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Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future
- rq1 6y agoI don’t know if it’s related but Binance is completely down. Is there a reliable broker out there?
- pmorici 6y agoCoinbase
- simonebrunozzi 6y agoNot very reliable. The most reliable broker is... Having a few accounts at different brokers that you could use - e.g. Coinbase, Kraken, Binance, etc.
- pmorici 6y agoI disagree, people like to dump on Coinbase but I think it is the undisputed leader when it comes to reliability and sound business practices. Kraken is so unreliable there were weeks at a time where I couldn’t login, ultimately closed my account. Binance has a legal liability problem from their genesis as a law flouting business.
- logicchains 6y ago>Binance has a legal liability problem from their genesis as a law flouting business. US-law. Not everybody in the world is obligated to abide by US regulations. >reliability and sound business practices Sound business practices like charging extortionate fees, literally 5-10x more than the non-US exchanges? It's typical regulatory capture: Americans are forced to pay more because they have fewer options.
- pmorici 6y agoNo, but Binance being a US based business is required to abide by us law. A basic Google search will tell you they are based in San Francisco.
- Consultant32452 6y agoI would submit any of them are fine. The important thing is not leaving your coins there, and transferring them to a private wallet ASAP.
- xangel 6y ago"Tesla is not a car company, it's a tech company". Now it wants to be a speculative hedge fund.
- monkeydust 6y agoSomething investors need to consider going forward - invest in company X you might be unknowingly gaining exposure to crypto Y
- usrusr 6y agootoh it might be quite attractive way to indirectly invest in bitcoin: profit when it's rising, go all minority shareholder on them when the bubble pops, because nominally the company in question did all its business in an entirely unrelated field. (I know nothing about minority shareholder stuff and certainly don't expect this calculation to actually work out financially, but on an emotional level, some people will just love being able to point fingers when their bet fails)
- exabrial 6y agoLegitimizing Bitcoin more than offsets the environmental benefits of electric vehicles.
- ludditetech 6y agoFiat system costs a lot to run too, pretty sure this assertion debunked.
- JustFinishedBSG 6y agoGood thing you are only pretty sure then because it's entirely false. Bitcoin needs several orders of magnitude more energy per transactions.
- lifty 6y agoIt's better to think of Bitcoin efficiency in terms of transaction throughput (value moved) instead of transactions per second. This tweet makes a comparison with Fedwire: https://twitter.com/nic__carter/status/1358155385081888778?s=21 https://twitter.com/nic__carter/status/1358155385081888778?s... 2nd layer solutions will scale Bitcoin transaction capacity in terms of transactions/s
- xur17 6y ago100% this. I work at a merchant that accepts Bitcoin for payment, and 90+% of our volume comes in over lightning (a layer 2 solution built on top of Bitcoin).
- mrpopo 6y agoSo, only 1 order of magnitude down. EDIT: according to a chart here [0], 1 "raw" Bitcoin transaction is equivalent to 400k Visa transactions. That's 5 orders of magnitude. Unless Lightning handles 99.999% of all Bitcoin transactions, the Bitcoin network will be unbelievably wasteful. https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/
- pearjuice 6y agoI have been bearish on BTC for a long time, but when I realized a few years ago that the fiat system we have in place is unsustainable, I see it as a safe hedge against it and the inevitable hyper inflation which will happen in our lifetime. I know HN is highly skeptical of anything crypto and I agree that blockchain as a technology doesn't have any notable usages. But right now, Bitcoin is the safest deflationary asset out there.
- phreeza 6y agoWhy not buy something useful like real estate?
- Fischinn 6y agoSooo you believe that when our current system fails, you will still be able to sell and buy bitcoins? Like when our current currency is no longer usefull, suddenly people will use bitcoins? How will anyone start to care about bitcoin if you can't really trade it for a currency normal people acutally use?
- pawelduda 6y agoOne can hope this doesn't cause full-blown mania, followed by a crash. On it's own, this is a bullish development for BTC, but everything Elon touches, tends to generate a lot of hype... could be too much.
- tluyben2 6y agoSeems it calmed down a bit already.
- luxuryballs 6y agoIt will, that’s when you buy. This happens every single time, whether it’s $250 to $70 or $12,000 to $5,000 or $40,000 to $????... ride the wave.
- rvz 6y agoThe people who bought at <$20,000 are already in 100% profit so a great time to take some off the table if a crash were to come. (Which I think will happen)
- smartties 6y ago> are already in 100% profit If they didn't cash out, there are not profit. Bitcoin could take a 80% dump within an hour and most people would be screwed.
- nojvek 6y agoYou lose money when you buy, and you make money when you sell. Everything else is somewhat fake money. So they're in 100% profit if they sold. Usually when you want to sell, everyone else wants to sell too (see Mar 2020) so it all comes crashing
- rognjen 6y agoOne can hope that it does.
- christmm 6y agonever bet against Elon , Burry
- jpswade 6y agoSo that's what Elon meant when he said Dogecoin is the people's crypto...
- Rinum 6y agoConsidering how much Elon Musk was pumping Dogecoin I'm surprised they didn't buy altcoins too
- riffraff 6y agothat would have dumped him straight into the SEC's "bad guy" list for security fraud.
- charcircuit 6y agoDOGE is not a security.
- riffraff 6y agono, but TSLA is, and you're not supposed to make jokes about investing a billion dollars of your company money. Or better, you can _joke_ about it but if turns out you didn't joke, then that may be problematic.
- ac42 6y ago63.8T USD o_O
- ikornaselur 6y agoSurely it's 1.5B USD dollars worth of BTC, being roughly ~39k BTC
- randompwd 6y agoYes. It was a badly titled submission. The TC headline is 'Tesla buys $1.5B in bitcoin'
- yyy888sss 6y agoBitcoin production is capped at 21 million BTC.
- Alex3917 6y agoMore like 150k. You don't pay anywhere near retail when you buy in that quantity.
- simonebrunozzi 6y agoA 75% discount? I'd bet less, in the 20-30% range.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Tepix 6y agoWho is going to sell at a huge discount and why?
- Alex3917 6y agoBig miners who would otherwise need to sell it for USDT. Instead they get Elon to create an American shell company for them to get their money out of China or wherever.
- ludditetech 6y agoOn the money Elon, as usual, but more importantly on point with ideas, and ideals.
- Kaze404 6y agoClearly Elon Musk is the bastion of ideals that benefit the world. "We will coup whoever we want, deal with it"
- speedgoose 6y agoThat's not good for the environment.
- Laarlf 6y agoSuicide is good for the environment. Money monopolies aren’t good for people.
- cies 6y agoTesla is not about being good for the env. It's about making money. Same thing with SpaceX not being about going to Mars. It's about making money too! The going to Mars/ good for env stories are to get some public goodwill behind them from a certain crowd.
- criley2 6y agoIf we're being honest, SpaceX is designed to gobble up government contracts. That's it. That's the whole business model. If NASA offered contracts exploring the ocean depths then Elon Musk would be sinking Tesla's in submersibles.
- thinkcontext 6y agoThat was ULA before SpaceX came around. They had a monopoly on government launch and they won almost no commercial contracts on the global market because they were uncompetitive. SpaceX has totally reversed both of those. They have saved the government $Bs by undercutting ULA and is the top commercial launcher in the world.
- cies 6y agoNot only govt contracts. Also private satellite launches, their own satellite internet network, and prolly more. Of there was an untapped market in deep sea, it might have been tapped by him as well. But judging from the oil+gas exploration there I think that's not quite as untapped (pun maybe intended).
