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Tesla Buys $1.5 Billion in Bitcoin, Plans to Accept It as Payment
Elon Musk's Tesla Inc. said that it has acquired $1.5 billion in bitcoins in January and that it could accept the world's No. 1 digital asset for payment in the future.
Tesla revealed the purchase in a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, which helped to drive up bitcoin prices +11.50% to around $44,203, a gain of over 13% in early trade on CoinDesk.
"In January 2021, we updated our investment policy to provide us with more flexibility to further diversify and maximize returns on our cash that is not required to maintain adequate operating liquidity," Tesla said in a 10-K filing with the U.S. markets regulator.
"Moreover, we expect to begin accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for our products in the near future, subject to applicable laws and initially on a limited basis, which we may or may not liquidate upon receipt," the filing continued.
The move comes as Musk has recently been a more vocal champion of digital assets on his social platforms.
Tesla buys $1.5 billion in bitcoin, sending its price soaring
The price of bitcoin rose to a new record above $43,000 on Monday after Tesla reported that it had purchased $1.5 billion of the world's most valuable cryptocurrency. In a regulatory filing, Tesla also announced that it expected to "begin accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for our products in the near future."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 09 2021, @02:39AM (64 children)
Since every transaction is over 700KWh to process, or 500,000x the cost to process a Visa transaction.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 09 2021, @02:46AM (50 children)
When, not if, this bitbubble bursts (and that will make the Tsar Bomba look like a kid's firecracker), Tesla along with SpaceX and all will be gone. Musk will be the poorest person on Earth.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 09 2021, @02:55AM (26 children)
I worried about that for about 2 seconds, then remembered that $1.5B isn't much at all compared to Tesla's current $15B+ cash on hand.
Also, the market, irrational as it is, seems to be eating this up - + 11% on the day after the announcement in the morning. Until the pool of TSLA investors gets wise to the hollow sound inside BTC - which may take decades - this is probably going to be a net positive for TSLA.
If Musk is smart, he's using his star power to pump BTC and is now reselling it for $2B+
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday February 09 2021, @09:58AM (23 children)
Anybody has an estimate how much energy was used to mine those coins?
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 09 2021, @11:54AM (21 children)
That should be getting impressive by this point in time - total energy invested in 1 BTC. It will be a slippery calculation since the required work has been increasing alongside improvements in mining efficiency, and there's probably not a good handle on how efficiently each coin was mined but there should be some kind of floor estimate using the most efficient available tech across the years, and don't forget to count the energy invested by the "losers" who tried to mine each coin and failed.
The counterargument is that it was easier to mine coins in the past, but it was also considerably less efficiently done. Here's a reference [thebalance.com] that says:
In the U.S. hydropower costs [wvic.com] (to produce, not retail) $0.0085/kWH - $8.5/MWH - $8500/GWH - $8,500,000/TWH - $102M USD per BTC mined, according to those two articles.
So, divide by 6 and you get 12 TWH per BTC for mining.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Socrastotle on Tuesday February 09 2021, @02:38PM (17 children)
To emphasize one thing that I suspect you understand but most do not. What is the minimum amount of energy needed to mine a Bitcoin? Practically 0. The Bitcoin protocol *automatically* increases the difficulty of mining a coin so that each block takes, on average, 10 minutes to mine. That means it takes about 10 minutes whether the systems total power consumption is a single guy on a laptop with a hand crank charger, or whether you have planet-sized colonies of super-computers draining power on a scale comparable to a dyson sphere. As bitcoin interest and demand grows, the energy cost grows. As bitcoin interest and demand declines, the energy cost declines.
So speaking of the amount of energy to mine a bitcoin, as some remotely persistent value, is just nonsensical. You can create viable arguments that, based on different choices of assumptions, are going to differ by orders of magnitude. The only thing they'll all share in common is that they'll be obsolete by tomorrow.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 09 2021, @02:50PM (16 children)
Of course, but in a practical sense the "free market" has decided what it will invest in mining one BTC and this is where we are at today.
Didn't we hit the "fully mined" threshold a while ago, so that coins are no longer mined they are earned through transaction fees, or is that not here yet? In any event, at a cost of millions to mine it would seem to be a fools' lottery at this point.
Really, the world needs to get over all proof of work schemes and move on to something that makes more sense, but there's that psychological component that is still a strong driver of proof of work and without it you fall to "distrust of the man" such as Ripple is (rightly) grappling with.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Socrastotle on Tuesday February 09 2021, @03:55PM (15 children)
Nope, the final Bitcoin will be mined sometime around 2140. What you're probably thinking of is the most recent logarithmic halfing of created coins per block, which happened last year.
I don't really know why you'd put distrust of the man in quotes, because it's a very real and very justified issue. Create a scenario where the powers that be are granted control over something of value (which money itself certainly qualifies as) and they will, sooner or later, abuse it. To take a brief tangent, what's your take on the world since 1971? Here's [wtfhappenedin1971.com] a fun page with a gazillion graphs showing some pretty interesting trends since then. 1971 was the year we unilaterally killed the Bretton Woods System [wikipedia.org], removing any sort of gold backing and making the dollar a entirely fiat currency. Hilary ensued.
You need a system that cannot be gamed. In my opinion that will only, for the foreseeable future, be proof of work. I also have a different take on energy consumption. I think something that creates an effectively endless demand for energy is a *good* thing. As demand for energy grows beyond what is currently able to be provided, it creates a market incentive for new energy sources. And thus it creates a straight forward commercial incentive for things like e.g. new solar farms. Trying to encourage people to use less energy is antithetical to the goal of transitioning to new forms of energy usage. It relies entirely on coercion, such as through taxing carbon. By contrast, creating an incentive based around greed is far more likely to be successful.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Fnord666 on Tuesday February 09 2021, @06:23PM
The big question is whether this was intentional or not. :)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 09 2021, @07:12PM (13 children)
The problem with BTC is that "the man" can take it down in any of a million ways. Holders of BTC are trusting that their local and national jurisdictions don't pass arbitrary laws or taxes or regulations that make it either outright illegal or highly unprofitable to hold or trade.
