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Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

timeslive.co.za

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Re: Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

#81

Post by lend000 »

eighthnate wrote: post #67
lend000 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is too big for a few "whales" to have a sizable effect on major price trends -- even if significant groups of them were somehow coordinated. This explanation is commonly used in general cryptocurrency forums and even some trading forums, but it really comes down to not understanding how markets work and trying to assign some meaning (not so different from religion). Whales are not gods.

> Bitcoin is too big for a few "whales" to have a sizable effect on major price trends Bitcoin is tiny as currencies go or as industries go. What is it $100 billion "market cap"? > Whales are not gods. Sure. But in such a tiny volume entity like bitcoin, any large player can easily move markets. It doesn't even have market makers or any real rules yet.

> It doesn't even have market makers or any real rules yet.

Blatantly false -- you clearly don't monitor crypto exchange order books full time (I do). Even most small-cap altcoins have active market makers running 24/7 for ALT/BTC, ALT/ETH and ALT/USD (where supported).

> But in such a tiny volume entity like bitcoin, any large player can easily move markets.

Do you know from experience? There are some extremely low market cap altcoins -- you should give it a try. I do not think manipulating markets for any length of time is as easy as sideline commenters seem to believe, and it certainly is difficult to make it profitable.

Also note that many of the highest market share Bitcoin investors were early crypto enthusiasts or wealthy venture-cap-type investors, not professional/active traders. If and when there is concerted market manipulation with hundreds of millions behind it, these early adopters are certainly taking heavy losses.

Re: Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

#82

Post by JetSpiegel »

lend000 wrote: post #58
pwaai wrote: post #20

I feel like there are whales that simply manipulate the price based on news. There's little evidence to suggest bitcoin has any usage in zimbabwe in practical day to day usage. Therelies the problem with bitcoin, why would someone in zimbabwe pay 1 week of their salary to move 3 weeks of pay and still not be sure if the money will still be there tomorrow?

Bitcoin is too big for a few "whales" to have a sizable effect on major price trends -- even if significant groups of them were somehow coordinated. This explanation is commonly used in general cryptocurrency forums and even some trading forums, but it really comes down to not understanding how markets work and trying to assign some meaning (not so different from religion). Whales are not gods.

> Bitcoin is too big for a few "whales" to have a sizable effect on major price trends

But small enough to have miner pools controlling 50% of the hash rate.

Re: Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

#83

Post by lend000 »

JetSpiegel wrote: post #82
lend000 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is too big for a few "whales" to have a sizable effect on major price trends -- even if significant groups of them were somehow coordinated. This explanation is commonly used in general cryptocurrency forums and even some trading forums, but it really comes down to not understanding how markets work and trying to assign some meaning (not so different from religion). Whales are not gods.

> Bitcoin is too big for a few "whales" to have a sizable effect on major price trends But small enough to have miner pools controlling 50% of the hash rate.

True for some altcoins, but not Bitcoin. You can see the hash rates here: https://blockchain.info/pools

And even then, most pools are largely decentralized and heterogeneous -- controversial political/technical changes by the pool owner would absolutely trigger an exodus of hashrate from the pool. (As happened during the BTC/BCH fork.)

Re: Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

#84

Post by freeloop3 »

drdaeman wrote: post #73
nikcub wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 137,000 satoshi price quoted isn't an average - it's the price to have your transaction almost guaranteed to be accepted in the next block It also shows 30 satoshi a byte gets you transaction accepted in 3-80 blocks, which based on experience is usually 3-12 blocks - and that works out to be 50c for the average transaction

I believe, dust collection is prohibitively costly. And if one's using Bitcoin any actively, they'll end up generating a lot of dust, I think. At the current BTC/USD rates, I have a few dollars worth of dust. However, it's spread over 17 inputs, so it's basically unspendable. It would require ~3.1KB transaction so even at 30sat/byte the fees would be, like, 0.00093 BTC ($6.5 at $7K/BTC). For poorer countries even $2-…

> For poorer countries even $2-5 could be a well significant amount. One can probably have a meal for that money.

Or ten... You're a little out of touch for whom you speak for.