- 6y ago
- PunchTornado 6y agoSo this is legal and ok to do: - You buy a lot of bitcoin personally. - Then as a CEO you make your company invest in bitcoin. Make it news. Prices go up. - You've made a lot of money for yourself.
- Frost1x 6y agoSounds like business as usual, other than it being bitcoin.
- simonebrunozzi 6y agoI don't think that Elon Musk bought bitcoin personally, but of course I could have missed it. Do you have a source for this claim?
- Clewza313 6y agoI suspect the previous poster was referring to MSTR, whose CEO appears to have done just that.
- 0xmohit 6y agoThis is what analysts and institutional investors appearing on TV have been doing.
- alexmingoia 6y agoThat’s also how stock buybacks work, and stocks in general.
- xiphias2 6y agoBitcoin is notca security, so at least SEC has nothing to say about it.
- mrg2k8 6y agoNow all ransomware "hackers" will be able to easily buy Teslas, a nice incentive for people to get into that business.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y agoYeah, same for all the drug kingpins with their "US dollars"
- DennisP 6y agoMixers are not that effective these days.
- protoman3000 6y agoHow not? Can you point some research in this direction?
- ddtaylor 6y agoThere are companies, such as Chainalysis that specialize in analyzing the graph created by mixers/tumblers. If you want a coin that truly cannot have it's origins traced, use Monero, since it's a completely different structure with a public/private "view" key. It's actually a very interesting system.
- blantonl 6y agogiven the amount of regulatory gates you must pass through to purchase a car (license, registration etc), I doubt that criminals are going to use Bitcoin payments for criminal services to purchase a car. They are far more likely to convert to fiat currency and then purchase the car.
- antupis 6y agoOr TSLA short sellers do 51% attack.
- jron 6y agoIn retrospect, it was inevitable.
- protoman3000 6y agoSo this is indeed what happens if there is no SEC protection against pump and dump schemes
- PartiallyTyped 6y agoDoes SEC ever do anything except chasing the small guys because that is as far as their power really goes?
- randompwd 6y agoalt https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/08/tesla-buys-1point5-billion-in-bitcoin.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/08/tesla-buys-1point5-billion-i...
- exabrial 6y agoI have hope for something like Stellar and Lumens rather than Bitcoin. It's environmentally responsible, and it's here and ready right now given the network of anchors like AnchorUSD.
- runako 6y agoThe timing on this announcement appears designed to overshadow other Tesla news from this morning: https://www.autonews.com/china/tesla-called-chinese-regulators-over-customer-complaints https://www.autonews.com/china/tesla-called-chinese-regulato...
- Pxtl 6y agoMusk has been pumping Doge on his Twitter feed a lot too. I wonder how much if this is about Musk thumbing his nose at the mainstream finance industry that he so clearly loathes as it is about anything approaching a valid business plan.
- api 6y agoI think you win. He's already done this with his deliberate attempts to ruin TSLA shorts. That being said doing this with a public company... if this guy isn't careful he's going to get barred from public markets and forced out of Tesla.
- kraemate 6y agoHe is the richest person in the world. Such trivial rules dont apply to him...
- bemmu 6y agoInteresting. Assuming he wants to see the finance industry burn, what might his next step be?
- 0x008 6y agoA private exchange for stocks that is based on crypto?
- deadalus 6y agoSoon, a nation might realistically buy $100 B + of bitcoin and declare it a national currency.
- londons_explore 6y agoThere are very few nations that don't have their own currency. That's because part of being a stable government is being able to have monetary control. Without that, it's only a matter of time before some expensive event (pandemic, war, drought, recession), people lose faith in government bonds, the government runs out of money, can't pay its workers, and a civil war ensues. Sure, some small island nations manage it. But in general, no big country can manage without monetary control.
- tonyedgecombe 6y agoAustria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Ecuador, El Salvador, Zimbabwe. Then there are some areas like Costa Rica where it is a quasi-local currency.
- londons_explore 6y agoAll the EU ones have at least some monetary control over the Euro. They also get support when they start struggling due to lack of monetary control (eg. Greek Bailout and Debt haircut of 2012). The other countries in your list (Ecuador, El Salvador, Zimbabwe.) I wouldn't say are bastions of government stability...
- anewaccount2021 6y ago80% of transactions are settled in USD so they'll either become an economic island cut off from the world, or just buy back USD later, possibly at a loss
- ddalex 6y agoThat is, assuming there isn't a nation state keeping one of these whale wallets that never was touched after initial mining.
- asenna 6y agoPeople paying attention to Elon's tweets [1] [2] saw this coming from a mile away. It'll be interesting to see if and when other big companies follow suit. In my opinion it's inevitable companies will start diversifying by a bit of exposure to Bitcoin but let's see how soon that will be. [1] - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-cryptocurrency/teslas-elon-musk-asks-about-converting-large-transactions-to-bitcoin-idUSKBN28U0XM https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-cryptocurrency/tesl... [2] - https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/29/bitcoin-spikes-20percent-after-elon-musk-adds-bitcoin-to-his-twitter-bio.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/29/bitcoin-spikes-20percent-aft...
- pmorici 6y agoI think the tell that it was definitely happening was when he went to visit Larry Ellison in person in Hawaii right after Christmas. What could have possibly needed the approval or advice of a member of the board and was too important or sensitive to discuss over the phone.
- Pyramus 6y agoI believe MicroStrategy ($MSTR) was the first major company to buy north of $1B BTC and effectively peg its shareprice to BTC.
- tchalla 6y agoYup, they have a dedicated page on their website explaining the decisions and other resources which are worth a read. https://www.microstrategy.com/en/bitcoin https://www.microstrategy.com/en/bitcoin
- xiphias2 6y agoActually in the SEC filing they state that they already changed their financial policy to be able to buy alternative assets. It's interesting that the media didn't pick it up, as MSTR did the same.thing first.
- pelliphant 6y ago
- Waterluvian 6y agoI bought $100 of BTC a while ago for fun. I watched it go up and down and mostly up. I got bored, and sold it for cash to donate... literally an hour before the big spike just earlier. I know about the fallacies of predicting the market. I understand 20/20 hindsight. But to actually experience it is such a strong lesson. To be flooded with, "ohhh I'm such an idiot!" and then think about how there's just no way I could have predicted this.
- legulere 6y agoI mined some bitcoins when they were worth around 5€ and sold them when they were around 300€. I still made a profit. Don’t try to hang on the things that could have been, but concentrate on the good things that happened. I bought some nice headphones from that money I still use and which make me happy.
- calabroa 6y agoNow would be a great time to cash out
- ddalex 6y agoOne should not ever sell Bitcoin, because it's a deflationary coin. Circulating Bitcoin is just lowering its value.
- thepete2 6y agoOnly if you assume that demand cannot go down.
- thaumasiotes 6y agoExcept of course that if you never sell it, its value has magically dropped all the way to zero, which is even lower than the value you would have gotten from selling it.
- estaseuropano 6y agoWell either you sell it someday or it doesn't have any useful value. Also this logic only applies if you assume there's no crash down the line.
- iujjkfjdkkdkf 6y agoThis is going to be one of those events that everyone points back to after the crash to show we had reached peak bubble. Like AOL buying Time Warner etc.
- lifty 6y agoI get similar vibes from these events, even though I am a cryptocurrency optimist (including Bitcoin).
