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India Should Buy Bitcoin

13 points by dsr12 6y ago

mindfulplay 6y ago
This is nonsensical peddling by a techno-crypto bro. Simple retort: currency is meant to be stable. He points to crypto being a trillion dollar "industry". Isn't that the same with any gambling/poker-like venture? Edit: removed name calling.
- dang 6y ago
  This comment breaks the site guidelines, which ask you not to call names, and not to fulminate. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. You may not owe techno-crypto-bro-absolutely-callous-rich-tech-asshole-hedge-fund-manager-scumminess any better, but you definitely owe this community better if you're posting to it. Thoughtful critique is different, and welcome.
  - jwblackwell 6y ago
    Thanks for moderating dang
ssivark 6y ago
Backing the INR with BTC is a moronic idea. Since India doesn’t currently have any significant semiconductor manufacturing facilities nor surplus power to burn on mining BTC (many more important human development use cases), India (and the INR) will be under the thumb of whoever does control the mining. As it stands currently, a lot of the mining is done by bots hosted in China, with whom India has geopolitical tensions. It might even be speculated whether the central coordination + semiconductor prowess might allow China to execute a 51% attack. It’s one thing to consider blockchain-backed databases and smart contract technology for specific use cases, and a totally different thing to peddle crap and drive the hype train with reasons such as: > Elon Musk: The world's richest man has said that Bitcoin is "inevitable" and changed his Twitter bio to simply "#Bitcoin". > The website coinmarketcap.com has a higher Alexa ranking (#324 at last check) than the website wsj.com (last ranked as #440).
- captn3m0 6y ago
  There's even a "national security" reason on the doc with no weight given to the whole Chinese mining situation.
yalogin 6y ago
This uses the motto, if you have a hammer everything looks like a nail. Quite a stretch from twitter banning an insurrectionist to "prevent it with ethereum". I am amused by the creativity there. I mean, if one is wholly invested in crypto currency, pushing for it makes sense I guess.
metabagel 6y ago
"Even a $3B purchase of BTC might appreciate to be on par with India's gold reserves given another 10X appreciation in the Bitcoin price." So, India should speculate on BTC, because it might go up. Got it.
- jwblackwell 6y ago
  Based on this logic aren’t all countries speculating on gold? How do you view sovereign wealth funds?
t0mbstone 6y ago
Remember when Mt. Gox got hacked and over $400 million worth of BTC got stolen? That same BTC is now worth almost $30 billion. I wonder how much of that $30 billion is now circulating around?
captn3m0 6y ago
Not a single mention of taxes anywhere in the document. How do you propose a fiscal policy with no words about taxation? The Indian fiscal policy is all about taxation: Our last major policy change was nation-wide tax scheme for GST. The most awaited item in the budget every year is taxation, and the whole demonitization exercise was reasoned as: "this will catch people who aren't paying taxes". How the heck do you tax BTC without any glaring loopholes?

13 points by dsr12 6y ago

This is nonsensical peddling by a techno-crypto bro. Simple retort: currency is meant to be stable. He points to crypto being a trillion dollar "industry". Isn't that the same with any gambling/poker-like venture? Edit: removed name calling.

dang 6y ago
This comment breaks the site guidelines, which ask you not to call names, and not to fulminate. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. You may not owe techno-crypto-bro-absolutely-callous-rich-tech-asshole-hedge-fund-manager-scumminess any better, but you definitely owe this community better if you're posting to it. Thoughtful critique is different, and welcome.
- jwblackwell 6y ago
  Thanks for moderating dang

ssivark 6y ago

Backing the INR with BTC is a moronic idea. Since India doesn’t currently have any significant semiconductor manufacturing facilities nor surplus power to burn on mining BTC (many more important human development use cases), India (and the INR) will be under the thumb of whoever does control the mining. As it stands currently, a lot of the mining is done by bots hosted in China, with whom India has geopolitical tensions. It might even be speculated whether the central coordination + semiconductor prowess might allow China to execute a 51% attack. It’s one thing to consider blockchain-backed databases and smart contract technology for specific use cases, and a totally different thing to peddle crap and drive the hype train with reasons such as: > Elon Musk: The world's richest man has said that Bitcoin is "inevitable" and changed his Twitter bio to simply "#Bitcoin". > The website coinmarketcap.com has a higher Alexa ranking (#324 at last check) than the website wsj.com (last ranked as #440).

captn3m0 6y ago
There's even a "national security" reason on the doc with no weight given to the whole Chinese mining situation.

yalogin 6y ago

This uses the motto, if you have a hammer everything looks like a nail. Quite a stretch from twitter banning an insurrectionist to "prevent it with ethereum". I am amused by the creativity there. I mean, if one is wholly invested in crypto currency, pushing for it makes sense I guess.

metabagel 6y ago

"Even a $3B purchase of BTC might appreciate to be on par with India's gold reserves given another 10X appreciation in the Bitcoin price." So, India should speculate on BTC, because it might go up. Got it.

jwblackwell 6y ago
Based on this logic aren’t all countries speculating on gold? How do you view sovereign wealth funds?

t0mbstone 6y ago

Remember when Mt. Gox got hacked and over $400 million worth of BTC got stolen? That same BTC is now worth almost $30 billion. I wonder how much of that $30 billion is now circulating around?

captn3m0 6y ago

Not a single mention of taxes anywhere in the document. How do you propose a fiscal policy with no words about taxation? The Indian fiscal policy is all about taxation: Our last major policy change was nation-wide tax scheme for GST. The most awaited item in the budget every year is taxation, and the whole demonitization exercise was reasoned as: "this will catch people who aren't paying taxes". How the heck do you tax BTC without any glaring loopholes?