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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

#941

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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 wh…

Fiat money is also volatile like crazy. Look at various forex pairs. USDCZK for example had 22% change in the past year and both are "stable" currencies.

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

#942
post #775

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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.

No such thing as “hoarding”. That’s just a low thought argument like calling everyone you disagree with a racist. Think of how many people’s retirement account owns Apple shares directly / indirectly. With Apple having $100b in cash, some portion of their valuation reflects that fact. So perhaps, Apple would be worth N% less if it just distributed all the cash tomorrow back to shareholders, correct? The point I’m mak…

Apple is making less and less repairable machines to force you upgrade sooner btw...

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

#943
post #192

I don't understand all the Crypto hate on this site. Since when have hackers become the luddites to new ways of finance?

> 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…

What is gold good for? Would you buy a cofee with it? Do you use it for chemical experiments at home? Majority of people don't need gold, either. Why do we trust fiat money? Why do we think that car or laptop is worth what it is?

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

#944
post #938

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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 high…

The way I see it, dollars and bitcoin are two competing forms of money. To calculate the equilibrium market cap of bitcoin, multiply each person's net worth by the fraction they wish to allocate to bitcoin and sum over the population. For example if the total value of all goods is 200T and the net-worth weighted allocation fraction is 1%, then the equilibrium market cap would be 2T. You don't need "greater fools" because people are constantly buying and selling in equilibrium, not just selling, similar to how gold maintains a pretty steady 10T market cap.

However bitcoin has superior intrinsic monetary properties to all other stores of value, including gold, so the equilibrium market cap might be extremely high.

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

#945
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.

International wire transfers take days! That's why there are services like PayPal or Visa. And nothing prevents them to eventually offer their services backed by crypto in the future.

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

#946

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

This is actually a very good point in contrast to many other "hater" arguments here. But isn't it partly self-regulating? I mean transaction consts are getting higher so it is becoming impractical to transfer small amounts often, that should reduce the total transaction numbers, maybe? The other thing is that people waste energy and produce CO2 in many other areas - stock market trading consumes energy too, so does excessive traveling, world-wide shipping, playing games on your GPU instead of watching movies, etc. But it is still a good argument, IMO.

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

#947

I am embarrassed by the industry. How many of our generation's best and brightest minds are doing crypto and day trading? Imagine if these minds were focused on societal problems -- energy, health, food. I know multiple Harvard CS graduates who went right into the crypto space. What a waste.

Are we to believe harvard CS grads are better than other CS grads?

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

#948

YFFA (your favorite fintech app) still has many advantages over Bitcoin. When sending money: YFFA free, Bitcoin not free YFFA instant, Bitcoin not instant YFFA has fraud protection, Bitcoin does not YFFA approved by government regulation, Bitcoin still not However, there is one thing YFFA does not give you, a shot at 10x or 100x your money.

YFFA can also just ban you for any reason

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

#949

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…

I think it's important to appreciate risks you don't take. If someone offered you to play Russian roulette, and you decline, you shouldn't feel remorse if afterward they pull the trigger to see what would have happened and there was no bullet in the chamber. It was still a wise decision.

It's easy to feel FOMO but if you educate yourself and still are not comfortable, then you're absolutely right to sit it out.

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

#950

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ll notice that even if they accept Bitcoin as payment, they’ll never price anything in Bitcoin. Nobody does that. They always price it in dollars and accept Bitcoin at the market rate. When people start pricing things I’m Bitcoin without doing some daily calculation, that’s when you know it’s serious.

You will never be able to price anything in Bitcoin, ever. It's volatile because deflationary currencies are inherently volatile. The future of finance is in some future crypto that provides for economic-growth-based inflation/deflation of the money supply. The Fed does this manually, and that's what keeps USD more-or-less stable.

I've got 50,000 chainlink that refuses to pump. Might be the first unintentional stablecoin.
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