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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

#931

Post by therealdrag0 »

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

How many of those benefits are based on regulation avoidance and will go away after crypto is more main stream or after its disruption will force institutions into offering more agile features through existing institutions (like faster cheaper transfers)?

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

#932

Post by bhupy »

Closi wrote: post #915
bhupy wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll try, even though I'm also still wrapping my head around it. > 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. I'd say that there are 2 ways to address this: 1. Bitcoin is less analogous to cash or credit cards, and more analogous to the US dollar . Today, when you buy a cup of coffee with a credit card, your issuing processo…

> This process is extremely asynchronous, and can take up to weeks to complete. Processing a Bitcoin transaction on the blockchain is analogous to that very slow, very asynchronous process. The difference is that you have a level of guarantees that it is going to clear - at least in the UK, the second I make a payment I get a notification and the debit is posted onto my account in real time. If someone sends me money…

> The difference is that you have a level of guarantees that it is going to clear - at least in the UK, the second I make a payment I get a notification and the debit is posted onto my account in real time. If someone sends me money I receive it within seconds at no fee. With Bitcoin you don't have that guarantee until it has cleared which can take hours and cost over $2.

While this might be true in the UK, it's untrue in the US. In fact, in the US the ACH protocol is such that you never get a failure (a "return") within the 1 business day, you only receive successes. You may receive a "return" any time over the period of the following month. Most payment processing systems empirically work out a rough time limit before deciding that an ACH transaction was successful after all.

This diagram captures the intended use case for the blockchain. You'll notice that it's the lowest level, at the Settlement layer -> https://twitter.com/stlouisfed/status/1358883628600721411/ph...

> Your bitcoin doesn't produce that - your bitcoin sits there not doing anything. The transactions are verified by actual assets (servers).

The same way that your specific gold isn't used to manufacture microchips or make jewelry, it's just sitting as gold bars in vaults managed by bullion trusts. The reason why gold has intrinsic value is that there is some use for your specific gold bar in theory, but not in practice. And yet, gold is still a viable store of value with intrinsic value. The same holds true for Bitcoin and its peers.

> Even the bulls seem to admit that the transaction fees of BTC are too high and the validation time too slow - this is why they seem to push towards alt coins.

Sure, I'm speaking of cryptocurrencies in general. Bitcoin, specifically, may not be the implementation that wins out. Transaction fees of altcoins like ETH and LTC are much lower, for example. They are also set per transaction rather than being a function of the actual amount size, so as long as the raw blockchain is merely used as a settlement layer, most institutions would submit large batches of transactions of high dollar amounts and pay a flat transaction fee per batch...not too dissimilar from ACH.

> I can see that someone might be able to live their entire life off bitcoin, but I still wonder why. I mean I live in the UK and people can hold all their money in Yen and pay via MasterCard if they want which will automatically do the currency conversion, but people don't do it because it would be insane. I don't see why BTC is any different.

Because foreign exchange fees. These don't necessarily exist with cryptocurrencies in the same way that they necessarily exist for actual fiat currencies.

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

#933

Post by RhodoGSA »

lm28469 wrote: post #372
RhodoGSA wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at polkadot. You can exchange any arbitrary data across parachains. How is that not the internet but better?

> Polkadot is a heterogeneous multi-chain interchange and translation architecture which enables customised side-chains to connect with public blockchains. > Polkadot provides unprecedented economic scalability by enabling a common set of validators to secure multiple blockchains. keyword bingo ! What problems does it solve ? Who's problems does it solve ?

I know - Some of this stuff gets very technical. It provides all the infrastructure for a blockchain. Think wordpress for blockchain developers. The programming language, Substrate, is written on Rust and is turing complete (Obviously). You can exchange information without the need of a third party (Polkadot is decentralized). All the problems of the current 'censoring' and datamining would be impossible in the network do to the possibility of anonymity.

Also, regardless of your feelings of how 'Useful' something is, the crypto market is worth 1.2T. There's millions to be made in DeFI and it's changing the world and propelling previously unknown people into some of the richest people on the planet. Kinda like the original internet, whether you want it or not its coming. Get on board or get out of the way.

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

#934

Post by therealdrag0 »

mleonhard wrote: post #924

I thought Tesla was an pro-environment company. Bitcoin mining produces a lot of CO2 [0] [1]. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511... [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.02612.pdf

There’s a lot of things to debate about Bitcoin, but this makes me morally against it. People can chase a million other bubbles and it’s whatever, but this is ridiculous.

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

#935

Post by RhodoGSA »

ma2rten wrote: post #330
RhodoGSA wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin unleashes a million possibilities and overall guides the market. Check out Ethereum, Polkadot and Cardano if you want to see a real use case - Until then the usecase for bitcoin is the same as gold. But one day Bitcoin will pour it's 'Gold' Into the broader crypto market.

