Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future • Hacker News Board

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

#831

Post by exclusiv » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

astrolince wrote: post #697

rzodkiew wrote: post #338

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…

You don't get it because you are privileged, we get it in the third world, the things that you see as dumb and simple, aren't granted at all here

Just because someone doesn't like Bitcoin doesn't mean it's a misunderstanding because they're privileged.

Bitcoin IS a terrible currency because it's volatile. Really the worst aspect to have in a currency.

Also, your statement alludes to Bitcoin being the one true way, as if there are no other options for third world countries.

Volatility in a currency is a terrible idea and it gets even more terrible of an idea when utilized by people with little money.

Can you explain how a volatile thing like Bitcoin is a reasonable currency for third world countries?

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

#832

Post by tobmlt » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

whb07 wrote: post #555

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am dead serious. The FED did cause the great depression and a lot of it had to do with currency being tied too closely to a deflationary token (gold). >You cannot eat gold or bitcoin. That is precisely the problem. The economy can get into a bad equilibrium where hoarding intrinsically valueless tokens displaces investing in productive assets. This state can persist because the firsts to invest in productive things…

The "economy" is some number larger than (2^999999999999999999999999999999999) of decisions done at every second. Unless you or some cabal of godly beings exist they cannot determine whats a "good" equilibrium in the first place. Furthermore, to describe descriptions good/bad to a market is against the definition of a market. It is what it is. A high price signal lets others that they should come in and get involved…

Just commenting to let you know that at least one other person on hacker news knows marginal revolution style economics/moral philosophy/classical liberalism and finds it more compelling than the alternatives seen to date. No offense meant to those who see it otherwise.

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

#833

Post by olejorgenb » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

camjohnson26 wrote: post #632

mordymoop wrote: post #617

Bitcoin “transactions” only appear to cost so much if you divide total energy usage by transactions. This is very silly, because it gives the impression that more transactions would lead to something like a linearly higher energy cost, which is not true; the energy cost is due to mining, and transaction validation comes along for the ride. You could try to figure out how to allocate the energy per transaction but onl…

You can’t have transactions without mining though and the block size is limited, so there’s an upper limit to how many transactions can go through in one block.

Details:

> Blocks size in blockchain is limited to 1MB. Miners can mine blocks up to the 1MB fixed limit, but any block larger than 1MB is invalid. This limit cannot be modified without a hard fork.

https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Block_size_limit_controversy

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

#834

Post by Closi » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

lawn wrote: post #669

Closi wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand all the Crypto hate on this site. Since when have hackers become the luddites to new ways of finance? For me, it's because nobody can explain what the value offering of Bitcoin is - mainly the question 'what can I actualy do with a bitcoin?' . It's a bad currency because it is slow to exchange and costs lots of money to exchange - I can't use it to buy my coffee in the morning. It's a bad non-spe…

> mainly the question 'what can I actually do with a bitcoin?' If we're talking about cryptocurrencies in general, then start here: https://whycryptocurrencies.com/eli5.html

It doesn't answer the question. Like what am I supposed to do? Spend it? Where? I can't buy a coffee with it.

The first article linked claims it has "better monetary properties than anything else in history" but then seems to misunderstand the most fundamental property - acceptability. This is actually "Do other people accept it as payment" rather than "could people theoretically accept it as payment". Fingernails do not pass this test, because even though people could accept them as payment, they don't. I can't pay for my coffee with Bitcoin without needing a secondary level of trade with some intermediate party to turn it into dollars/pounds, so I would say acceptability is in fact poor.

Like are you arguing that it is a currency, or some sort of 'store of value'? Do we at least agree that Bitcoin is a bad currency? If so what is bitcoin supposed to be?

I have never found anyone able to clearly explain the value proposition of bitcoin without eventually it just boiling down to "well the value is going up so I'm hodling"

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

#835

Post by randomsearch » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 5:52 PM UTC

rzodkiew wrote: post #338

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 agree.

One "strong-manning" observation: it seems to me that a digital currency could really facilitate international trade. As I understand it, bitcoin may not be technically suited for general transactional use (I may be wrong) but in general this could be very useful, to avoid the bureaucracy and charges of changing currency multiple times.

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

#836

Post by Waterluvian » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 5:55 PM UTC

nly wrote: post #242

Waterluvian wrote: post #30

I bought $100 of BTC a while ago for fun. I watched it go up and down and mostly up. I got bored, and sold it for cash to donate... literally an hour before the big spike just earlier. I know about the fallacies of predicting the market. I understand 20/20 hindsight. But to actually experience it is such a strong lesson. To be flooded with, "ohhh I'm such an idiot!" and then think about how there's just no way I coul…

The thing I've learned investing so far: never sell anything . It really only ever makes sense to sell if doing so will positively change your lifestyle, or you have no alternative. Examples of when selling might be a good idea are buying a house, retiring, going through hard times, loss of a job etc. Rebalancing is fine too, but I'd personally only bother to do that if your portfolio is massively distorted (like it…

I sold because it's an open tab in my life I don't care about anymore. I don't like having open tabs I forget about everywhere.

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

#837

Post by nly » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 5:55 PM UTC

mrb wrote: post #811

nly wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In many places you can't buy significant amounts of Bitcoin easily without following KYC / ID steps. The regulations aren't going to get any looser going forward, they will tighten.

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

#838

Post by charcircuit » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

helen___keller wrote: post #677

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #371

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…

> If this isn’t resonating with you after the past year, I don’t know. On the contrary, it's made me more firm in my position: fiat is better than bitcoin because fiat is responsive to the demands of democracy, while bitcoin is responsive only to a protocol written in the late aughts. There's a lot of issues with American democracy, but it's still democracy. I can vote, and theoretically any root problems can be fixe…

It sounds like you would be interested in DAOs in the cryptocurrency space. Governance tokens are issued out and you can use them to vote on proposals.

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

#839

Post by 93po » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 5:57 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #757

Tenoke wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bitcoin transaction typically takes 30 minutes for 3 confirmations which is plenty sufficient unless you think the other party is pulling a very sophisticated/expensive attack on the network.

30 min is ok for cars and houses, not for groceries or cellphone bills.

Well there's a payment system built on top of BTC that solves that problem too.

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

#840

Post by prepend » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 5:58 PM UTC

qqii wrote: post #756

prepend wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my biggest “problem” with crypto. I actually think it’s neat in theory, but it’s the disconnect between what they say and what they do that makes my brain itch. It’s like when a function’s documentation says “returns a tuple with three elements” but looking at the source it only returns a tuple with two elements. My tech survival skills help me avoid things where what people say is different than what they’re…

Here's a perhaps unique problem that cryptocurrency solves - trustless, decentralised proof of ownership (digital or physical) through NFTs. This is a less talking about area of cryptocurrencies but in my opinion quite an important one. For the first time we can create digital scarcity without relying on a trusted party. NFTs have no digital analogue.

There’s lots of cool problems that crypto solves, but only once speculation goes away.

I think the incentives of new users greatly increasing wealth of early users is too alluring to overcome. Until that gets solved, I think it’s hard to actually meet some of these use cases because they get crowded out by various approaches who only care about attracting investors and speculators.