- elyobo 6y agoIs an optimist one that thinks it will stay around, or one that thinks it will go away?
- lifty 6y agoOne that thinks that they will be around and be progressively more integrated in the fabric of society. I think crypto assets and blockchains have the potential to scale societal institutions and trust relationships in a way that was not possible before. Anything that requires consensus and governance can be implemented in a more transparent and trustworthy way on top of crypto asset networks. But some parts of the puzzle are not there yet. Most importantly, we need better ways for people to be able to manage cryptographic keys. Devices like Ledger or Trezor are good but they need to get even better.
- antupis 6y agoYeah truly WTF moment.
- 3np 6y agoYou could be right, but I strongly believe that's too early and that there's more to come. This and the markets' reaction are absolutely part of the left side of a hype-mania bubble that will have some event(s) like that but your guess is as good as mine
- NumberCruncher 6y ago
- kgwgk 6y agoWhat a disappointment. Tesla should have taken GameStop over!
- wewake 6y agoHighly irresponsible and foolish move but what else can you expect from him these days.
- Tenoke 6y agoOT: Not that I mind but why was my submission, posted and on the front page before this one marked as a dupe and this one boosted?
- pdevr 6y agoI can assure you that I didn't mark your post as dupe. But then again, I am not the moderator. Sorry for the poor joke, just trying to make you feel better :-) Added: I do see that your submission was made before this one. Maybe because of Bloomberg (paywall?) vs Techcrunch? I am just speculating.
- simonebrunozzi 6y agoIt happened to me several times in the past. Bitter taste, but that's life.
- anewaccount2021 6y agopresently, this could be a great way to save a lot of money on a Tesla. You buy BTC...it rises...you buy a car with no cap gains paid on the increased BTC value. Compare that to holding a stock like AAPL...you have to take a big tax hit to convert it to USD to buy the car. In high-tax States where Teslas are very popular, this is a nontrivial amount
- Pyramus 6y ago2020 has completely changed my perception of Tesla and Musk. I had this image of a benevolent genius who is sometimes misunderstood ("funding secured", "pedo guy", "Autopilot"). Came across Teslacharts' podcast [1] (now the Chartcast) and oh boy was I wrong. This is only the latest in a long series of red flags around Tesla/Musk and however it ends, it will not end well. [1] https://thechartcast.com/ https://thechartcast.com/
- ihsw 6y ago> however it ends, it will not end well Can you be more specific?
- kgwgk 6y agoBeing Elon Musk is securities fraud.
- Clewza313 6y agoTo be fair, as Matt "Money Stuff" Levine likes to say, everything is securities fraud. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everything-everywhere-is-securities-fraud https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...
- simonebrunozzi 6y ago
- JumpCrisscross 6y agoIn a way, buying Bitcoin is a bet on the timing of quantum computing.
- TacticalCoder 6y agoInteresting comment! Note that there are cryptographers out there working on blockchains that are quantum resistant: David Chaum for example and its "xx" blockchain (which is still in beta but already has a few hundreds nodes running).
- antidocker 6y agoOh people! Since when medieval people invented Jets before the tech for Jet comes out!! Sounds like Scam!
- marcosdumay 6y agoWhat is the size of the BTC chain nowadays? A quantum resistant version of it must be really impossible to download.
- shawabawa3 6y agoYou can use bitcoin without being vulnerable to quantum computing attacks, you simply have to never sign a transaction from the same address more than once (which is already considered a best practise for privacy)
- herpderperator 6y agoHow does that work?
- ddtaylor 6y agoWhen you spend Bitcoin you move coins from one public key to another, and you use your private key to sign the transaction. However, in Bitcoin you don't actually reveal the public key that the coins are being moved to, instead you reveal a hash of the public key. The actual public key isn't revealed until the time those coins are spent.
- Tepix 6y agoWhy Bitcoin? It's a contributor to climate change, slow and outdated. There are better alternatives.
- agilob 6y agotechcrunch.com does transparent redirect to a tracking domain. Clicking the link redirects to https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_cc-session_5e641399-ff23-4cd3-a0f7-ccac8fb1e2df https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_... which then redirects you back to a URL you wanted to visit.
- georgeplusplus 6y agoHow did we get to this point where the entire global economy has become a speculative carnival rodeo. This clearly can’t end well. Is there any precedence in history how this will turn out?
- person_of_color 6y agoThe Roman Empire
- gonzo41 6y agooof!
- fasteddie31003 6y agoI don't understand all the Crypto hate on this site. Since when have hackers become the luddites to new ways of finance?
- speedgoose 6y agoIt's more proof of work hate.
- fasteddie31003 6y agoThen can Etherium 2.0 get some love?
- prepend 6y ago“Hey there, you love the rich getting richer and a perpetual level of Uber rich controlling the financial system that is unbreakable? Then you’re going to love proof of stake.”
- fasteddie31003 6y agoWhy is that? The consensus mechanism only prevents a 51% attack?
- RhodoGSA 6y agoBecause the more money you have, the more money you make. That's why polkadot nominated proof of stake, which splits the rewards across validators equally to ensure even returns across the dot.
- whitepaint 6y agoAnyone can stake. Even if you don't have 32 ethers.
- prepend 6y ago
- danesparza 6y agoOh look. Elon Musk has figured out he has the power to influence currency markets ...
- sschueller 6y agoI am surprised they didn't do a ICO on Ethereum or something like that. Edit: I understand the down votes but you can't deny that this isn't something that Elon wouldn't do. If anyone would, it would be him.
- marshmallow_12 6y agohonest question: why would tesla, a responsible company, gamble so much money on a "product" which is literally worthless? (is it because so much of their income is generated from selling credits?)
- disruptalot 6y agoTo answer your question, you might for a second want to consider that your ideas about Bitcoin are incorrect.
- bhupy 6y agoI'm no crypto bull, but I don't think it's obvious at all that Bitcoin (or other crypto) is "literally worthless".
- marshmallow_12 6y agofrom my (admittedly meagar) understanding bitcoin is not backed up by any solid assets. Its value is solely dependent on what someone is willing to pay for it at any given time. It's a gamble that someone will be a bigger fool then you and buy your cryptocurrency. Someone will get hurt eventually.
- bhupy 6y agoIt's not (just) that. Gold has an intrinsic value because you can actually do something with it; it's used in semiconductor manufacturing, jewelry, etc. When you buy a gold bar as a store of wealth/value, even though your specific gold bar is probably not going to be used for anything, it holds value because there are other bars of gold just like it that are being used for something. The same holds true for Bitcoin. The one (and only one) use case for Bitcoin is censorship resistant transactions. There will always be some subset of people that use Bitcoin as a legitimate way to transact; black market trading, drugs, people that live in countries that have unstable currencies, etc. This isn't a significant number of people, but it's non-zero. As long as there exists that set of people that legitimately use Bitcoin, Bitcoin has some intrinsic worth.
