3 ms·

No, it has been meandering around $3600 for a month or so (around the average electricity cost to mine one[1]). To put that in perspective, at that price the t

No, it has been meandering around $3600 for a month or so (around the average electricity cost to mine one[1]). To put that in perspective, at that price the total value of all bitcoins that will ever exist is about $75 billion. That's close to the total value of Swiss Francs or Mexican Pesos in circulation[2], which still seems insane to me given that you probably can't even use it to buy lunch. [1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-how-much-it-costs-to-mine-a-single-bitcoin-in-your-country-2018-03-06 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-how-much-it-costs-to... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circulation_%28currency%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circulation_%28currency%29

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> That's close to the total value of Swiss Francs or Mexican Pesos in circulation Physical currency in circulation. Almost every modern currency is principally held digitally.
SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
>No, it has been meandering around $3600 for a month or so (around the average electricity cost to mine one[1]). I had wondered why that $3300-3600 mark seemed to be the bottom. That seems to be a fair explanation. It doesn’t seem good. I wonder; has the demand for gold ever been lower than the cost to mine it? >which still seems insane to me given that you probably can't even use it to buy lunch. Anyone still calling it a “currency” doesn’t seem to grasp what currency is supposed to be. Crypto-commodity is much more appropriate.
- rjf72 8y ago
  The 'price of electricity to mine a bitcoin' is clickbait. There is no fixed price as it's 100% market/demand driven. The way bitcoin works is that the difficulty of the algorithm automatically adjusts to the rate at which they are being solved so that a block is able to be mined, on average, in about 10 minutes. What this means is if there was a world where only one person was mining bitcoin using a single hand crank and a laptop for energy, it'd still take exactly as long as a world where there were trillions of people mining bitcoin using nuclear powered supercomputing complexes. So the amount of electricity required to produce one coin on average is 100% a reflection of demand. The more demand there is for bitcoin (and the more miners), the more it costs to mine a BTC. It's quite a brilliant design since it scales endlessly with no change necessary to the underlying system. For instance imagine a bunch of people started spending $3600 of electric/compute time mining coins. Suddenly the increased number of people mining would mean that that level of compute would generate fewer coins - and so the necessary compute to produce a coin would naturally grow. By contrast, imagine the price of BTC went down and thus there was a decline in incentive and number of people mining it. Suddenly the price of electric required to produce one coin would also go down. There are also some technical issues with things like the 'price of electricity to mine a BTC' such as the fact that the electric consumption per hash generated is going to vary quite dramatically depending on whether somebody is using a CPU, GPU, dedicated ASIC system, etc and then the specifics within those broad categories. The old saying likely holds here: there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. People stating statistics like this are mostly just pushing an agenda. I do not mean the grandparent comment here. I mean the source he read it from. There are so many uncountable variables that just giving a number is completely meaningless, and highly misleading.
- brazzy 8y ago
  > I wonder; has the demand for gold ever been lower than the cost to mine it? It has definitely happened that mines were closed because of a decline in price: https://www.cdfund.com/en/gold-mine-closures-due-to-current-gold-price/ https://www.cdfund.com/en/gold-mine-closures-due-to-current-...
juskrey 8y ago
Value means nothing, sell 10% of bitcoins in one day and price will probably dive 100x
- Sargos 8y ago
  Sell 10% of stocks in a day and the price will dive 100x too.
  - isk517 8y ago
    A stock is still tied to a company that produces something. If 50% of Apple was sold tomorrow regardless of what happens to the stock price in the short term people know in the long term a new iPhone will be released in September and the company will still make money hand over fist. Bitcoin on the other hand only has value because of people buying or selling it.
  - juskrey 8y ago
    Yes, that's why company total stock value and bitcoin value are both equal BS. It's just last sucker's price multiplied by total. Anything nonlinear can't be measured like that.
Sir_Substance 8y ago
>which still seems insane to me given that you probably can't even use it to buy lunch. At the risk of being branded a "Bitcoin zealot from Reddit", I'd like to point out that although this may be locally true for any given reader since it's obviously dependent on where they live (which is also true of being able to buy lunch with US dollars by the way), it's certainly either ignorant or intellectually dishonest. You can buy anything under $500 on aliexpress or amazon here[1], and that's only one of about half a dozen or so different websites I have bookmarked that accept various cryptocurrencies, operating either as currency conversion services or selling directly. The implication that you cannot spend bitcoin on real goods is not correct. If you don't live in mexico, it's much easier to spend $10 of bitcoin than $10 of pesos. [1]http://olodolo.com/ http://olodolo.com/

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> That's close to the total value of Swiss Francs or Mexican Pesos in circulation Physical currency in circulation. Almost every modern currency is principally held digitally.

