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Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

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Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#811
post #653
post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While away on vacation, I once sent $1000 in cold hard cash, on a Sunday, to an unbanked person in Los Angeles, in less than 1 hour, thanks to bitcoin and the recipient withdrawing it for cash at a Bitcoin ATM. There is not a single alternative service in the world that would have made this possible. If people thought a little beyond their personal use cases, they would understand the utility of Bitcoin/crypto for ma…

The shitty American bank system doesn't make something that works slightly better a 'paradigm shift'. https://transferwise.com/gb/send-money/instant-money-transfe...

As I said in another comment:

It's impossible for 2 new unverified users to sign up to TW and send money instantly within 1 hour, cash in hand. Lengthy verification steps, etc. So TW wouldn't have worked in our urgent situation.

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#812
post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is not a single alternative service in the world that would have made this possible. I work at TransferWise so I know that 34% of our transactions are now instant (less than 20 sec).

It's impossible for 2 new unverified users to sign up to your service and send money instantly within 1 hour, cash in hand. Lengthy verification steps, etc. So TW wouldn't have worked in our urgent situation.

Whoever downvoted me has obviously never tried to use TW.

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People dont use dollars because they choose to. They use dollars because they have to. The US government doesnt need to earn dollars to spend them. It simply has to require for us to earn dollars to pay it taxes to enforce the use of its currency.

But people do choose to use US Dollars. Emerging economies facing currency problems frequently become "dollarized" on a de facto or de jure basis precisely because the currency is so liquid (internationally) and so stable. Inside its borders the US Dollar also derives value from chartalism, but the currency clearly has other sources of de facto value.

The main source for value is that every USD is guaranteed to be able to settle 1USD worth of debt, and a lot of debt is denominated in USD. This pretty much guarantees a stream of people needing USD over any future time horizon (further factors like certain types of debt discharge reducing M1 and Fed intervention in the lending market) including internationally, with or without US federal taxes on top of that. Its status as an asset ultimately depends on it being someone else's repayment obligation.

BTC doesn't have that (there's some BTC-denominated debt, but it's relatively thin and/or unenforceable) and so future demand is based on fickle wants rather than established needs. I'd be more inclined to trust the long term value of cryptocurrency if it was issued as repayable debt, but I'm not sure how you begin to achieve that in a decentralised, anonymous and enforceable way.

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#814

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not claiming that a low-latency, no-borders, truly international digital currency is a bad thing. The main issue with Bitcoin is a complete lack of oversight. As a currency it's dreadful, suffering from tens of thousands of percent in deflation (= value increased relative to the cost of goods). As a trade product it's terrible, suffering from a lack of oversight from e.g. the SEC, opening it up to price manipulat…

Bitcoin is 12 years old. It’s very very young. Problems will be addressed as it matures. Further, every currency has problems. Is USD perfect in your mind and without it’s own unique set of issues?

Let's look at the Euro as a better¹ example, and let's take 2002 as the start date².

One year into its existence, a Pan-European Clearinghouse provided clearing services for participating countries.

Six years into its existence, in 2008, credit transfers and direct debit are operational across the SEPA area, meaning roughly that international payments are on par with domestic payments (i.e. no fees, 1-2 days wait time).

Eight years into its existence, SEPA transfers have become the dominant form of electronic payments in the Eurozone.

Since 2017 (fifteen years in), anyone with a SEPA bank account can send money to anyone else in the Area instantly³, and free of charge.

Throughout this time: * The Euro didn't suffer hyperdeflation. * There are ways to recover payments that were sent to mistyped IBANs and/or were sent fraudulently. * Users who forgot their e-banking password can get a new one from their bank and not lose all of their assets.

In 2019, SEPA processed about 22 billion credit transfers⁴. That's about 700 transactions per second, or about a hundred times more than the Bitcoin network is able to handle. SEPA also handled about the same number of direct debits, something that BTC doesn't offer. Best of all: SEPA did all that, without using approximately Chile's annual energy use.