There are a lot of things you can do to exchange value with asymmetric key encryption, I prefer individual promises [mangocats.com] to deliver goods, services or money, but it does lack the "get rich quick" lure of a single volatile mineable crypto currency.
Sooner or later quantum computing will destroy the security of BTC's 256 bit ECC, and along with it the whole Bitcoin brand cachet which is as strong or stronger than Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Mercedes, Kleenex and Cheerios combined. It will be interesting to see what rises from those ashes, there are plenty of crypto currencies that are ready for the quantum revolution, Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin is not one of them. Attempts to hijack the Bitcoin brand with updated technology so far seem to have struggled.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Wednesday February 10 2021, @05:28AM (12 children)
No, they can't. And that in particular is what makes Bitcoin so attractive. When you trade Bitcoin you don't rely on anybody or anything other than the Bitcoin protocol and other people also using the protocol. It is extremely decentralized. Even China with their rather sophisticated firewall was unable to impede Bitcoin. That actually made it big in China because China has strict laws against taking money outside of the country. People simply bypassed the laws using Bitcoin.
Or see the recent article [soylentnews.org] posted where German police try "seize" $60 million unlawfully gained Bitcoin, but are ultimately helpless to do anything when the guy refuses to give them access to his coins. So they seized an encrypted and useless wallet which he undoubtedly has backups of and will just access as soon as he's let out. I mean they could try to torture him or keep him in prison forever or whatever, but that kinda goes against our modern value systems.
Quantum computing remains in the realm of deeply theoretical and will be for the foreseeable future. If the software needs to soft fork then it's not a big deal. It's a small theoretical threat that does not yet exist, probably will not exist for the foreseeable future, and has straight forward fixes available if it does ultimately become an issue.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 10 2021, @02:35PM (2 children)
Just like Dread Pirate Roberts will never be found and captured. "The man" can pass laws against anything, spy on most things, and arrest anyone - if they care enough to do it.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Wednesday February 10 2021, @02:48PM (1 child)
You're talking about the difference between arresting a person sharing files, and getting rid of the Bit Torrent protocol. The former is easy, the latter is impossible.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 10 2021, @03:19PM
Yes, the protocol will always exist, as will state actors' ability to enforce "thought crime" restrictions. Bitcoin continues because governments have chosen to let it continue, for now.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 10 2021, @02:47PM (6 children)
Again, for whatever reasons, China has chosen not to invest the resources necessary to start arresting bitcoin users... do you really think they can't identify at least some of the bitcoin traffic on their networks, trace its endpoints and identify some of the people using it? China, of all places, would also seem to require little hard proof in order to support arrest and detention. Perhaps it is "too big to fail" at this time, they don't want to take it down because they don't see a benefit in doing so, at this time. While BTC may, currently, move freely past the Great Firewall - there have to be points inside where it is converted to/from fiat currency and/or goods and services. I would expect those conversion points to be the first to fall, when the crackdown comes - probably when China has figured out what they think is a viable state controlled replacement.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Wednesday February 10 2021, @02:58PM (5 children)
Of course they can. And they have engaged in intermittent crackdowns. But this gets back to what we're talking about above. It's all decentralized. There is no single group, person, IP or whatever you can arrest to make Bitcoin go away. They can pass laws, arrest people, create regulations, whatever they want. The network and its usability will continue along pretty much unimpaired. It's similar to Bit Torrent. The MPAA/RIAA/etc are some of the most influential lobbyists in DC and they have the full support of our corporate clowns of political representatives, file sharing copyrighted content is illegal, etc.. Yet it continues mostly unimpaired. The best they can do is to occasionally shut down a site after which 5 new ones spring up to fill in the vacuum.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 10 2021, @03:21PM (4 children)
So, it won't fall like Napster - true. It will continue like bittorrent and to an extent The Pirate Bay, but the value of BTC will plummet when/where trading in it can get you heavily taxed, fined, or arrested.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Wednesday February 10 2021, @04:54PM (3 children)
BTC is *very* global at this point and an increasing number of large nations are openly recognizing it. Any individual player, even the US, banning it isn't going to affect the price in a longterm way.
But yes, governments can try to criminalize it. And then it'll become impossible to get or use in some limited region. Like marijuana.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 10 2021, @05:49PM (2 children)
Unlike MJ, BTC has no intrinsic value. When BTC gets you marked for enforcement, fines, etc. the way MJ did for the past 50 years around most of the world, it becomes a negative value in those jurisdictions with little positive value to offset it, unless you're just transporting it from one positive value region to another - which would normally be done through a network, which can easily be deep packet inspected and traced...
MJ carries the negative value of enforcement/penalties, but positive intrinsic value to consumers, so the net benefit keeps it in circulation even where it is illegal.
70TWh/year wasted is a bigger negative global impact than MJ ever had.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Wednesday February 10 2021, @06:49PM (1 child)
Ah, but can't see not everybody shares your worldview? I see marijuana as having little positive value, but I see immense value in a decentralized, anonymous currency. I think access to your own currency and wealth should be an inalienable, human right. Bitcoin *is* an embodiment of that vision. Of course I can easily understand how you might disagree; if only you can understand how people might disagree with you.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 10 2021, @07:41PM
Value is an abstract concept, different in each person's perception.
Price is what people are willing and able to pay - somewhat related to their perceived value of a thing.
The (data accessible) cannabis market is running around $150B per year today, even with continued national level bans, bank unwillingness to deal with MJ businesses, etc. That's for a single use consumable product.
