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If this is true, which I welcome because Chinese miner centralization has been a massive worry for us since about 2012, that still has yielded they highest hash

If this is true, which I welcome because Chinese miner centralization has been a massive worry for us since about 2012, that still has yielded they highest hash rate (the computing power dedicated to mining Bitcoin) in the History of BTC: https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-hashrate.html https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-hashrate.html Its easy to skew this if you don't understand the underlying tech, but Bitcoin continues to work despite a supposed exodus of miners (best example being the last fork with BCash), what secures the network are the nodes, not miners. They're just participants who are rewarded for appropriating the network with hashing power. As for the price dip, well I welcome anyone to buy $100 of BTC and hold onto a $100 and see which is more valuable now that the Federal Reserve has dropped Interest rates to 0%, and is issuing a $700 Billion QE program: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/15/federal-reserve-cuts-rates-to-zero-and-launches-massive-700-billion-quantitative-easing-program.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/15/federal-reserve-cuts-rates-t... > They should never be there anyway, Bitcoin is a waste of time. Personally, this couldn't have come at a worst time for me as I stepped down from my day job to undergo my SpaceX interview(s), I've turned down some gig/jobs in the last month too, but I'm glad that I have BTC as a cushion with some cash on hand.

lawn 7y ago
> BCash If anyone wonders what this is, it's a demeaning name for the Bitcoin Cash fork, used to discredit it. https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/why-some-people-call-bitcoin-cash-bcash-this-will-be-shocking-to-new-readers-956558da12fb https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/why-some-people-call-bit...
iamaelephant 7y ago
Bitcoin is fundamentally not a cash alternative. Which means definitionally the alternative to holding onto $100 BTC is NOT holding onto $100 cash. In fact cash is intentionally inflationary and BTC is intentionally deflationary (over long enough time scales) so yeah, you'd win your silly bet if there's no major crash. Doesn't mean you'll come out ahead of other strategies.
- Melting_Harps 7y ago
  > Bitcoin is fundamentally not a cash alternative Funny, I built a fintech startup on helping the cannabis Industry from their supposed 'cash' problem(s): predominately having too much of it and not having banking, or having thier cash taken indefinitely by the bank/paypal upon closure of their account(s). While also doing B2B transactions where banks/CC companies failed to lend them services, despite having Local/State laws permitting so. None of which Cash seemed to prove as useful as you think it is. I think you're looking at this the wrong way: rather than looking at it as a paradigm shift in what programmable money can do, you are measuring Bitcoin by how it fails to function (or dysfunction) as your local Fiat currency does. That's a very poor measure/metric, as for being able to use it day-to-day, provided you're willing to operate within a KYC/AML system, you can have Visa Credit Cards that draw from your source of BTC in real time/previously loaded, depending on what service you use. Merchants who accept Bitcoin is a constraint, mainly a tech related one, but just like how many restaurants now take UberEats/Doordash/GrubHub that amount to a growing/large(r) percent of their revenue (moreso when States are limiting restaurant hours or outright operation to online orders only [1]) you will see new use cases appear which Bitcoin's layer 1/2 can utilize natively as a private p2p system. I think its very telling that despite guy's like Jack Dorsey backing Bitcoin, who I think understands the fintech landscape, and has been orientating Square to be integrated and compatible with it many of you still refuse to see the shift has already happened. Price drops happen in Bitcoin, I've been in this long enough that it doesn't phase me anymore; and is the only real antidote to the supposed 'what about the early adopter whales' issue people bring up, personally I'm using some of my discretionary budget to buy more. I'm not here to convince you to use Bitcoin, or why it would work for you/your business: I'm just pointing out why what you said is skewed and not framed correctly. Otherwise you'll have to do what IBM did: offer a good salary for consultant fees to do so. :) [1]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/15/coronavirus-bars-restaurants-closed-states/5055634002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/15/corona...