- tchalla 6y agoSEC filing text commentary https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000156459021004599/tsla-10k_20201231.htm https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/0001... > We hold and may acquire digital assets that may be subject to volatile market prices, impairment and unique risks of loss. > 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. As part of the policy, which was duly approved by the Audit Committee of our Board of Directors, we may invest a portion of such cash in certain alternative reserve assets including digital assets, gold bullion, gold exchange-traded funds and other assets as specified in the future. Thereafter, we invested an aggregate $1.50 billion in bitcoin under this policy and may acquire and hold digital assets from time to time or long-term. 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 prices of digital assets have been in the past and may continue to be highly volatile, including as a result of various associated risks and uncertainties. For example, the prevalence of such assets is a relatively recent trend, and their long-term adoption by investors, consumers and businesses is unpredictable. Moreover, their lack of a physical form, their reliance on technology for their creation, existence and transactional validation and their decentralization may subject their integrity to the threat of malicious attacks and technological obsolescence. Finally, the extent to which securities laws or other regulations apply or may apply in the future to such assets is unclear and may change in the future. If we hold digital assets and their values decrease relative to our purchase prices, our financial condition may be harmed. > Moreover, digital assets are currently considered indefinite-lived intangible assets under applicable accounting rules, meaning that any decrease in their fair values below our carrying values for such assets at any time subsequent to their acquisition will require us to recognize impairment charges, whereas we may make no upward revisions for any market price increases until a sale, which may adversely affect our operating results in any period in which such impairment occurs. Moreover, there is no guarantee that future changes in GAAP will not require us to change the way we account for digital assets held by us. > Finally, as intangible assets without centralized issuers or governing bodies, digital assets have been, and may in the future be, subject to security breaches, cyberattacks or other malicious activities, as well as human errors or computer malfunctions that may result in the loss or destruction of private keys needed to access such assets. While we intend to take all reasonable measures to secure any digital assets, if such threats are realized or the measures or controls we create or implement to secure our digital assets fail, it could result in a partial or total misappropriation or loss of our digital assets, and our financial condition and operating results may be harmed.
- 1helloworld1 6y ago.
- dan1234 6y agoI believe the Lightning Network[0] is designed to alleviate this (at least for small payments). I'm not sure how much it gets though (but do people even buy/sell BTC for actual products?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network
- sandworm101 6y agoLol. Not that I think it will ever happen, but the purchase of a car is perhaps the one transaction that might actually work in bitcoin. It is huge one-time purchase that isn't really time dependent. Neither party would mind if it took a few days to process.
- Tenoke 6y agoA bitcoin transaction typically takes 30 minutes for 3 confirmations which is plenty sufficient unless you think the other party is pulling a very sophisticated/expensive attack on the network.
- sandworm101 6y ago30 min is ok for cars and houses, not for groceries or cellphone bills.
- scotty79 6y agoNot sure if that's a interesting enough question to ask here but, how high do you think the price will go in reaponse to that news?
- higerordermap 6y agoAside from all environment and ethical concerns, can someone elaborate how bitcoin & other crypto affects global economy and especially wealth equality? Since bitcoin transactions are anonymous, what will happen to taxes?
- whitepaint 6y agoIt's not anonymous. Very far from it actually. Let's say you buy BTC on some exchange platform and then you buy something illegal with it from some FBI honeypot. FBI can trace where you get those bitcoins and then they can go to the exchange platform with a warrant (probably they don't need it nowadays) to extract your real identity.
- higerordermap 6y agoBut again what's the effect on taxation?
- ddtaylor 6y agoIf you're looking for an actually anonymous cryptocurrency, see Monero.
- charcircuit 6y agoTaxes wise for the US fiat -> crypto: nothing crypto -> crypto: capital gains crypto -> fiat: capital gains nothing -> crypto: income
- buildbuildbuild 6y agoCryptocurrency is a blind spot where Hacker News’ normal optimism towards innovation has disappointed for a decade. May this thread be one we can reference years later as another example of “our collective opinions can be very wrong about technologies that were transformative in hindsight.” Innovators, follow regulations and go for it. Don’t let the HN crowd get you down. Few of these commenters have ever been unbanked. You’re on to something, close the tab and get to work.
- graeme 6y agoWhat exactly is the bull case for bitcoin? I have not seen it clearly explained. I’ve got an open mind. In more specific terms you mentioned the unbanked. How does crypto solve the problems that leave them unbanked?
- ddtaylor 6y agoAnyone can send or receive cryptocurrency without third party authorization.
- graeme 6y agoBut why does that require a specific monetary value for bitcoin? And doesn’t this apply to any cryotocurrency?
- RhodoGSA 6y agoit doesn't. People just like to exchange it for real money. There's no real need, everyone just still prices things in USD instead of btc. Once btc has around a $20T market cap, it will be much less volatile.
- skizm 6y agoWhy would you want to though? It takes at least an hour to confirm (~6 blocks) without a third-party and the fees are getting super high (costs around $13.50 / 30624 satoshis per transaction to get reasonable transfer times). So unless you're transferring a large amount, you're better off using a third party that can just hold all the money and flip a bit in their database saying the money is moved.
- fenk85 6y agoAnyone know when exactly Tesla accept bitcoin? TakeMyMoney.gif
- secondcoming 6y agoCan't bitcoin addresses be blacklisted? [0] Since mining is laregly controlled by the Chinese these days isn't everyone taking a massive risk of not being able to move their money out? [0] https://www.coindesk.com/us-treasury-department-blacklists-20-bitcoin-addresses-tied-to-alleged-north-korean-hackers https://www.coindesk.com/us-treasury-department-blacklists-2...
- alfl 6y agoRegarding the environmental concerns raised in other threads: Energy production can cause emissions, energy consumption typically does not. We should be producing energy cleanly. There is an argument that more energy consumption causes more energy production, which typically uses dirty sources. Again: we should be producing energy cleanly. We should be consuming as much green, clean, energy as possible. Bitcoin mined in Iceland is emission free.
- hfsp 6y agoBtc is predominantly powered by renewables like hydropower in non-urban areas, or uses otherwise wasted sources of energy. Yes, there is carbon power use. Compare the coin to current fiat system energy use, not stand-alone. Btc is more energy efficient than fiat. Few understand this overall, and judging by the comments, few understand on this site.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y agoSure, but since we aren't, then using less energy is what we should be doing instead.
- andysinclair 6y agoHere is the key paragraph from todays 10k. It also mentions gold related assets. (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000156459021004599/tsla-10k_20201231.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000156459021...): "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. As part of the policy, which was duly approved by the Audit Committee of our Board of Directors, we may invest a portion of such cash in certain alternative reserve assets including digital assets, gold bullion, gold exchange-traded funds and other assets as specified in the future. Thereafter, we invested an aggregate $1.50 billion in bitcoin under this policy and may acquire and hold digital assets from time to time or long-term. 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."
- bob33212 6y agoAll global companies with cash reserves "Maximize returns on Cash" via currency and other investments and hedges.
- MrMan 6y agoThe intention of cash management is hedging to facilitate commerce and protect the balance sheet, not speculation.
- bob33212 6y agoThis is a hedge. A hedge against consumers/suppliers/employees using BTC as their preferred form of payment.
- MrMan 6y agotesla doesnt need to hold sizable BTC reserves to accept BTC as payment, so using the word hedge there doesn't seem correct to me. please elaborate on your stratement, it doesnt make sense that this BTC position is a hedge. it seems like a speculative allocation, betting on BTC price increasing vs USD? and maybe some kind of marketing thing to convince people tesla is cool?
- remontoire 6y agoPretty disappointing to see the reaction this has received in this thread.
- alexmingoia 6y agoKeep in mind there are a lot of sour grapes when it comes to Bitcoin. Critics have had so many chances to buy in, and Bitcoin price and popularity continues to grow.