Bitcoin's "market cap" is $600B, but like any stock start selling large quantities and watch that drop like a stone, easily less than $100B of "value" could be extracted, and this is a relatively friendly, or at least hands off, global regulatory environment.
As you note, only a small percentage of the population has any use for MJ, whereas almost everybody on the planet uses some form of money.
A better analogy might be Nevada gaming revenue, which was running $12B annual (revenue to the houses) pre-covid, just in Nevada.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 10 2021, @03:15PM (1 child)
Progress is perhaps moving faster [nature.com] than [theverge.com] you [ieee.org] think [wired.com].
If the post-BTC $100 clusterfuck of alt-coin and alt-crypto-tech development is any indicator, a mandatory fork in BTC will be a brand-diluting event that makes the AT&T breakup look like a smooth transition. Also, I would suspect that true quantum supremacy will be achieved in secret first - probably by the usual suspect state actors: Russia, Israel, U.S.A., China, possibly Iran. Look for "lost keys" to start trickling into the network slowly - miraculously found by unknown owners.
I think that lack of expiration [mangocats.com] is a major failing of the Bitcoin spec. As is non-modularity of the cryptographic algorithm. Sure, any crypto-hacker with 2 weeks study of the subject can sketch out a workable modular crypto scheme, the problem is: dozens, if not thousands, will propose competing schemes and consensus won't be Coke vs Pepsi, it will be Coke vs Fanta vs Surge vs Crush vs Sunkist vs Stewart's vs Mug vs Mtn Dew vs A&W vs Mellow Yellow vs Dr. Brown's vs Norka vs A-Treat vs RC vs Jarritos vs Sun Drop vs Barq's vs Boylan vs Pepsi vs Cheerwine vs Virgil's vs Dr. Pepper vs Hansen's vs IBC vs Maine Root. vs Pibb vs 7Up vs Vernor's vs Squirt vs Jones vs Schweppes vs Sierra Mist vs Canada Dry vs Hansen's vs Reed's vs Seagram's vs Blue Sky vs Orangina vs Ale 8 vs Sprite vs Moxie vs Dry vs Red Bull vs Snoop vs Doge... with up to a dozen flavors of each of the above, all vying at once to be the "next Bitcoin."
Bitcoin has proven to be the resilient brand, even though it makes you fat, rots your teeth, and frankly doesn't taste so great - oh, wait, that's Coca Cola - Bitcoin is just sucking down 50-75 TWh per year [digiconomist.net], roughly the power consumption of Romania, Venezuela, or Chile.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Wednesday February 10 2021, @05:46PM
I'm guessing you have been around the tech game for a while. K. Eric Drexler ring any bells? Around the early 2000s, nanotech was going to be the next big thing. We were going to be creating nanomolecular machines capable of completely revolutionizing the world. It was all completely imminent with revolutionary breakthroughs being announced every other month with every single big name in tech involved. I couldn't even imagine what the world be like in 20 years. Then we got here. And yeah, it's dead. No funeral was ever announced, but the demise is doubtless.
And then genetic engineering was going to change everything, completely eliminate disease, perhaps even usher in the age of humans living for hundreds of years. Oooo and all the eerie questions and ethics about superhumans. Are we imminently racing towards Gattica? And yeah.. we have some plants that are immune to an herbicide, pretty much like we did 30 years ago. And self driving vehicles. 10 years ago, within 10 years taxis and trucking will be obsolete with vehicles driving themselves, with 0 human intervention safely from coast to coast. And then graphene. Graphene can apparently be used to do absolutely everything and will change the world and so forth and so on.
The one recurring pattern I've noticed over the years is picking up on when an exponential curve (which is where all the hyper comes from) becomes a sigmoid curve. I'm well aware of the progress in quantum computing but in my opinion the rate has dramatically slowed. Specialized toy problems on dozens of qubits are neat and can create some great headlines, but you're not going to get from there to the systems you need to actually do stuff without many orders of magnitudes of progress which necessitates exponential progress. And so I see quantum computing going the way of all of the other 'next big things'.
See exponents that did play out like, like the miniaturization of computing. It was an ongoing exponential improvement over decades. No need for hype or allusions to what we might be able to achieve. It was just regular clear and dramatic progress relative to just 2 years prior. We didn't reach a stuttering point until very recently and since then - yeah it's clearly also starting to enter into its sigmoid years.
---
Back to Bitcoin, see things like SegWit [wikipedia.org]. Softfork updates to the protocol, accepted or rejected solely by decentralized consensus, are possible. And expiration is not as big a deal with infinite subdivisibility. The main reason you'd want expiration is because you want to avoid scenarios of simply insufficient amounts of currency driving deflation (or price increases) for artificial reasons. But since Bitcoin can be made to be divisible to an arbitrary length, this is not an issue.
(Score: 2) by anotherblackhat on Tuesday February 09 2021, @08:14PM
The vast majority of bitcoin mining is done by people who are trying to make a profit.
They can do the math, and I guarantee that if the profit isn't there, they stop mining.
Bitcoins are selling for $47,000 right now, so you can be sure it takes less than $47,000 worth of electricity (around 500,000 kilowatt-hours) per bit coin.
Yes, there's a thieves market, but it isn't as big as the legitimate one.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by FatPhil on Wednesday February 10 2021, @10:02AM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday February 11 2021, @08:27AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 09 2021, @02:07PM
I was looking up that 5 Gigawatt statistic that seems to be floating around (and sounds just low enough to be plausible, but very weird). Check: https://medium.com/@interdome/how-much-electricity-does-bitcoin-use-c350bd84c64e [medium.com]
"Running a 50 Gh/s miner for one day should get you 4,320,000 Gh, or 0.027648 BTC, according to my calculations, or $17. So it would take you 147 days to make back your initial investment. But, you still have to pay for power. 10 cents per kilowatt hour is a decent price in the United States.
Let's try it with 10 watts per Gh/s.