  - Nursie 7y ago
    I tend to measure bitcoin by how its proponents sell it. It has failed at all of these things - Being a fast/cheap payments network Being a decentralised cash equivalent Being a store of value The shift hasn't already happened - large businesses that have accepted bitcoin in the past have almost all stepped back from it citing a variety of problems, but mainly boiling down to it not being worth the effort, and nobody using it. And why would they? It's inflationary in theory and speculative in actuality, anyone that actually thinks BTC is the way of the future would be a fool to part with it.
api 7y ago
That's not how economies of scale work in a price crunch. This will drive further consolidation of mining power since the largest players are the most efficient. It's the smaller indie miners that will be forced out. When margins are squeezed only the largest vertically integrated players survive.
- Melting_Harps 7y ago
  > When margins are squeezed only the largest vertically integrated players survive. And yet, that's not what happened when it forked Bitmain (who may have had 70-80% of Bitcoin's hashing power at one point) was the one to take the hardest hit and essentially folded; its founder was exited and disgraced, and the company was pivoted to what seems to be primarily an AI business now [2] after that utter failure to 'prove' what you have said is accepted as 'Truth' when its not simply true when it played out in this space. I think what many, especially those not actively working or participating in this space, seem to not understand is that Bitcoin, and to some extent cryptocurrency in general, is defying the supposed 'conventional wisdom' by just exisiting and then disproving them with these occurences. Most of the criticisms are cherry-picked and mis-focused to react to it in a negative light--eg the ICO craze had nothing to do with Bitcoin. After all this time I don't see any of those price drops as bad, its allowing newer participants to into this system if seen as investment, that they otherwise may have not been able to enter. And for those that were using to transact for goods/services during this volatility it may have hurt, but as someone pointed out merchant adoption is not so large that it could kill a business right now, not to mention there are ways to mitigate this with other instruments (tethered to USD and such). Also, the thing most people don't seem to understand either is that Bitcoin mining has spurred on tons of renewable energy projects and has since migrated to that to capture said efficiencies [3] as documented by the International Energy Agency. The network is estimated to be operating on 70% renewable energy, and is growing with projects like Theil's backed bitcoin mining facility in Texas [4]. 1: https://www.ccn.com/bitmain-jihan-wu-micree-zhan-stepping-down/ https://www.ccn.com/bitmain-jihan-wu-micree-zhan-stepping-do... 2: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-mining-giant-bitmain-making-160026694.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-mining-giant-bitmain-... 3: https://www.iea.org/commentaries/bitcoin-energy-use-mined-the-gap https://www.iea.org/commentaries/bitcoin-energy-use-mined-th... 4: https://www.iea.org/commentaries/bitcoin-energy-use-mined-the-gap https://www.iea.org/commentaries/bitcoin-energy-use-mined-th...
Yizahi 7y ago
Regardless of Bitcoin pros and cons this event will increase centralization and by a lot. Whales will acquire cheap hardware of bankrupt smaller or more reckless competitors and after stabilization there will be fewer major players, with remaining ones being much bigger. I wouldn't even discount emerging of "benevolent 51%" entity which will be a monopolist "for the greater good".
mywittyname 7y ago
> issuing a $700 Billion QE program: That's nothing. That's a rounding error compared to the compared to the 4.4 trillion dollars spent each year by the government. The market cap of the S&P 500 is still well over $20 trillion. It fluctuates more than $700 billion in a single day.

