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posted by
cmn32480
on Wednesday June 07 2017, @12:31PM
from the where-it-is-all-made-up-and-the-dollar-value-does-matter dept.
from the where-it-is-all-made-up-and-the-dollar-value-does-matter dept.
Cryptocurrencies, as a whole, now hold over $100 billion in market cap for the first time. While bitcoin (BTC) leads the pack at just over $46.6 billion, or 47.9 percent of all cryptocurrencies, the recent surge in these other coins has helped to push the total cap over the top.
Since the Bitfinex hack low on August 2, bitcoin has traded better than JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Tesla, Apple, Google and gold. One of the few stocks to match the frenetic pace of bitcoin has been Nvidia, which is up over 200 percent since July of last year.
[...] Although China, Japan and South Korea are trading at a ~$100-plus premium compared to the exchanges in the United States, most of the volume [on June 5th] has been driven by USD.
Source: Bitcoin Magazine
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Cryptocurrencies Hit $100 Billion Market Cap
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday June 07 2017, @01:06PM (5 children)
The cost of the electricity it takes to mine the next one.
Its a simplification, and varies over time with block size and difficulty factor and a random effect based on the number of other miners. But in a simplistic black box effect on long term average you pump in $X of electricity to get a coin.
Note that's enormously more intrinsically valuable than the bills in my wallet and no one has a problem with the bills in my wallet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @02:06PM (1 child)
People do mistrust fiat currency. And countries regularly fire up their printing presses to cause runaway inflation.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday June 07 2017, @06:54PM
> cause runaway inflation
Great... as if one wasn't enough already.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @02:59PM (2 children)
So, as usual, you completely miss your own point.
It takes a lot of resources to mint a coin or produce the bills in your wallet—hey, it even takes electricity to do it!
What you're missing is that while the miner does need to take into account his expenditure for finding a block, that's not the determining factor in the price of BTC; as with all things, the price is determined by demand, and there's someone out there who desperately wants to buy some BTC because some crazy guy is selling a dream car only for BTC, and he is doing that because he wants to buy a lot of weed from a website on the Internet, etc.
The value of BTC comes from the fact that it is facilitating human interaction. Now, this is not an "intrinsic" value, because there is no such thing as "intrinsic" value; rather, it's a value that simply exists currently.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday June 07 2017, @07:01PM (1 child)
Additionally, in many cases, the person mining the bitcoin did not invest said electricity, or even computing resources.
Ask big IT departments how many times they've found bitcoin mining software on machines.
Like an idiot, instead of pocketing that extra computing power the landlord and boss pay for, I'm just giving it away on folding@home [stanford.edu].
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Thursday June 08 2017, @05:29PM
A friend now heats her home with a BitCoin ASIC. It is an outdated and inefficient unit but the rationale is simple. Over a winter, it may only provide enough funds for one pint of beer. However, that's a suitable quantity of funds in a suitable currency for further experimentation. Furthermore, it may only capture 1% of the value of electrical heating but you're probably capturing 0%. So, that's better than most people. Indeed, in her situation, it is arguably the most ethical action she could take.
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