That's means the ASIC draws 500 watts, which will run you 12 kilowatt-hours per day, or 1.20 cents."
Oh, and that gigawatt statistic is off by several orders of magnitude.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday February 09 2021, @10:15AM (1 child)
This is what he just did. Pump and dump. They "plan" to accept bitcoin; this and the announcement itself.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 09 2021, @12:01PM
It's only illegal if you can't afford lawyers who will tell you it isn't.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 09 2021, @02:59AM (7 children)
People who buy bitcoin are always going to be poor at some point in the future according to nocoiners. Instead they keep getting richer.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Tuesday February 09 2021, @03:06AM (6 children)
Meanwhile, I keep looking at each jump, thinking "Man, I probably should've bought some earlier. But it will definitely drop from here this time. For sure!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 09 2021, @03:13AM (5 children)
Buttcoin is dependent on the Internet, the favor of governments, and is backed by warm CO2 farts.
Everything that gold isn't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 09 2021, @05:18AM (1 child)
What you've said is true. However, a thing's value comes from someone else wanting it. It doesn't matter what it is, only how much someone is willing to pay for it or not. As long as someone else wants Bitcoin, it will have value. Whether that demand comes from the wise or the foolish doesn't matter.
Personally I avoid Bitcoin, because creating it is a program, storing it is a program, and trading it is a program, and the network among the traders is a program, and the internet that trading network works on is a program. I've spent too many years in the programming business myself to think there aren't bugs in all that code. Plus if it gets valuable enough, it becomes worthwhile for someone to strive to control more than 51% of the network, and thus do whatsoever they wish (the Chinese have a fuckton of money with which to do this, if they want to, for instance). Plus, it forked once, which means it can fork to infinity; sure that won't create more bitcoin, but it would create more cryptocurrency in general thus lowering the value of the entire investment space. Besides, that supposed limit of 20,999,999.9769 bitcoins... would a quick update and recompile change what the limit is? I honestly don't know -- do you? Have you read the actual code?
I just keep thinking of what Tarkin said to Leia: "You're far too trusting."
But hey, I could be wrong.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 09 2021, @07:18PM
Sure, except that then it wouldn't be Bitcoin anymore.
If you want to place value on Alt-Bitcoin with a 200,999,999.9769 limit, you and everyone like minded are free to do that (to the extent that current BTC investors are also free to invest in BTC), however - if it's not implementing the whitepaper in the way that the larger community has agreed to do, then it's not BTC and people won't be paying you BTC prices for it - likely they will pay you nothing, like 99% of the alt-coins today.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Socrastotle on Tuesday February 09 2021, @03:13PM (2 children)
Bitcoin is definitely not dependent upon the favor of governments. During its early rise most made futile efforts to ban and/or regulate it. After that failed many (including the United States) flirted with trying to create their own centralized cryptocurrencies which makes no sense at all. After that failed, then and only then did they begin to more openly accept it simply under the mantra of if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
In a way it's a similar situation with gold, just much better. Like you presumably know, in 1930 FDR passed an executive order requiring all citizens to give all their gold to the government in exchange for far below market rate compensation. You might argue that you could have hidden your gold or whatever, and that's not untrue - but they government made it extremely onerous to deal with in any meaningful way. By contrast with Bitcoin you can transact with anybody, anywhere, so long as you can access the internet - even if restricted. For instance even China's Great Firewall was unable to impede Bitcoin. But I'd add that even if the internet goes down, Bitcoin could just as well be revived on the new networks that would inevitably spring up. So the only way it truly dies is if *any* form of networked connection becomes indefinitely inaccessible, which would likely suggest scenarios where money itself is no longer so relevant.
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Tuesday February 09 2021, @06:29PM
I thought the plan was that if you couldn't beat 'em, tax 'em [forbes.com]!
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Thursday February 11 2021, @05:27AM
On a practical level, if the government can force you to turn in your gold for greenbacks, it can do the same with bitcoin. The only difference really for those who refuse to comply, is that gold survives better in the ground than paper, usb sticks, CDs, hard drives, or whatever media the keys are on. Well, not the only difference -- bitcoins would be easier to get across a border, but that would also likely leave some digital trace.
(Score: 3, Funny) by fakefuck39 on Tuesday February 09 2021, @06:05AM (14 children)
So let me get this straight. You think Elon Musk, worth about $200 billion, and his companies with their net worth of almost a trillion, will go bankrupt, and he will be on welfare, if they lose $1.5 billion.
Oh boy. I don't know what to tell you. I will tell you this, as someone who speaks russian: It's "Tsar Bomb." Bomba is the Russian word for "bomb" and not part of the bomb's name. "Tsar" is the name of that bomb. Kind of how you say a Toyota car is a "Toyota car," despite "Toyota car" being pronounced "Toyota nazenara" in Japanese. Because nazenara is not a name. It's a word for car.
I hope that clears things up for you.
You know what bursts worse than bitcoin? A country's currency. Not the dollar, not the euro, but many many a country's currency. So bitcoin is fairly in the middle there as far as currencies go, and whoopla-doo, all those shittier currencies are still around, and bitcoin is actually doing a great job replacing them. We don't need it to replace the dollar. Because there's a lot more to the world than the dollar. Probably not your little world though.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday February 09 2021, @07:32AM
Yes, fakefolk69! It only takes a small crack in the dyke, and all you think you had is gone! She tied you to the kitchen chair, Oh, dear:
Bitcoin through ya!
(Score: 2) by The Vocal Minority on Wednesday February 10 2021, @06:28AM (10 children)
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Wednesday February 10 2021, @07:16AM (9 children)
and french, and korean. a little bit of spanish too. you speak only english, and that also is no surprise.
(Score: 2) by The Vocal Minority on Thursday February 11 2021, @07:10AM (8 children)
The only thing you have really shown here is that you do not know me!