Can you name a single compelling use case for Ethereum, Polkadot or Cardano?

Think of everything you do, but under one roof. I pay subscriptions, bank, get paid internationally, consume on the internet without selling my data, manage my stocks.

Theoretically, this is all possible within the polkadot ecosystem. I have complete animosity across my transactions. I can browse the different smart contracts across the various parachains. I can transact online without worrying that due to my past purchase history that it's going to charge me more such as Airbnb and other flight aggregators.

I can cancel my subscriptions by not no longer executing the contract instead of going through GUI's designed to be hard to cancel.

I can get paid internationally without extremely high fees.

I can buy synthetic stocks, other coins, use Yield farming, or just stake my polkadot to earn 14% more DOT a year. Fiat money is automatically -2% a year.

Exchange it seemlessly into bitcoin to buy a Tesla.

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

#936

Post by xerxespoy »

Closi wrote: post #842
xerxespoy wrote: post #497

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…

> I too find it baffling how uneducated and "luddite" many on HN are regarding blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Ah, people who disagree are uneducated on it. Nice! I actually understand the technology, but my view is as follows: * As an investment I take the Warren Buffet approach - I will only invest in things where I can see fundamentals. Bitcoin has no fundamentals. There is no utility and it generates no income,…

Warren Buffet has lost his fortune many times over by failing to invest a small high-risk portion of it in Bitcoin since he first heard of it and passed judgement on it. [0]

Most people claiming to understand the technology clearly have little grasp of its wider implications.

Its honestly a bit tiresome to reply to people who say, after 12 years consistent value increase, and a trillion-dollar market cap that its somehow a useless ponzi.

If it is, it's the most successful and self-sustaining ever, and for that alone could well deserve merit even ignoring anything else...

Edit to add: [0] - Warren Buffet first expressed negative sentiment on Bitcoin in March 2014 (https://coindesk.com/warren-buffet-bitcoin-currency ). The price in March 2014 was ~$550. Assuming a 5% portfolio position in Bitcoin held until now, equates to a 4x overwhelm of the entire portfolio at the time of entry (an 80x increase in value of the Bitcoin portion).

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

#937

Post by RhodoGSA »

Tepix wrote: post #604
RhodoGSA wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla is not an automaker and i don't know why people keep calling it that. It is a technology company. It's designed chips, software, Cars, trucks, manufacturing lines, battery's, solar panels - And oh my god, if you saw the random products the engineering team designed in Keto Factory outside Fremont, you'd think very differently about Tesla as a company.

Tesla makes 93% of its revenue by selling cars and 7% with energy generation and storage.

'Selling Cars' doesn't quite describe what Tesla does such as saying apple is just a phone designer. They are both selling platforms that are very much software and technology driven. Tesla app store and gaming console isn't a car. Developing 30 times cold rolled steel casting with a unibody design is definitely some next level manufacturing as wekk,

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

#938

Post by groone »

scottmsul wrote: post #388
graeme wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is the bull case for bitcoin? I have not seen it clearly explained. I’ve got an open mind. In more specific terms you mentioned the unbanked. How does crypto solve the problems that leave them unbanked?

Michael Saylor pulled the same move six months ago and explains it really well. Highly recommend watching any of his interviews. The one with Preston Pysh is particularly enlightening. Essentially bitcoin is a really good store of value with superior monetary properties to all other assets. If you want to store wealth for a hundred years there's nothing better. Even gold has 2% devaluation per year and has custodial…

I had a big problem with his interview. It does not mention bitcoin's reliance on "demand". If you look at bitcoin as a closed system and realize that money that goes in also goes out. The cash from your bank account is transferred to early adopters and used to pay for the huge electricity bills. It does not get stored. It is not there. You cannot get it out. Unless you find a greater fool to buy some bitcoin at higher price. You cannot find greater fools forever, so bitcoin as a system is unsustainable. When people stop believing there will be someone to relieve them the price will go up they stop buying. When that happens and money stops coming, the doors are shut and you are stuck with worthless bitcoin.

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

#939

Post by therealdrag0 »

charcircuit wrote: post #660
MrMan wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is maybe the only inflation story anyone can come up with? Venezuela is misgoverned, but how do I know bitcoin governance is better? Bitcoin exchange rates are not stable. I can only hoard it, it's not an investment and not a currency.

He never said BTC. Bitcoin was not designed to be a stable currency. If you want a stable currency look at stable coins such as DAI, USDT, USDC, etc.

Yet those are never in the MSM. It seems like the only reason we talk about crypto is because BC is in the news. If it wasn’t BC triggering the news maybe we could have more interesting crypto discussions.
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