I don't understand all the Crypto hate on this site. Since when have hackers become the luddites to new ways of finance?
Having joined Team Technology, we would be disloyal if we are against any technology? Is that your view?
Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
991–1000 of 1001 posts
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#992Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm no crypto bull, but I don't think it's obvious at all that Bitcoin (or other crypto) is "literally worthless".
from my (admittedly meagar) understanding bitcoin is not backed up by any solid assets. Its value is solely dependent on what someone is willing to pay for it at any given time. It's a gamble that someone will be a bigger fool then you and buy your cryptocurrency. Someone will get hurt eventually.
It's not (just) that. Gold has an intrinsic value because you can actually do something with it; it's used in semiconductor manufacturing, jewelry, etc. When you buy a gold bar as a store of wealth/value, even though your specific gold bar is probably not going to be used for anything, it holds value because there are other bars of gold just like it that are being used for something.
The same holds true for Bitcoin. The one (and only one) use case for Bitcoin is censorship resistant transactions. There will always be some subset of people that use Bitcoin as a legitimate way to transact; black market trading, drugs, people that live in countries that have unstable currencies, etc. This isn't a significant number of people, but it's non-zero. As long as there exists that set of people that legitimately use Bitcoin, Bitcoin has some intrinsic worth.
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#993Earlier 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 you look at the history of the gold standard, this comment doesn't really make all that much sense. The gold standard attracts a lot of people because of the naïve view that the government can't debase gold like it can fiat. However, that view is naïve: the gold standard doesn't prevent debasement, it just means that the government has to make a choice between maintaining the gold standard or pursuing the fiscal p…
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#994Earlier 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.
Is Amazon still just an online book store?
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#995Earlier quoted context omitted.
Graeme I've got the perfect article for you [1]. [1]: https://vijayboyapati.medium.com/the-bullish-case-for-bitcoi... Please let me know what you think
Thanks. It didn’t seem very focussed. One of the major thesis is that all currencies follow four steps to adoption as a medium of exchange. For this they cite Jevons’ and his discussion of gold. And indeed, Jevons said gold followed those four steps. But I looked at the source text and saw Jevons said gold was an exception to the rule in that it developed as a currency late in the cycle. “ The use of esteemed article…
Personally I'm not so concerned about the step "store of value" -> "medium of exchange".
Let's imagine for a second that most people on earth want to hold bitcoin, becuase they believe the price will not go down (i.e., it will remain stable or go up).
Then, they would rather accept bitcoin for payment, were it as easy to accept the fiat of whereever they live. This is because fiat is designed to lose purchasing power.
The way to make it "easy" will be solved by second layer solutions like lightning or even custodial solutions, these need not occur on the bottom layer all the time.
Anyway, to your last sentence. Why it must rise in value.
Satoshi created "number go up" technology which aligns perfectly with human greed and adjusted to occur in large swings on a four-year basis. No growth in price can be linear btw, because how would the front-running look?
Believers in bitcoin believe in "number go up" [1]
[1]: https://www.ministryofnodes.com.au/2021/01/26/what-is-number...
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#996Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a counter to being a pyramid scheme, we've seen the 4 year moving average price of bitcoin continue to trend upwards. That's more than 10 years and the price hasn't collapsed. Bitcoin governance is performed through mining pools signaling their opinion on proposals, we saw this with segwit and larger block sizes. As a relevant example Ethereum currently is going through a proposal and one pool has been vocal in be…
"Bitcoin governance is performed through mining pools signaling their opinion on proposals" yes this is a regression from representative government - a corporate cartel controlling monetary policy
Mining pools do not control monetary policy - that is fixed as part of the consensus protocol. If miners tried to change it, their blocks would get rejected and they wouldn't be able to sell their coins to anyone who disagreed with their change.
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#997Bitcoin 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…
Greed is natural. Embrace it.
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#998Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah this confused me for a long time as well. I then realized that there is tremendous value in something that acts as a reliable store of value. For example, rich people are known to buy expensive art and then lock it away in a warehouse. Why do this? You're not getting any value out of the piece. The reason is that the sole purpose of the art piece is to be a reliable store of value. You're paying a lot for someth…
Sorry but I disagree about your analogy with an art piece. An art piece is unique, especially the antique ones made by an artist who is no longer alive. And that artpiece will always be the only one to ever exist. There are many other cryptocurrencies which can do what bitcoin can, dogecoin was made just to illustrate that point.
Bitcoin is essentially unique in that you cannot double spend it.
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#999Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you described is how a banking system in many countries works. I can send a wire transfer for free to any other person in Poland at 4am on saturday night, and they will get it instantly (some exceptions apply). I can even send them a direct code to withdraw a specific amount of money from most ATMs in the country, instantly and anonymously. (Could be to an unbanked person, but we don’t have those really - aside…
> I can send a wire transfer for free to any other person in Poland at 4am on saturday night, and they will get it instantly (some exceptions apply). Depends on who you are, or who he is (or who he knows) and how much money you're sending, how much you've sent overall in the past X weeks/months, etc... The concept of having electronic money that no one (banks nor governments) can touch is just incredibly appealing to…
Huh? No, ot doesn’t depend on who anyone is, or their account usage patterns. That’s another thing - literally anyone can open a bank account as long as they have a mailing address. There are no requirements, and you get the same service.
Instant transfers are not supported by every single bank yet, and there is a limit to 15k€. As a fallback you have electronic wire transfers that are usually free (or 0.25€), and have a guaranteed delivery of one working day (usually sooner).
You can literally 1M€ for 0 fee, and it gets delivered within 2-4 hours if you send it before 3pm, and if later - by 8am the next day.
After my first date with my gf, she wired me 15€ paying back for dinner, and I wired her back 7€ saying that 15€ was too much. Yes, you can literally flirt with wire transfers - that’s how cheap and common they are :)
As for having money that nobody can touch - sure, it has an appeal. I won’t argue that. But for person to person transfers, most of the world has already figured it out.
Re: Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
#1000Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you described is how a banking system in many countries works. I can send a wire transfer for free to any other person in Poland at 4am on saturday night, and they will get it instantly (some exceptions apply). I can even send them a direct code to withdraw a specific amount of money from most ATMs in the country, instantly and anonymously. (Could be to an unbanked person, but we don’t have those really - aside…
« how a banking system in many countries works » Recipient was unbanked (under severe financial hardship)
In my country, at least, having a bank account is a right. You walk into a bank, say that you want an account and they open it on the spot, no questions asked (aside from a mailing address, but you can get that one even when you’re homeless).
The only time they will ask you questions is if you start with putting in huge amounts of money fast - then AML applies.
I know there is an issue with unbanked population in US, but it’s a regulatory one - it doesn’t have to be that way.