- ddtaylor 6y agoI get people being upset about speculation events, and I'm fine with that. What I find upsetting is the FUD that is spread. Inferring that people who use it are criminals and such. It's interesting because if a congressional bill comes up to ban encryption and uses FUD about "save the children" and "anyone who uses encryption is a criminal" HN is quick to notice and call bullshit. But then in other situations, like this one, many resort to the same rhetoric =/
- bob33212 6y agoTesla and all other world wide companies hold a variety of currencies for several reasons. They have Euros but not because they think that the Euro is superior to the Dollar. It allows them to run gigafactory Berlin and customer transactions in the local currency.
- brenner100 6y agoCoinShares research shows at least 78% of Bitcoin mining uses renewable energy! Making Bitcoin mining greener than almost every other large-scale industry in the world. (In addition to this, the energy is not "wasted") https://coinshares.com/research/bitcoin-mining-network-december-2019 https://coinshares.com/research/bitcoin-mining-network-decem...
- Traster 6y agoThis really seems like yet another failure in governence. There doesn't seem to be any good reason for a car company to be investing in crypto currency other than their CEO's personal interest in the technology. If you have something productive to do with the money, invest it in your business. If you do want to keep money on hand for investments, investing in such exotic instruments seems weird, you want something reasonably hedged and low risk so that you can invest in the future. Otherwise why not just let Musk set up his own crypto holding company?
- RhodoGSA 6y agoOr, if you throw <10% of all your money in an account, have no liquidity problems, start an absolute stampede to buy the 'limited' amount of bitcoin and in 5 years, <10% of all the money you invested makes you 50% profit for that year. Pretty good bet to me, and i've been heavily invested in bitcoin since 2015.
- scsilver 6y agoHow exotic is it when the future head of the SEC is teaching classes at MIT about blockchain's roles in finance of the near future. https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/sloan-school-of-management/15-s12-blockchain-and-money-fall-2018/video-lectures/session-1-introduction/ https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/sloan-school-of-management/15-s1...
- brenner100 6y agoIf someone wants to learn more about Bitcoin, that is a good source: https://www.lopp.net/bitcoin-information.html https://www.lopp.net/bitcoin-information.html
- mromanuk 6y agoIs Elon Musk hyping Bitcoin in Twitter and in parallel buying it, market manipulation?
- Robotbeat 6y agoOn the contrary, he’s pointing out how even a meme currency has significantly better features than Bitcoin. It’s weird to me to buy that much Bitcoin, but accepting it as payment makes sense as a lot of tech savvy types may hold a lot of Bitcoin and want to buy a Tesla. It may make sense as a sort of digital inflation hedge. Inflation is a reasonable fear when the economy is still supply constrained and is getting a bunch of stimulus (stimulus which I support FWIW). EDIT: But generally speaking, financialization can crowd out more productive uses of time and resources, and I often considered Tesla an exception to that where they’re building and investing in physical, useful things. I hope they get back to building out charging stations (with solar), factories, maybe even lithium mining, etc. Financial stuff should be done to facilitate trade and physical investment. When it goes beyond that it can be a net drain on the economy.
- y04nn 6y agoWhy directly buy the Bitcoins with Tesla the automaker? It makes no sense to me. If Musk is interested with cryptocurrencies, he should have setup a new startup dedicated with processing transactions from cryptocurrencies to fiat (he already has more than enough experience in the domain with PayPal) and facilitate the payment with crypto for Tesla (and other merchants). Considering the high volatility of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, and the massive amount of market manipulation going on, this is very risky. Is it to find new revenues for Tesla to justify its absurd market capitalization?
- SuchAnonMuchWow 6y agoElon found that he can manipulate bitcoin price quite freely, without any regulations issues. He can use that do make a lot of wealth, and its probably not illegal (not a lawyer tho, so I'm not sure). And Tesla has more cash than him personally, so it makes more sense if its Tesla doing the move.
- rognjen 6y agoThe Venn diagram of TSLA, GME and bitcoin owners is nearly a circle.
- kilo__ 6y agoI don't agree. I am active in different areas of the crypto space. You would be surprised to hear how few (big) bitcoin owners own traditional stocks or participated in the GME pump and dump.
- GizmoSwan 6y agoWhat is the monetary benefit for Tesla when accepting the bitcoin currency ? Is it going to charge more in bitcoin? Is Tesla using it as an investment thing? Is it for publicity? What is the benefit?
- rognjen 6y agoMusk went from Tony Stark to Lex Luther in about 12 months.
- adamlangsner 6y ago"The highest reach of injustice is being deemed just when in fact you are not" - Plato
- lottin 6y agoThis is very worrying. Don't they have financial advisors at Tesla? An automaker should focus on making cars. This is what they specialise in and what they are good at. They should not be speculating with financial assets. Tesla shareholders can do that themselves, if they wish to.
- villasv 6y agoUltimately this comes down to Mr. Musk stomping his feet until his personal vision starts being called "strategic" by Tesla C-level.
- RhodoGSA 6y agoTesla is not an automaker and i don't know why people keep calling it that. It is a technology company. It's designed chips, software, Cars, trucks, manufacturing lines, battery's, solar panels - And oh my god, if you saw the random products the engineering team designed in Keto Factory outside Fremont, you'd think very differently about Tesla as a company.
- lottin 6y agoWhat's a technology company?
- throwawayffffas 6y agoThat's pretty much all the things you need to design to be an automaker these days, perhaps with the exception of solar panels.
- leesec 6y agoWell then it's shocking how much if this is outsourced by the average automotive company
- Tepix 6y agoTesla makes 93% of its revenue by selling cars and 7% with energy generation and storage.
- nly 6y agoDec 2020 - Raises $5bn from investors Jan 2021 - Spends 30% of raised money to buy Bitcoin What value are Tesla adding here? Those investors could have just put 70% in to Tesla and 30% in to Bitcoin directly. Arguably, the only positive here (for BTC and TSLA holders) is short term, and it's that Tesla are associating their brand with Bitcoin to whip up froth.
- RhodoGSA 6y agoMichael Saylor raised $900m in debt to buy bitcoin. It's like a free option call on bitcoin and is rather ingenious. If bitcoin spikes, you convert you debt into stock. If bitcoin falls, you still got your debt.
- jackTheMan 6y agoor it is a hedge against a market downturn as gold is "not cool" to buy from Tesla and cash should be invested if not used.
- mskec 6y agoBitcoin dropped 55% in March 2020 vs S&P500 dropping 35%. You'd lose more with this hedge than without.
- jackTheMan 6y agoTesla dropped even more (180->72) and since then it is hyped even more even so it still doesn't make profit from it's core business. And since then lot of people hyped the bitcoin.
- Tenoke 6y ago1. It helps to have significant holdings if you plan to use the currency. 2. Tesla buying btc might conceivably move the price more and result in higher overall profits than the investors holding it directly. 3. A lot of companies make investments that in theory the shareholders could've done on their own.
- rzodkiew 6y agoBitcoin is a mystery to me. Somehow it's hailed as revolutionising the economy, by replacing currency with a worse kind of currency. It feels like this is where all the "how to get rich quick" book writers and other hustle bros went and created one giant financial pyramid, which works in quite simple way: - buy bitcoin - tell everyone around how revolutionary it is, so they buy it and what you holding increases in value, then tell them to do the same. Keep repeating the above two steps through different layers of abstraction, so it's not so obvious anymore. The other thing that comes into play and makes it grow even bigger is when people see others who made money on this bunch of bollocks, and think that the fact they are rich somehow makes them smart. Then they buy into all of the cryptocurrency platitudes wholesale without stopping for a moment to critically evaluate it. I think I'm a bit sour, because this whole crypto-crap infested the idea space of decentralisation, which is imho very important step that we should try to take take as a society. Now it's just forever tainted with bitcoin and all the greed fuelled people there, while the decentralisation should be quite the opposite in nature. You know what would be revolutionary? Getting rid of currency altogether.