lawn 7y ago

> BCash If anyone wonders what this is, it's a demeaning name for the Bitcoin Cash fork, used to discredit it. https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/why-some-people-call-bitcoin-cash-bcash-this-will-be-shocking-to-new-readers-956558da12fb https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/why-some-people-call-bit...

iamaelephant 7y ago

Bitcoin is fundamentally not a cash alternative. Which means definitionally the alternative to holding onto $100 BTC is NOT holding onto $100 cash. In fact cash is intentionally inflationary and BTC is intentionally deflationary (over long enough time scales) so yeah, you'd win your silly bet if there's no major crash. Doesn't mean you'll come out ahead of other strategies.

Melting_Harps 7y ago
> Bitcoin is fundamentally not a cash alternative Funny, I built a fintech startup on helping the cannabis Industry from their supposed 'cash' problem(s): predominately having too much of it and not having banking, or having thier cash taken indefinitely by the bank/paypal upon closure of their account(s). While also doing B2B transactions where banks/CC companies failed to lend them services, despite having Local/State laws permitting so. None of which Cash seemed to prove as useful as you think it is. I think you're looking at this the wrong way: rather than looking at it as a paradigm shift in what programmable money can do, you are measuring Bitcoin by how it fails to function (or dysfunction) as your local Fiat currency does. That's a very poor measure/metric, as for being able to use it day-to-day, provided you're willing to operate within a KYC/AML system, you can have Visa Credit Cards that draw from your source of BTC in real time/previously loaded, depending on what service you use. Merchants who accept Bitcoin is a constraint, mainly a tech related one, but just like how many restaurants now take UberEats/Doordash/GrubHub that amount to a growing/large(r) percent of their revenue (moreso when States are limiting restaurant hours or outright operation to online orders only [1]) you will see new use cases appear which Bitcoin's layer 1/2 can utilize natively as a private p2p system. I think its very telling that despite guy's like Jack Dorsey backing Bitcoin, who I think understands the fintech landscape, and has been orientating Square to be integrated and compatible with it many of you still refuse to see the shift has already happened. Price drops happen in Bitcoin, I've been in this long enough that it doesn't phase me anymore; and is the only real antidote to the supposed 'what about the early adopter whales' issue people bring up, personally I'm using some of my discretionary budget to buy more. I'm not here to convince you to use Bitcoin, or why it would work for you/your business: I'm just pointing out why what you said is skewed and not framed correctly. Otherwise you'll have to do what IBM did: offer a good salary for consultant fees to do so. :) [1]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/15/coronavirus-bars-restaurants-closed-states/5055634002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/15/corona...
- Nursie 7y ago
  I tend to measure bitcoin by how its proponents sell it. It has failed at all of these things - Being a fast/cheap payments network Being a decentralised cash equivalent Being a store of value The shift hasn't already happened - large businesses that have accepted bitcoin in the past have almost all stepped back from it citing a variety of problems, but mainly boiling down to it not being worth the effort, and nobody using it. And why would they? It's inflationary in theory and speculative in actuality, anyone that actually thinks BTC is the way of the future would be a fool to part with it.

api 7y ago

That's not how economies of scale work in a price crunch. This will drive further consolidation of mining power since the largest players are the most efficient. It's the smaller indie miners that will be forced out. When margins are squeezed only the largest vertically integrated players survive.

Melting_Harps 7y ago
> When margins are squeezed only the largest vertically integrated players survive. And yet, that's not what happened when it forked Bitmain (who may have had 70-80% of Bitcoin's hashing power at one point) was the one to take the hardest hit and essentially folded; its founder was exited and disgraced, and the company was pivoted to what seems to be primarily an AI business now [2] after that utter failure to 'prove' what you have said is accepted as 'Truth' when its not simply true when it played out in this space. I think what many, especially those not actively working or participating in this space, seem to not understand is that Bitcoin, and to some extent cryptocurrency in general, is defying the supposed 'conventional wisdom' by just exisiting and then disproving them with these occurences. Most of the criticisms are cherry-picked and mis-focused to react to it in a negative light--eg the ICO craze had nothing to do with Bitcoin. After all this time I don't see any of those price drops as bad, its allowing newer participants to into this system if seen as investment, that they otherwise may have not been able to enter. And for those that were using to transact for goods/services during this volatility it may have hurt, but as someone pointed out merchant adoption is not so large that it could kill a business right now, not to mention there are ways to mitigate this with other instruments (tethered to USD and such). Also, the thing most people don't seem to understand either is that Bitcoin mining has spurred on tons of renewable energy projects and has since migrated to that to capture said efficiencies [3] as documented by the International Energy Agency. The network is estimated to be operating on 70% renewable energy, and is growing with projects like Theil's backed bitcoin mining facility in Texas [4]. 1: https://www.ccn.com/bitmain-jihan-wu-micree-zhan-stepping-down/ https://www.ccn.com/bitmain-jihan-wu-micree-zhan-stepping-do... 2: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-mining-giant-bitmain-making-160026694.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-mining-giant-bitmain-... 3: https://www.iea.org/commentaries/bitcoin-energy-use-mined-the-gap https://www.iea.org/commentaries/bitcoin-energy-use-mined-th... 4: https://www.iea.org/commentaries/bitcoin-energy-use-mined-the-gap https://www.iea.org/commentaries/bitcoin-energy-use-mined-th...

Yizahi 7y ago

Regardless of Bitcoin pros and cons this event will increase centralization and by a lot. Whales will acquire cheap hardware of bankrupt smaller or more reckless competitors and after stabilization there will be fewer major players, with remaining ones being much bigger. I wouldn't even discount emerging of "benevolent 51%" entity which will be a monopolist "for the greater good".

mywittyname 7y ago

> issuing a $700 Billion QE program: That's nothing. That's a rounding error compared to the compared to the 4.4 trillion dollars spent each year by the government. The market cap of the S&P 500 is still well over $20 trillion. It fluctuates more than $700 billion in a single day.