791–800 of 830 posts
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The forefront of the Bitcoin frenzy isn't even on the blockchain, it's at the exchanges. Hardcore tech people and those who don't (or can't) trust institutions with their Bitcoin will pay the transaction fees to get their money out of exchanges and into their own wallet. The average retail investor, however, doesn't want to be their own bank. They just want in on the price action, while letting the exchange manage th…
> That said, Tesla's Bitcoin purchase does make a lot of sense ... They then announced their Bitcoin purchase with fanfare that drove the price up, marking a quick return on their investment. Tesla is a car manufacturer! It doesn't make any sense at all! At any company that made sense, a CEO would lose his job for gambling $1B of company money in a casino totally unrelated to the company's business interests.
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is there some widespread issue with trusting the ledgers of banks currently? I wasn't aware that this is a pressing issue, or really an issue at all. >You can trust that your balance in your account is what the blockchain says it is, and that nobody but someone in possession of those keys can use it. And there are definite risks around that too. This really feels like a solution in search of a problem to me.
Some would think so. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/04/paypal-shuts-d... There are also many restrictions on how, why, when, and where transfers from those accounts can be made. There is no trust in an institution required, because you know the blockchain will carry out your wishes regardless of any other factors.
It will carry out your inputs regardless of other factors. That is a very important distinction, especially in this case.
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I think this would be covered by the "judgemental dismissal of market rationale" explanation I was talking about.
Because they self evidently are, markets are so self evidently irrational the concept of "animal spirits" is one of the first thing we learned in econ 101, almost every post about the stock market will have someone saying the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent unless you want to explain how what happened with gme reflected a rational valuation of the company
For instance your comment about GME seems to involve an intentional misrepresentation of what occurred, for the purpose of supporting a judgemental comment. All of the decision making involved was perfectly rational. The decision to short the stock is a perfectly rational risk to take based on the short sellers analysis of the business fundamentals. The decision to squeeze the stock is also a perfectly rational risk to take based on the knowledge that the short sellers would eventually have to close their positions. Your statement that the price of GME should have (in a rational world) reflected the value of the business is simple a misrepresentation of how the system works. The price of GME represents the demand for GME, and for a set of perfectly rational reasons, that price was temporarily misaligned with the value of the underlying business. I get the feeling you're trying to make some criticism about how the mechanics of the system work, but to do so under the pretence of irrationality is simply wrong.
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Which part of the $28 average transaction fee is the paradigm shift?
You're missing the forest for the trees. Transaction fees aren't important. In this case, it's the ability to raise funds for a project outside of an elite class of investors, and not have to wait 5-10 years for a liquidation event.
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> remains an absurdly simplistic explanation of USD demand. Are you willing to provide a more sophisticated explanation for USD demand? The biggest thing missing from my explanation is demand as an investment, or foreign demand to hedge risk. Which right now isn't huge, given interest rates are at 0. > just an illustration of easy to intuit scenario where demand responds dynamically to supply Sorry, I was not correct…
>Are you willing to provide a more sophisticated explanation for USD demand? The biggest thing missing from my explanation is demand as an investment, or foreign demand to hedge risk. Which right now isn't huge, given interest rates are at 0. Not who you're replying to, but I don't think you can have a reasonably complete explanation of USD demand without mentioning the petrodollar system/international dollar trade s…
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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.
2/ Bitcoin is causing _more_ energy consumption. It's not curbing pollution, in any way. It's just grafting itself where the energy is cheap. Noone's building wind farms for bitcoin.
3/ If I cut off 36% (which is a low bound, other countries are not clean either) of your salary, go ahead and tell me it's okay because you still have the supermajority of it.
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Some would think so. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/04/paypal-shuts-d... There are also many restrictions on how, why, when, and where transfers from those accounts can be made. There is no trust in an institution required, because you know the blockchain will carry out your wishes regardless of any other factors.
>carry out your wishes regardless of any other factors. It will carry out your inputs regardless of other factors. That is a very important distinction, especially in this case.
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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.
1/ Bitcoin itself might be 100% on renewables. But it's still causing a need for non renewables to be used, to compensate for the fact that you're mining a useless coin. I'd rather have us use this energy in a useful way. 2/ Bitcoin is causing _more_ energy consumption. It's not curbing pollution, in any way. It's just grafting itself where the energy is cheap. Noone's building wind farms for bitcoin. 3/ If I cut off…
3/ I’m not sure what you are saying here? Is this supposed to be an analogy to something? What happens if you get rid of that energy use? The bitcoin network will adapt to a lower difficulty rate... not sure what you think you’re saying here.
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When I read a message like this, I conclude that bitcoin has another 10x to go since gold has a 10 trillion market cap. (Preemptively I'm going to say that gold market cap has almost nothing to do with its usage as a commodity, google it) reply
This seems to be flat out false. According to this 78% of gold globally is used in jewelry. Some other portion is used in electronics of industry. https://goldprice.com/project/facts-about-gold/ There’s no such reserve value for Bitcoin. You can’t look at it or hold it or do anything with it other than as a currency. I’ve seen widely varying stats estimating gold’s jewelry share but all of them are large.