- I_am_tiberius 6y agoI don't understand such kind of comments. Let's talk again after you experienced a bank cancelling your business account for no reason with seemingly having landed on a shared hidden blacklist that makes it impossible to get a new bank account.
- robjan 6y agoHas bitcoin actually solved that problem though?
- vntok 6y agoYes it has, anyone in the world can open their own "current account"/"deposit account" for free, right now. Barring hacking you, no government or authority can access it without your consent. None can prevent you from receiving money in it from someone else, or from transferring money out of it to someone else.
- rich_sasha 6y agoAt times like this, I’m not sure if I’m the only sane person in a world of lunatics, or the only lunatic in a world of normal people.
- naraga 6y agoseems like you just didnt dyor
- donsupreme 6y agoI wish Elon would know more about NANO if he truly cares about the environment and wanting to push forward a realistic digital money
- EtienneK 6y agoI love the idea of Bitcoin. But, as someone who's been working in banking for more than a decade - what problem does Bitcoin solve? Serious question; 'cause I'm failing to come up with a good answer. Edit: The closest I've come to answering this: To me Bitcoin is more a decentralized international payment protocol (such as SWIFT); not a store of value / currency. But I rarely see it being pitched in that way.
- bronak1 6y agoSociety has had multiple stores of value, as none is perfectly secure. Gold, oil, dollars, real estate, (some) bonds & equities. Crypto is the first that’s decentralized and digital and on a open network not governed by any centralized entity which is powerful bc the world needs a international reserve currency
- azatris 6y agoGold is a decentralized store of value too, to be fair.
- patricius 6y agoIt is what people values it to be. We cannot define it to be a particular thing. Some people see it as digital gold. Other people sees it as a type of money.
- valenterry 6y agoInstead of thinking about what bitcoin&co. save for a single average person (not that much in comparison to e.g. gold), think at bigger scale: It forces states to be even more mindful about what they do with their currency. Because, states have a lot of ways to prevent people from starting to avoid their currency. In particular they can increase tax on everything, such as real estate, income, or just wealth in general. However, taxing bitcoin (or even monero) is so much more difficult, that it can act as a sort of regulator - similar to gold, but even better in this point.
- dannyw 6y agoBitcoin is a digital hard asset, that is a hedge against inflation. We've seen insane money printing over the past year thanks to COVID, and while we can debate on the merits of it, what is indisputable is that fiat money can be arbitrarily debased at will. Bitcoin is a hedge against this.,
- BenoitEssiambre 6y agoOh noes, if this starts a trend, becomes widespread, and businesses start hoarding crypto tokens instead of investing in building stuff, it could cause a great depression pretty much the same way gold hoarding caused the economy to collapse in 1929. When people, businesses and banks start hording tokens instead of investing in building and maintaining the production capacity of consumables, the ratio of value of tokens meant to buy consumables vs the actual production of consumables gets out of wack. When the music stops, people realize that others are sitting on tons of seemingly valuable tokens but stuff to buy with them is getting scarce because capacity is not being maintained, they reverse their trade, prices of stuff go up, volatility ensues in an incredibly destructive cycle. Too much savings being tied to tokens instead of assets that create real value is an economy wide coordination failure, a terrible Nash equilibrium. It can be hard to solve because it's a prisoner's dilemma where the first people to invest in real production are disadvantaged so everyone hoards tokens instead. This is what central banks are designed to prevent. We don't want cryptocoins to cause another great depression like gold tied currencies did almost a hundred years ago.
- whb07 6y agoI cannot tell if this is sarcasm or not. But I’ll assume it’s not: You cannot eat gold or bitcoin. The “hoarders” at some point will want to consume be it a pizza or a lambo. Then there’s those who invest in ways to get more... what for it.. gold or bitcoin so they go out and purchase picks and shovels. Crazy stuff, extremely complicated when I write it as such. Btw, the FED made a trivial recession into a “great” one back in 1929.
- BenoitEssiambre 6y agoI am dead serious. The FED did cause the great depression and a lot of it had to do with currency being tied too closely to a deflationary token (gold). >You cannot eat gold or bitcoin. That is precisely the problem. The economy can get into a bad equilibrium where hoarding intrinsically valueless tokens displaces investing in productive assets. This state can persist because the firsts to invest in productive things are at a disadvantage to the token hoarders (at least for some time). >The “hoarders” at some point will want to consume be it a pizza or a lambo. Yes, then it becomes a game of "catch the peak" because when people realize all these tokens are sitting on the sideline but production has declined and there isn't much to purchase with the tokens, and that if they want to buy something at a good price they better be quick, the cycle can reverse explosively. It's important for aggregate savings to be (at least indirectly) tied to things you "can eat" or the production thereof.
- Proven 6y agoHahaha. Buy $1.5B, Tweet about it, sell it to losers for $2B. "Accept BTC" doesn't hurt or help, they just send the received BTC to an exchange to get fiat for it.
- me551ah 6y agoI really don't get why bitcoin is worth so much.Bitcoin is called a store of value like gold, but gold has inherent uses. If the price of gold went to zero then you could still use it to make jewellery or use it for electrical conductivity. If the price of bitcoin goes to zero then it's worthless. It's also not environmentally friendly and bitcoin mining uses up 0.21% of the world's power supply. And all of this energy is used to calculate billions of hashes per second out of which all but one will be discarded. There is also increased regulatory focus from governments who see it as a threat , with India even going so far as to suggest they would ban it.
- pqs 6y agoTo me, the bans are the proof tha BTC is ofering something. Why would central banks fear something that has no value?
- koonsolo 6y agoI'm pretty sure most gold investors don't actually have the gold physically at their location (Maybe someone can prove me wrong here). Gold seems to be mainly to store loads of money, without actually having the physical drawbacks of gold. So most money invested in gold, is basically a paper that claims you have gold. In that case, the benefits of the physical attributes of gold go away pretty quickly. So having a claim that you own gold, is maybe not that different than storing value in some virtual thing that everyone agrees on has some value. Let's say you do want to have the physical gold at your location. Well, then you have to think about transport and safely storing it. It feels like Bitcoin bootstrapped it's way up to having value. And right now, it seems as a "store of value", it has some benefits over gold itself.
- thehappypm 6y agoI am embarrassed by the industry. How many of our generation's best and brightest minds are doing crypto and day trading? Imagine if these minds were focused on societal problems -- energy, health, food. I know multiple Harvard CS graduates who went right into the crypto space. What a waste.
- fasteddie31003 6y agoThink of the crypto programmer who make it possible for poor Venezuelans to have an island of crypto inflation stability when their Bolívars are worth toilet paper. I don't know of any feel goody NGO where a Harvard grad could feel woke working at that could do that.
- MrMan 6y agoBut is maybe the only inflation story anyone can come up with? Venezuela is misgoverned, but how do I know bitcoin governance is better? Bitcoin exchange rates are not stable. I can only hoard it, it's not an investment and not a currency.
- charcircuit 6y agoHe never said BTC. Bitcoin was not designed to be a stable currency. If you want a stable currency look at stable coins such as DAI, USDT, USDC, etc.
