitcoin is a (relatively simple) statistical calculation of energy-cost which is a bounded cost (at any given time, within a range). Not a single bitcoin MINER is "greatly incentivized to further decrease power cost".