Maybe save your trolling for someone who gives a fuck.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Thursday February 11 2021, @09:56AM (7 children)
not knowing you is not a requirement for laughing at you. didn't troll you. you tried trolling me and got shat on in your mouth.
(Score: 2) by The Vocal Minority on Thursday February 11 2021, @11:09AM (6 children)
I think you're selling yourself a bit short if you think your discourse amounts to shit. Whist a lot of people here would agree I think you are actually pretty amusing on occasion. And laugh away, be my guest, but really if you don't know me then you are not laughing at me you are just laughing at your own imagination. Which is fine, more power to you of you can do it. I'm sure you need the entertainment - if your ego is so brittle that you think I was trolling you I would say you don't get out that much.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Thursday February 11 2021, @12:29PM (5 children)
i don't know the crackhead yelling at cars who's shat his pants either, but i'm definitely laughing directly at both of you, not at my imagination
(Score: 2) by The Vocal Minority on Thursday February 11 2021, @05:03PM (4 children)
No worries, just keep telling yourself that. All the best :)
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Friday February 12 2021, @05:26AM (3 children)
i believe it is you who has kept tellng yourself that all the people laughing at you cannot, since they don't know you. since high school. as a coping mechanism.
(Score: 2) by The Vocal Minority on Friday February 12 2021, @05:58AM (2 children)
No, as I said i don't mind you laughing at me at all. You can even project your own feelings of inadequacy on to me if you would like. Sorry to hear you were bullied at high school. I guess that explains your fragile ego.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Friday February 12 2021, @09:21AM (1 child)
was the bully. still am. you're ok w me laughing at you. strange how times have changed in a day. just last night you claimed laughing at you was impossible, since i don't know you. you see sherlock, your original dumbass comment is enough for someone to know about you to laugh at you.
(Score: 2) by The Vocal Minority on Friday February 12 2021, @10:32AM
Ah yes, you were the bully. You make a lot of claims, but I think we know the truth. Might want to work on your reading comprehension as well.
(Score: 3, Touché) by FatPhil on Wednesday February 10 2021, @10:26AM (1 child)
АН602 (она же «Царь-бомба», а также (ошибочно) РДС-202 и РН202 [⇨]) — термоядерная авиационная бомба, разработанная в СССР в 1956—1961 гг. группой физиков-ядерщиков под руководством академика Академии наук СССР И. В. Курчатова[⇨].
Its *name*, is "Tsar-Bomba" - you can see it in quotes up there right next to its official designation.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Thursday February 11 2021, @09:50AM
awesome. now look at how б is not in caps in russian. strangely you added the cap in english on the b. this both illustrates my correct point, and your mistake.
Sears Tower -name
Sears tower - a tower named Sears.
you just gave yourself a checkmate retard.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 09 2021, @03:01AM
Why not mention how much electricity is wasted on advertisements, tracking, crappy webpage design, and porn?
Shillsplain to us some more.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday February 09 2021, @03:38AM (7 children)
To be fair, Musk's purchase didn't even make a dent: https://www.blockchain.com/charts/n-transactions [blockchain.com]
But yes. Bitcoin has scalability and power efficiency issues when it comes to micro-payments. However, those are solved by solution the likes of the Lightning Network [wikipedia.org].
compiling...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 09 2021, @11:41AM (5 children)
Are solved... spoken with confidence.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday February 10 2021, @01:32AM (4 children)
Even if lightning didn't solve the problem - which it does - you could always go manual and put together something like a digital debit card using a weakly encrypted intermediary digital currency that settles its balance within a business day/week for off-ledger micro-payments. It's more middlemen compared to lightning but it replaces Visa and could be just as power-efficient.
Regardless, it's better than how credit based micro-payments skew the economy.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 10 2021, @02:54AM (1 child)
That was my impression of lightning - everything that makes proof of work attractive seems to be lacking in the lightning layer, but you are 100% dependent upon it...
That depends on your perspective. If you of the Banker persuasion, of course you want the masses with fingertip access to credit/debt/fee generation/interest payments, etc. If you're a political economist, pushing debt onto the masses is like printing free money - money that generates income for your best lobbyists best because their industry generates cash without environmental impact and relatively little foreign involvement. If you're rich, you can laugh heartily at how the poor stay poor through their weak minds unable to resist the temptation of your wealth which they will never obtain due to their insatiable desire for it... and on and on.
Yep, like opium for Vietnam, crack for the 'hood, credit for the poor lets them legally destroy themselves and pay for the privilege.
Have I plugged my crypto micro-payment story [mangocats.com] yet?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday February 10 2021, @09:51AM
Lighting substitutes ledger transparency with funding transaction penalties to prevent fraud while also limiting the maximum amount you can transfer to a safe not-worth-hard-cracking figure. And since BTC scales with power, that figure similarly scales with the expense of the cracking effort. So, the penalties prevent "second mortgages" where someone tries to concurrently pay with the same bitcoin by opening multiple channels while cracking will stay worthless since the power expenditure for cracking the channel while it's still open will always cost more than the value of the transaction.
Switching from credit to debit (using lightning over over secondary coins / credit cards) isn't just good for social justice. The likes of Visa are a costly middleman for big and small businesses as well. So whether it's a working poor mom constantly leaking money over interest payments or Amazon losing a certain percentage of their income to Visa, everyone aside from the credit companies can gain from it.