- therealdrag0 6y agoYet those are never in the MSM. It seems like the only reason we talk about crypto is because BC is in the news. If it wasn’t BC triggering the news maybe we could have more interesting crypto discussions.
- kobalsky 6y ago> but how do I know bitcoin governance is better? if you live in an affected country you may ponder about this while you see your money evaporate in front of your eyes. or you can buy BTC to get your money in an exchange and distribute it into stable coins. yes, one may implode, right now our national currency has imploded, whatever their governances are doing it's better.
- fxtentacle 6y agoProbably Elon Musk has friends who own Bitcoin, and now they can exit at a high price. I'd be surprised if this turns out to be more than a celebrity endorsement pump and dump.
- acapybara 6y agoI like this realist, skeptical, Machiavellian perspective. Is it a money game, or is there something more to it? https://bitcointreasuries.org/ https://bitcointreasuries.org/ is a site I use to try to determine if this is a legitimate trend or not. At $1.5B, Tesla's initial position is 1.31x the original position of MicroStrategy, which was the previous largest position for a public company. Granted, MicroStrategy's position has since appreciated to about $3B, so Tesla is about half that in terms of current market value. It seems Tesla's position is serious, not just a token. But I suggest everyone try to look at the data and make up their own mind.
- orange_tee 6y agoDon't understand much about corporate finance. Why would they park $1.5B of their cash? Don't they need it for other stuff? Or will they just borrow an equal amount to use for whatever they need?
- bkeyes 6y agoMaybe they want to diversify and not have so much in cash (ie: USD) because they think it will get devalued over the coming years, especially compared to Bitcoin.
- pontifier 6y agoThis stuff is maddening. We need to stop rewarding people who merely speculate or otherwise provide no value.
- peter_d_sherman 6y agoObservation: Any large company that accepts a given digital currency as payment -- validates that digital currency... (In other words, newly released digital currencies -- will not have the same degree of acceptance/validation -- without a large corporate backer/sponsor/entity-that-accepts-payments-in-that-digital-currency, etc.)
- RhodoGSA 6y agoNevada's new corp-building cities seemed mighty suspect originally. Tesla is the biggest employeer in Reno and yet not a single word from Tesla came to respond to the news. However, bitcoin company's responded. Elon always seems to have some long term vision that no one is thinking about. What if he builds a city in Texas and Nevada that pays and transacts in bitcoin? This whole threads arguments about the 'Use Caseof bitcoin' Would evaporate over night. Elon is the richest man in the world, whatever he puts his mind to can be accomplished. If anyone can do it, Elon can do it.
- fasteddie31003 6y agoI've been thinking something along these lines too. If I were a billionaire I wouldn't be buying yachts, I'd found new cities. Personally, I'd pick the middle of Baja Mexico. With solar and reverse osmosis you could terraform a desert into an oasis there with a perfect climate.
- nickik 6y agoI didn't like Bitcoin when it came out and I still don't get it. I used it for a while for the only thing it seems possible useful for, but I don't have saving of it (to bad I guess). - It uses to much energy. - Its simply a public ledger with horrible privacy characteristics. You can of course work around the privacy issue, but systems should be designed to have that characteristic, not require work around on every level. And in terms of economics, actually running a complex, multiplayer economy on Bitcoin is in my opinion not possible at all. This is something that Bitcoin advocates ignore, but even under the Gold standard, the actual broad money (in a monetarist sense) was expanding and contracting because of banks issuing currency and fractional reserve banking. I had various arguments with people involved in Bitcoin claiming Side-Chains could have the same properties, but I don't see how that makes sense. I for one, don't want to go back to what amounts to energy inefficient, horrible privacy gold coins.
- known 6y agoBitcoin is not immune to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pump_and_dump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pump_and_dump
- littlecranky67 6y agoIf only we'd knew if Musk goes long or short on BTC. It might be his plan to tie the TSLA stock price to BTC, and if the BTC crashes, so could the TSLA stock - opportunity for Musk to take TSLA of the public market by buying its stock out of his own pocket with the help of other investors? Who knows...
- happyconcepts 6y agoCurrency means the current instrument of exchange. As a currency, gold is too heavy to be practical and too malleable to be trusted without testing it every time it is used. Bitcoin by nature would seem to avoid these problems, but it does introduce the new risks and limitations inherent with passwords.
- throwawayffffas 6y agoThis should really be interpreted by the market as tesla saying, "We don't really know what to do with your money, so we just bought a bunch of bitcoin.", Unfortunately I don't think that's going to be the case.
- sethd 6y agoMaybe he's realized that robotaxis as a justification for the company's valuation [1] is not going to work out as planned. Now he's decided to buy Bitcoin (from proceeds of newly issued shares) and pump that instead. [1] - https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/27/elon-musk-explains-how-self-driving-robotaxis-justify-tesla-valuation.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/27/elon-musk-explains-how-self-...
- NiceWayToDoIT 6y agoThe other day I was thinking about Tesla employing guy from the Wall street and now all it looks as they capitalizing on Elon fame, people gullibility and and inflating economic balloon by mimes. Basically idea is simple if you have a billion to spare, you buy something very cheap, then you say that that will be most important thing in the world. Many people buy it, and then you sell your share. Don't get me wrong I love what Tesla and SpaceX do, but in this game I can envision that Elon wins, and many other ordinary people will lose. In some way I consider all this - very, very wrong.
- chill1 6y agoI think you fundamentally misunderstand why a business might buy an asset like Bitcoin. It's certainly not to participate in a pump and dump scheme - as you seem to be alluding. It takes time for a corporation to build up a position in something like Bitcoin. And it will take time to unwind that position. This is clearly a long-term hedge.
- NiceWayToDoIT 6y agoI hear you, the same way the GameStop was a long term position.
- zupreme 6y agoThis comment is unlikely to win me many friends here, but it is worth considering that while Bitcoin is, nominally at least, decentralized and free from government control, internet access is not. A simple glance at the trend of governments to partially or to fully shut down internet services to certain areas in times of unrest or mass protest means, in the case of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies requiring collective transaction verification via online communications, that a loss of internet constitutes an inability to conduct financial transactions for those thus affected. While I applaud the efforts of so many to free the world from government control of "money", the full implementation of this effort should be preceded by freeing internet communications from the control of those same governments, otherwise what appears to be a new financial "power" is actually a new financial "weakness". Think over this carefully.
- johndevor 6y agohttps://www.starlink.com/ https://www.starlink.com/ https://www.cnet.com/news/best-vpn/ https://www.cnet.com/news/best-vpn/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_routing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_routing
- chill1 6y agoInternet is not required [1] to sync a full Bitcoin node. There have also been numerous proof-of-concepts for transmitting Bitcoin transactions via radio. [1] https://blockstream.com/satellite/ https://blockstream.com/satellite/
- jpaul23 6y agoVery nice initiative, but for first time users you still need to download 300GB+ of blockchain
- vmception 6y agohttps://aws.amazon.com/snowmobile/#:~:text=AWS%20Snowmobile%20is%20an%20Exabyte,by%20a%20semi%2Dtrailer%20truck.&text=Transferring%20data%20with%20Snowmobile%20is%20more%20secure%2C%20fast%20and%20cost%20effective https://aws.amazon.com/snowmobile/#:~:text=AWS%20Snowmobile%.... https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/217665948-Restore-Return-Refund-program-How-to-return-a-USB-restore-drive-for-refund https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/217665948-Resto... https://www.fastcompany.com/3048163/in-cuba-an-underground-network-armed-with-usb-drives-does-the-work-of-google-and-youtube https://www.fastcompany.com/3048163/in-cuba-an-underground-n...