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago

>No, it has been meandering around $3600 for a month or so (around the average electricity cost to mine one[1]). I had wondered why that $3300-3600 mark seemed to be the bottom. That seems to be a fair explanation. It doesn’t seem good. I wonder; has the demand for gold ever been lower than the cost to mine it? >which still seems insane to me given that you probably can't even use it to buy lunch. Anyone still calling it a “currency” doesn’t seem to grasp what currency is supposed to be. Crypto-commodity is much more appropriate.

rjf72 8y ago
The 'price of electricity to mine a bitcoin' is clickbait. There is no fixed price as it's 100% market/demand driven. The way bitcoin works is that the difficulty of the algorithm automatically adjusts to the rate at which they are being solved so that a block is able to be mined, on average, in about 10 minutes. What this means is if there was a world where only one person was mining bitcoin using a single hand crank and a laptop for energy, it'd still take exactly as long as a world where there were trillions of people mining bitcoin using nuclear powered supercomputing complexes. So the amount of electricity required to produce one coin on average is 100% a reflection of demand. The more demand there is for bitcoin (and the more miners), the more it costs to mine a BTC. It's quite a brilliant design since it scales endlessly with no change necessary to the underlying system. For instance imagine a bunch of people started spending $3600 of electric/compute time mining coins. Suddenly the increased number of people mining would mean that that level of compute would generate fewer coins - and so the necessary compute to produce a coin would naturally grow. By contrast, imagine the price of BTC went down and thus there was a decline in incentive and number of people mining it. Suddenly the price of electric required to produce one coin would also go down. There are also some technical issues with things like the 'price of electricity to mine a BTC' such as the fact that the electric consumption per hash generated is going to vary quite dramatically depending on whether somebody is using a CPU, GPU, dedicated ASIC system, etc and then the specifics within those broad categories. The old saying likely holds here: there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. People stating statistics like this are mostly just pushing an agenda. I do not mean the grandparent comment here. I mean the source he read it from. There are so many uncountable variables that just giving a number is completely meaningless, and highly misleading.
brazzy 8y ago
> I wonder; has the demand for gold ever been lower than the cost to mine it? It has definitely happened that mines were closed because of a decline in price: https://www.cdfund.com/en/gold-mine-closures-due-to-current-gold-price/ https://www.cdfund.com/en/gold-mine-closures-due-to-current-...

juskrey 8y ago

Value means nothing, sell 10% of bitcoins in one day and price will probably dive 100x

Sargos 8y ago
Sell 10% of stocks in a day and the price will dive 100x too.
- isk517 8y ago
  A stock is still tied to a company that produces something. If 50% of Apple was sold tomorrow regardless of what happens to the stock price in the short term people know in the long term a new iPhone will be released in September and the company will still make money hand over fist. Bitcoin on the other hand only has value because of people buying or selling it.
- juskrey 8y ago
  Yes, that's why company total stock value and bitcoin value are both equal BS. It's just last sucker's price multiplied by total. Anything nonlinear can't be measured like that.

Sir_Substance 8y ago

>which still seems insane to me given that you probably can't even use it to buy lunch. At the risk of being branded a "Bitcoin zealot from Reddit", I'd like to point out that although this may be locally true for any given reader since it's obviously dependent on where they live (which is also true of being able to buy lunch with US dollars by the way), it's certainly either ignorant or intellectually dishonest. You can buy anything under $500 on aliexpress or amazon here[1], and that's only one of about half a dozen or so different websites I have bookmarked that accept various cryptocurrencies, operating either as currency conversion services or selling directly. The implication that you cannot spend bitcoin on real goods is not correct. If you don't live in mexico, it's much easier to spend $10 of bitcoin than $10 of pesos. [1]http://olodolo.com/ http://olodolo.com/