Anyhow, regardless of lightning/bitcoin, switching from credit micro-payments to debit using digital currencies is technically workable and been run in the wild for years just waiting for the regulators and vendors to adopt it. It should have happened years ago but the likes of Paypal as well as Google's and Apple's payment services has delayed it. Hopefully now that big companies are hoarding bitcoin we'll start seeing related micro-payment solutions like lightning gaining traction.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday February 10 2021, @10:45AM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday February 12 2021, @12:25AM
As debit (rather than credit) you'd buy a certain amount of the transitory currency at the start of the day and sell the remaining / the profits at the end of the day. The downside is you're depending on an exchange to both buy and sell so they'll ask for a commission for what is essentially being a middleman with little to no risk (since the cipher is so weak that no one would want to hoard the temporary currency for too long anyhow). Still, though unjustifiably inefficient in the presence of lighting, it's a valid and workable solution for micro-transaction that is still more than competitive with the likes of Visa and doesn't introduce credit related issues (social or otherwise) to the system.
Anyhow, there's a LOT of academic and industry work on all of this and even banks and credit card companies are entering into it so I suggest you go read up on those. The big problem right now is actually how to do taxes and design monetary policies when people are doing it all digitally... Now that's what I call a hard problem.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday February 10 2021, @10:39AM
That sentence is meaningless. There was no "Musk's purchase", singular. He made, programatically, many small purchase, distributed over time to not perturb the underlying asset price, and to be able to take advantage of dips.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 09 2021, @05:59AM
Bitcoin Energy Consumption Is Far More Efficient and Greener Than Today's Banking System [bitcoin.com]
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Tuesday February 09 2021, @09:26AM (2 children)
Other currencies that used proof-of-work, like Etherium, are moving to other metrics. Bitcoin is long overdue for such a change, but I haven't found any indication that they plan to make the leap.
Why not? Does anyone have insights into this?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 09 2021, @01:34PM
Proof of work is a significant psychological hook that keeps people engaged in the Bitcoin game. Work hard, earn BILLIONS - it's powerful stuff, even when it's false.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Tuesday February 09 2021, @04:29PM
1) There is no "they". Bitcoin is a protocol, not a company, not an entity. Somebody could easily make a fork of Bitcoin using something like proof of stake, but whether it would have any value would be up to the market. I suspect the answer would be no.
2) Proof of work has been shown to work at massive scale and in the presence of countless malicious actors. Nothing else has. The major alternative, proof of stake, has been shown to have major and perhaps insurmountable issues which is why Ethereum has been moving to proof of stake for years, and probably will be for years to come.
There's also something unique and important about proof of work. Bitcoin is not perfect and does have some areas where it could almost certainly be improved upon. And numerous forks have tried to do just this. However, their market adoption has been negligible. And part of the reason is that in proof of work miners have to effectively dedicate themselves to one currency. This helps to stabilize the currency's dominance. You can easily see this as a negative, because it means Bitcoin is unlikely to change anytime in the foreseeable future. But this also is good because it means that its demand/price might be wildly volatile, but its existence is not - it's not going anywhere. In any currency with minimal cost to mine, miners would be incentivized to participate in an endless number of forks. Yet this participation would devalue, destabilize, and ultimately destroy the currency itself - a textbook example of a tragedy of the commons.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 09 2021, @03:33AM (1 child)
When honest labor and genuine innovations are sidelined for the benefit of big fat cats, you get weird shit like inflated bitcoin and god-knows-what.
I blame the modern "economics" academia.
FUCK HBS. FUCK McKinsey. FUCK GovernmentSach.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday February 09 2021, @04:27AM
Yeah, I miss the good ole days of big fat cats in dollars. Those were clean crooked, not like those dirty crooked bitcoin fat cats...
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday February 09 2021, @04:24AM (18 children)
...and should have sold it all right off for immediate profit in real currency.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday February 09 2021, @04:46AM (8 children)
HODL
This follows some musings by Musk:
Tesla CEO Elon Musk: Bitcoin On ‘The Verge Of Broad Acceptance’ [forbes.com]
Elon Musk, The World’s Richest Person, Wants To Be Paid In Bitcoin [forbes.com]
I'm not sure what advantage Tesla will have by holding so much Bitcoin (other than selling it at a higher price later). Anyone have a good take?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 09 2021, @05:29AM
Probably Elon thought it would be funny.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 09 2021, @06:46AM
To make change?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 09 2021, @06:58AM
Did it for the same reason MicroStrategy (and others) did:
World’s Biggest Business Intelligence Firm Buys 21K Bitcoin for $250M [cointelegraph.com]
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday February 09 2021, @10:20AM (3 children)
He is just hyping the Tesla's stock price.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday February 09 2021, @11:38AM (2 children)
When Musk tweets that Tesla's stock price is too high and it goes down immediately, is that part of the long con?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday February 09 2021, @01:42PM (1 child)
I don't know if he tweets it, but if he were than yes, it is stock price management as well. Overheating is dangerous.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday February 10 2021, @11:42AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Tuesday February 09 2021, @06:33PM
I believe it's called pump and dump [investopedia.com].
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday February 09 2021, @10:18AM (8 children)
He can't sell. An attempt would crash bitcoin. He needs other bigger idiots to enter the game.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Tuesday February 09 2021, @05:54PM (5 children)
Hahah, not quite. You can get some market stats on Bitcoin here [coinmarketcap.com]. Trading volume nearly broke $100 billion yesterday. That's of course higher than usual owing to higher than usual prices, but even when the price was much lower (which would imply a dividing of Tesla's $1.5 billion purchase), there was daily volume regularly in the tens of billions of dollars. $1.5 billion wouldn't even register as noise.
(Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday February 10 2021, @02:21PM (4 children)
I believe that volume is mostly between market manipulators and they would immediately sense 1.5 billion sale attempt.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Wednesday February 10 2021, @02:39PM (3 children)
But this is another cool thing about Bitcoin - that volume is not manipulators. Everybody plays by the exact same rules and so each and every one of those trades is paying a fee on their transaction comparable to what you or I would for a single transaction.