Re: Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

#85

Post by drharby »

kown223 wrote: post #24
pwaai wrote: post #20

I feel like there are whales that simply manipulate the price based on news. There's little evidence to suggest bitcoin has any usage in zimbabwe in practical day to day usage. Therelies the problem with bitcoin, why would someone in zimbabwe pay 1 week of their salary to move 3 weeks of pay and still not be sure if the money will still be there tomorrow?

if you didn't dealt with this you can't understand, but simply put, 1 week of pay could be toilet paper next week(s), as it happened in Venezuela. In my country some years ago, in a time of crisis for example the government locked all foreign currency in banks, and auto exchanged it for the national currency, at a rate set by them, it was robbery basically, prices would jump up like 25% day to day, so the national cu…

...PH?

Re: Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

#86

Post by drdaeman »

freeloop3 wrote: post #84
drdaeman wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe, dust collection is prohibitively costly. And if one's using Bitcoin any actively, they'll end up generating a lot of dust, I think. At the current BTC/USD rates, I have a few dollars worth of dust. However, it's spread over 17 inputs, so it's basically unspendable. It would require ~3.1KB transaction so even at 30sat/byte the fees would be, like, 0.00093 BTC ($6.5 at $7K/BTC). For poorer countries even $2-…

> For poorer countries even $2-5 could be a well significant amount. One can probably have a meal for that money. Or ten... You're a little out of touch for whom you speak for.

Yes. You're right.

Re: Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

#87

Post by craigc »

xadhominemx wrote: post #59
CamelCaseName wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His joke is that Zimbabwean dollars are toilet paper.

No, I wasn't joking. I was asking sincerely, if you're reason for holding bitcoin is that you want to be able to buy goods next week without worrying about inflation, why not just buy the goods now and avoid the risk of owning bitcoin.

But if you spend all your money on goods and then you need something else in a week or two then what do you use to buy it? Sell/trade the goods you already purchased? I think it makes sense to hold on to some form of currency.

Re: Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

#88

Post by freeloop3 »

Retric wrote: post #13
wereHamster wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure they can try to "outlaw" cryptocurrencies. Or the internet as a whole. Good luck with enforcing it though…

It's easy to ban mining in a country when you control the backbone infrastructure. At which point there is no difference between cryptocurrencies and any other foreign currency.

Foreign currency can be confiscated. A brain wallet cannot

Re: Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

#89

Post by brettfarrow »

kown223 wrote: post #24
pwaai wrote: post #20

I feel like there are whales that simply manipulate the price based on news. There's little evidence to suggest bitcoin has any usage in zimbabwe in practical day to day usage. Therelies the problem with bitcoin, why would someone in zimbabwe pay 1 week of their salary to move 3 weeks of pay and still not be sure if the money will still be there tomorrow?

if you didn't dealt with this you can't understand, but simply put, 1 week of pay could be toilet paper next week(s), as it happened in Venezuela. In my country some years ago, in a time of crisis for example the government locked all foreign currency in banks, and auto exchanged it for the national currency, at a rate set by them, it was robbery basically, prices would jump up like 25% day to day, so the national cu…

That's definitely a real concern for some countries, but Zimbabwe has only used other currencies for years. When I went 5 years ago, you could pay for your entrance visa in either USD, GBP, or EUR. All large grocery stores had that day's exchange rates posted near the entrance in USD, ZAR, and at least one other currency (GBP, EUR, or Botswana pula are the ones I remember).

Re: Bitcoin surges in Zimbabwe after military seize power

#90

Post by Kiro »

johnvonneumann wrote: post #47
rnhmjoj wrote: post #31

I don't want to start the usual bitcoin scaling debate, but aren't the fees extremely high now? Using [1] an average transaction costs about 10$, this is particularly bad in a poor country. I wonder if using a cryptocurrency is really the best option in this case. [1]: https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/

Average transaction cost has been shown to be a bad metric, context: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7b7jj1/john_newber...

24 hours? I want it to confirm in 1 second for even less fee than that. How else can Bitcoin become a serious mean of payment?
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