Bitcoin is amazing Sci-Fi, brought to life. It's a testament to Satoshi's genius, to a cyberpunk-y spirit, and to applying game theory in a system that actually kinda works. But given its immense costs for miners, users, and society overall, it's something that falls squarely on the dystopian side of sci-fi.

¹: Mainly because the Euro is a multinational project and not a national currency. And also a little bit because the US banking system is a bit of a mess. But mainly for the "international" aspect.

²: Technically, it was created in 1992 and could be used, in electronic form, from 2001 onward. Still, banknotes and coins were introduced in 2002, so that feels like a good starting point.

³: "10 seconds, or up to 20 seconds in some circumstances"

⁴: https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/be-involve...

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#815
post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While away on vacation, I once sent $1000 in cold hard cash, on a Sunday, to an unbanked person in Los Angeles, in less than 1 hour, thanks to bitcoin and the recipient withdrawing it for cash at a Bitcoin ATM. There is not a single alternative service in the world that would have made this possible. If people thought a little beyond their personal use cases, they would understand the utility of Bitcoin/crypto for ma…

How large is the population of people who are both unbanked but sophisticated enough to use bitcoin? 95% of the population is banked, but only 11% own bitcoin. https://www.fdic.gov/analysis/household-survey/index.html

Recipient didn't have to use Bitcoin. He walked up to an ATM and just read me the instructions (address) to transfer the Bitcoin to the ATM. He didn't even have a Bitcoin wallet or anything.

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#816
post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin != Cryptocurrencies It's like using the term "COBOL" when you mean "programming languages", and then criticising COBOL's modern utility in that context. The parent comment was about crypto (short for "cryptocurrencies") in general, not Bitcoin, which is 12-year old technology, and broadly not fairly comparable to current cryptocurrencies or their applications. You are as correct that you can't do much with a…

Can I get paid in dollars for spare storage?

https://filecoin.io/

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#817
post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.” -Satoshi Nakamoto Feb. 2009 If this isn’t resonating with you after the past year, I don’t know. I was forced to watch my government bungle a pandemic in the worst possible way and then asked t…

A senior economist from FRED explained why there is the surge in M1. Basically a reclassification of parts of M2 in M1. Definitely not -- OMG end of Dollar, money printer going brrrr :-) https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2021/01/whats-behind-the-rec...

Came here to say just that. Still, M2 itself has also grown 20+% in one year.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2

Yet consumer price indexes do not appear to have been greatly affected

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPILFESL

The dollar has however lost ~9% to the euro

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DEXUSEU

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#819

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if your post is sarcasm or not. Look at Apple, or any other large tech company. Hoarding billions in cash. Business lives to suck up any dollar possible and refuses to spend unless absolutely necessary because they are scared of risk or loss. They find their niche and that's it. Notice how there's no more research divisions in companies anymore? Like old school ATT.

Sure but cash is held in banks and banks lend that out to be reinvested elsewhere (this investment channel is moderated by central banks). Not so with cryptocoins, it's just pure accumulation of tokens.

The people who have $10 Trillion in gold savings beg to differ.

There is a growing market for loans using crypto as collateral.

Using crypto to transact frees up the added financial costs required for charities, non profits , and regular businesses to thrive.

Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future

#820

Bitcoin is a mystery to me. Somehow it's hailed as revolutionising the economy, by replacing currency with a worse kind of currency. It feels like this is where all the "how to get rich quick" book writers and other hustle bros went and created one giant financial pyramid, which works in quite simple way: - buy bitcoin - tell everyone around how revolutionary it is, so they buy it and what you holding increases in va…

I tried, I sincerely did. I had many friends who were strong believers in bitcoin. I read articles, I watched videos, and every time it felt like hucksterism. There was no serious discussion of the advantages of bitcoin, no attempt to explain blockchain. There was a lot of repeating, over and over again, how amazing and revolutionary bitcoin was. "For the first time ever, a computer owns currency!" one youtuber said…

You can just read "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" by Satoshi Nakamoto, it's very readable. I personally like "Shelling Out: The Origins of Money" by Nick Szabo as well, for giving some background/entry-level theorizing about money.

Here's a pretty large literature list as well: https://nakamotoinstitute.org/literature/

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