Their are lots of bots involved in the market but it's people just trying to make money like any other. There are no elite groups playing using rules, fees, and tactics unavailable to you or I. Due to the decentralized nature of Bitcoin there's a completely level playing field. The one asterisk I might want to add here is that I am speaking of the market as a whole. How e.g. Coinbase manages the internal trades is not something I'm familiar with beyond knowing they do get into the tiered, special treatment type scenarios we see on e.g. Wall Street. But that is for internal action where they're just shuffling their coins privately. Stuff done out in the open, is a level playing field for all.
(Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday February 10 2021, @03:48PM (2 children)
This is exactly what free market believers refuse to accept. A totally free and fair market is easily manipulated. Market has to be heavily regulated - which creates other problems you mentioned - to be resistant to manipulation.
One of the simplest examples of how to artificially increase the price is to put large number of buy and sell orders that equal to zero more or less using different brokers. There are more - many more - way more sophisticated techniques. Until bitcoin is heavily regulated, which is difficult to implement, we should assume it is always manipulated.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Wednesday February 10 2021, @04:48PM
Nobody claims markets cannot be manipulated. The claim is that regulation tends to work at best briefly, but in the longrun creates more problems than it solves. Your own post is a perfect example of this. You just described how a regulated market is manipulated - what you described there is called ladder selling, and can be used to inflate or deflate the price of an asset depending on your goal. In our "regulated market" it's often done with assets people don't even own using "tricks" available to the elite. This is believed to be one of the [many and illegal] methods that insiders used to help crash the price of GameStop stock in order to save the short sellers. They saved tens of billions of dollars doing it. If, and that's a big if, they're penalized by the SEC - it'll be a fine in the millions of dollars. Those SEC regulators will then eventually go on, retire, and get a 7-8 figure "consulting" gig for the firms they were "regulating." Yay regulation.
For what it's worth laddering in Bitcoin at large would be rather more difficult, again because of the level playing field. You actually need to have the assets you're transferring, you cannot undo a transaction, it's all 100% transparent [bitcoin.com] (quite cathartic somehow), and *everybody* pays transaction fees. Those fees right now are relatively high - around $9 per transaction. And those fees are paid to whoever mines the block, which cannot be controlled. Laddering may be able to have some limited effect in a micro-economy (such as Coinbase shuffling coins around to itself, depending on how their tiering/fees/transparency) but it is not a concern for Bitcoin, or the Bitcoin economy, as a whole.
---
Ultimately the reason I'm not so down on regulation is not only because it doesn't work, in that it overtime invariably degenerates into a "rules for thee, but not for me" but because it also creates a false sense of safety in the population which can lead to catastrophic outcomes.
- "No way this university would let me take on debt that the average outcome for my major will never be able to pay off."
- "No way the bank would give me an impossible to pay off loan."
- "No way my doctors would get me hooked on extremely dangerous drugs like a street corner dealer."
Yes way. If people were more skeptical of authority not only would they be far more in touch with reality, but I think we'd also have had a much better chance of staving off many of the absolutely horrible outcomes we've had.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Wednesday February 10 2021, @06:27PM
Actually, I just thought of a much more concise way to explain the issue. Right now, as you observe - Bitcoin is pretty much unregulated. And it is *huge*. The daily $ volume of Bitcoin is currently higher than the annual GDP of most countries in the world. And there's major liquidity, you can instantly and easily buy or sell for billions of dollars with no real issue. There are countless players trying to manipulate the market in various ways. And what's the net result? A normal, healthy, well functioning assets.
It certainly is high volatility and so is not a good asset to put money into if you're risk averse, but anybody who can read a graph could tell you that. But outside of that it has infinite upside potential, and works as an extremely solid hedge against our financial system. Is Bitcoin becoming worth more or is fiat currency becoming worth less? Depends on your world view I suppose.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday February 10 2021, @11:52AM (1 child)
Note that a highly predictable response is available to you here, in particular given the headlines being thrown around. Now I've made you aware of that, think twice before falling into the trap of making that response - you are hereby warned that any follow-up would be far from flattering, and rightfully deserved, as the highly predictable response would a display of almost infinite ignorance.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday February 10 2021, @02:26PM
I don't follow bitcoin and not going to google it but rather say what I think. The bitcoin market is rigged. Large holders manipulate the prices and artificially increase the volume. They are glad though to dump such a volume on a new sucker.
Why I think so? Because any and every unregulated market historically behaved this way at some point.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 09 2021, @06:18AM
1,400 sign up for MicroStrategy's corporate Bitcoin-buying bootcamp [cointelegraph.com]
MicroStrategy bought $1 billion in BTC last year.
New institutional player — MassMutual purchases $100M Bitcoin [cointelegraph.com]
MassMutual purchased $100 million in Bitcoin for its general investment account.
BlackRock’s entry reflects a change in institutional outlook on crypto [cointelegraph.com]
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager with over $8.7 trillion assets under management, appeared to have given the green light to two of its associated funds, ...to invest in Bitcoin futures.
Bill Miller’s $2,250,000,000 Fund Prepares To Buy Exposure to Bitcoin, Officially Files With SEC [dailyhodl.com]
“Bitcoin has been the best performing asset over eight of the past ten calendar years, and its annualized performance has blown away the next-best performer, the Nasdaq, by a factor of ten over the past decade…
Ruffer Investment Used Coinbase to Execute $745M Bitcoin Buy [coindesk.com]
Ruffer invested 2.5% of its $27 billion portfolio into bitcoin in November.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 09 2021, @07:37AM
Forget Bitcoin! It has gone beyond the energy horizon! It's all about DogeCoin, now, especially the SnoopDogeCoin! Up over $.08, as we speak! You want to get in on GameStop, after it stopped? Well here is you chance, dweebs! Front up, hold, don't sell! Let's pump, and pump, and then, well, we will cross that bridge when we come.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Tuesday February 09 2021, @08:25AM
He's a smart guy. With that announcement this investment has already roughly doubled in value. Tesla is probably planning not to sell the bitcoins they receive for car payments, so his heap will grow both in size and value. His end goal? To get to Mars isn't it?
(Score: 2) by r_a_trip on Tuesday February 09 2021, @09:04AM (10 children)
What always amuses me is that the value of bitcoin is always expressed in one of the "hated" fiat currencies. It's always bitcoin is valued at X dollar or X EURO, etc. You never hear that the value of the dollar or EURO is now X Satoshi.
Which tells me the "value" of Cryptocoins is being an exchange token for the fiat currencies that it so desperately tried to escape. Would anyone (except starry eyed "we will stick it to the man" nerds) be interested in crypto currencies if it wasn't possible to convert it to a fiat currency?
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday February 09 2021, @10:27AM (3 children)
While it's possible to buy things using crypto, the only real use case I see so far is to dodge local laws.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 09 2021, @02:14PM (2 children)
Your money in the bank lost 5-10% of buying power over the last year. If you put it in bitcoin you would have gained 800%.
And the only reason inflation is that low is lockdowns keeping money velocity down.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 10 2021, @02:58AM (1 child)
You know about risk vs reward tradeoffs?
What does that tell you about the risk in an issue that has increased 800% in the last year?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 10 2021, @09:29AM
The dollar lost 800% of value in bitcoin, because they keep printing trillions of dollars and are promising to print trillions more.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Tuesday February 09 2021, @05:45PM (5 children)
The motivations are going to vary wildly by person. For me it's pretty simple. I believe that the US, by virtue of being the world reserve currency, has engaged in reckless spending and debt accumulation since the termination of Bretton Woods. The lack of consequences are primarily a product of being the world reserve currency - the currency other countries governments shove under their bed in case of a rainy day. Right now China is eclipsing our economy and places like India are expected to do so over the coming years as well. We're going to become a smaller and smaller player on the international scene in term of economics.
So what happens if the US dollar is no longer the gold standard, so to speak? This isn't hypothetical, there is an active and ongoing global effort to supplant the USD as the world reserve currency. And there's really no reason to think this won't, sooner or later, succeed. And then you have what? A country with 110% debt to GDP ratio (probably much higher by then) paired alongside a stagnating economy. You can only start paying off the debt by printing money like there's no tomorrow. That, in turn, triggers massive inflation resulting in the need to print even more resulting in more inflation resulting in.... Hyperinflation - happened a gazillion times in history, pretty much always the exact same setup. It's nothing new. Next thing you know you we're the guys mining gold in MMO's to sell because we make more money doing that than getting paid in funny money for a real job.
"But that could never happen in [country I live in]!" Said everybody everywhere everytime that it happened. This is the unspoken reason companies are also picking up sizable quantities of Bitcoin. In the best case scenario (in terms of the state of the country) the coins appreciate a bit and they've just made some sexy interest. In the worst case scenario, hyper-inflation hits and their USD assets become worthless, but the coins retain their value. There is also the possibility that Bitcoin itself becomes the world reserve currency. Completely decentralized, strictly finite, impossible to forge, transactions without needing middle men/banks, proven to work at scale, infinitely subdivisible (with a bit of work), etc. Pretty sexy choice for a world reserve currency.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 10 2021, @03:02AM (3 children)
I disagree, I believe the U.S. dollar is now primarily backed by U238 in weapons form. It's not spoken of day to day, but back the U.S. into a financial corner by actually enforcing things like fair trade balance on them, make them suffer real pains like materials shortages so they can't build more weapons and see what comes next. Oh, nobody has really tried that since 1971, have they?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Wednesday February 10 2021, @05:03AM (2 children)
I mean economic consequences, and it's entirely organic. Normally when a country prints obscene amounts of money it results in inflation. This [tradingeconomics.com] is a graph of the monetary supply of the US. Be sure to change the scale to max. Our economic policy now a days can be summed up as: when exponential functions get exponents. The reason we see relatively little in the way of consequences is because when international trade, oil, and many more things are all settled in USD it helps to 'export our inflation'. As dollars become worth less due to inflation, other countries need to devalue their own currencies, and/or obtain more USD. Both have the effect of mitigating any inflation on the dollar. And then interestingly enough this resultant stability in the value of the dollar further encourages nations to hold onto (and trade in) the USD which makes its stability become a self fulfilling prophecy.
So in effect we effectively become protected from the consequences of our own economic decisions. But that remains true only so long as USD remains the world reserve currency. When that changes, and it will, our economic state will be decided by our economic fundamentals. And they're quite awful, especially as our economy seems to be headed towards stagnation - while our debt seems to be headed to Mars. It's already long since gone to the moon, literally. Stack dollar bills equivalent to the size of our debt on top one another and they would reach well beyond the distance to the moon. Fun imagery.
In recent times places like China [tradingeconomics.com] and Russia [tradingeconomics.com] have been accumulating massive reserves of gold. It's a gradual process because they need to accumulate an increasingly large share of all gold in existence, but if they try to do that rapidly it would massively increase the price of gold. The idea they not so secretly hold is to try to create a new gold-backed currency that can be used to replace the dollar in trade and reserves. It's similar to what Gaddafi was trying to do in Libya/Africa with a gold dinar, before he got 'democracy brought to him'. If these nations succeed, they will have defeated the US, by letting us defeat ourselves, no weapons required. And I see no reason to think they won't succeed.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday February 10 2021, @12:07PM (1 child)
Causally [economicshelp.org], no [forbes.com], it [investopedia.com] doesn't [nytimes.com].
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Wednesday February 10 2021, @02:46PM
Ah the internet! I'm glad to see you've become an expert on a topic you clearly have no clue about after spending 30 seconds on a google search to try to create an argument confirming your own biases, without even understanding why the articles you've linked to and what I've said are in no way incompatible.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 10 2021, @03:04AM
No, whatever you've been smoking: that's the new gold standard.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/