- sailfast 6y agoHave they fixed the transaction cost issue? Are they going to pay the fees to transact in Bitcoin, or should I continue to pay in dollars? Then congrats on buying something anonymously that you have to register to drive off the lot. Short of the anonymity, I'm not sure why you'd buy an asset with something that is less inflationary than the dollar. Keep the BTC, use the dollars if you are making an inflation play. That way you cut your opportunity costs down a bit by the rate of inflation?
- bezout 6y agoA move that already made them millions due to the Bitcoin going up 7%.
- xyst 6y agoyall think eth will experience the same highs as btc? considering mainstream adoption, I think eth has more viability than btc due to possible enterprise adoption (either via the public or private blockchains). With the enterprise adoption, mainstream usage should accelerate even faster than btc would.
- CivBase 6y agoSo... what is Tesla going to spend that BTC on when the time comes? They can't use it to pay wages or purchase materials. What kind of assets could Tesla possibly trade $1.5B in BTC for? I like the idea of cryptocurrency, but right now it seems to be more like a stock than an actual currency. There isn't much you can do with it still other than trade it back and fourth for other currencies. And I've never heard of a company making an investment like that in a stock. It'll be interesting to see how this play out.
- GordonS 6y ago> I've never heard of a company making an investment like that in a stock. It's commonplace for companies to invest cash in all sorts of things, including stocks, commodities, real-estate and other (fiat) currencies. Some of this is hedging against currency fluctuations, and some is speculative investing for gains. If Tesla had invested $1.5B in stocks or commodities etc, they couldn't use those to pay for wages etc either. Presumably they view Bitcoin as an investment, and plan to later exchange some/all for fiat currencies, just as you would with stocks or commodities.
- kinghajj 6y agoThey could lend out their Bitcoin holdings to platforms like BlockFi, Celsius, or even negotiate loans OTC. Even the minimum APY of 3% would yield ~$45m per year. That would of course fluctuate with the spot price of Bitcoin.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mordymoop 6y agoBitcoin “transactions” only appear to cost so much if you divide total energy usage by transactions. This is very silly, because it gives the impression that more transactions would lead to something like a linearly higher energy cost, which is not true; the energy cost is due to mining, and transaction validation comes along for the ride. You could try to figure out how to allocate the energy per transaction but only after you somehow set aside the energy required strictly for mining. Another way of framing this is that for a system with a relatively low transaction volume, i.e. a small denominator, your “cost per transaction” is always going to look ridiculous. All of that being said — I wish he had picked Ethereum instead.
- camjohnson26 6y agoYou can’t have transactions without mining though and the block size is limited, so there’s an upper limit to how many transactions can go through in one block.
- olejorgenb 6y agoDetails: > Blocks size in blockchain is limited to 1MB. Miners can mine blocks up to the 1MB fixed limit, but any block larger than 1MB is invalid. This limit cannot be modified without a hard fork. https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Block_size_limit_controversy https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Block_size_limit_controversy
- Vecr 6y agoNot exactly true anymore, it's 1MB "virtual", yeah, but segregated witness bytes are worth 0.75 other bytes, so the actual value can go over.
- FabHK 6y ago1. I see a securities fraud class action lawsuit coming up if (when?) that tanks. 2. Accepting Bitcoin as payment is not a big deal, really. It would be remarkable when they denominate things in BTC. Say, you can buy a Model 3 for 1.1 BTC (and, just to be clear, when BTC-USD changes, it still sells at 1.1 BTC, and whatever the then new USD price is). That would be something. That's not going to happen, of course.
- charcircuit 6y agoIf you were referring to bitcoin, it isn't a security.
- FabHK 6y agoTesla issues shares. People might buy the shares based on what Tesla said it was going to do, then Tesla buys BTC, then BTC tanks, Tesla shares drop, people sue Tesla.
- crackerinchief 6y agoBitcoin is basically the bond market replacement now.
- nickbauman 6y agoTesla's gambit of making a cleaner world with non-polluting cars gets canceled out by the dirtiest waste of energy, the bitcoin proof-of-work algorithm.
- fatjokes 6y agoBased on Elon's tweets I hope he starts accepting Dogecoin soon...
- hn_acc_2 6y agoWhat "moat" does Bitcoin have protecting it from other crypto which may have more attractive features? It seems to me that it's just the first one that everyone's grandma has heard the name of. Some journalists will say BTC is just the "most stable" but the fact that it has the most miners is just a consequence of the high price, not the other way around. As for the technology, what is actually maintaining BTC dominance in the crypto world other than general first mover sentiment?
- charcircuit 6y agoI think you mean most secure, not most stable. It has the first mover advantage, it's well known, it's trustworthy. It's the coin with the largest market capital Technology wise it isn't that impressive, but it's simple and seems to work good enough. Another thing to remember is that a bitcoin's value is not necessarily tied to the effectiveness of the Bitcoin network. Bitcoins can be migrated and live on newer and better projects.
- averynicepen 6y agoThe "moat" is public adoption, because public adoption is going to be the strongest driver of eventual price stability. No other cryptocurrency has as much public media momentum and institutional buy-in. Momentum being, Square and Paypal bought into Bitcoin, so other institutions bought into Bitcoin, and so Tesla is going to buy Bitcoin, and because Tesla bought Bitcoin, others are going to buy bitcoin. Why? Because each successive buy-in indicates more trust in the cryptocurrency, backed by the financial inertia of large companies. Of course, down the line, if all cryptocurrencies become more stable, then there could be changes to other currencies with more attractive features. But by that point, it would have gained so much inertia and momentum that it will likely continue being the de-facto cryptocurrency, with other cryptocurrencies having their value underpinned to BTC similar to the way we currently value BTC in terms of USD.
- andysinclair 6y agoHow does this square with Tesla's "green" mission? Bitcoin consumes annually the electricity output of a small country. Surely if they were serious about tackling environmental issues they would not be investing in Bitcoin? This news itself has pushed the price up over 15% today and no doubt enables another warehouse full of machines to start working 24/7 to mine more bitcoin...
- vmception 6y agoThe vast majority of bitcoin mining is a sustainability solution. The source is more important than the amount of energy. Most bitcoin mining is using energy at the source that was uneconomical to use for other purposes, because of the loss experienced in transporting the energy to economic centers. That includes places that were previously opting to pollute the air with hydrocarbons, which now use that energy on site for miners instead. This has been the reality for years.
- Arrath 6y agoI have trouble seeing how Bitcoin would make a reasonable vehicle for everyday transactions as long as it is so volatile. Last week you could've bought a Model 3 for ~1.92 BTC. This morning you'd be spending ~1.58. That is a substantial change, and one side of the transaction would be taking a bath on it. Certainly as btc usage becomes more widespread the value would level out and the volatility would decrease. As it is though, at least personally I couldn't see using bitcoins for purchases while the FOMO is looming and I'm thinking "what if it goes up and I save 20%?"
- charcircuit 6y agoIt doesn't. The cryptocurrency space includes stable coins, usually pegged to the dollar, which have a stable price.
- webinvest 6y agoDeflating currencies are bad for day to day transactions because no one wants to spend them. Economic man will discard whichever currency has the worst inflation. However if you’re buying a Tesla, you aren’t doing it because you think it has a good ROI monetary-speaking, you’re doing it because you want a Tesla. There may be cases of people who are fucked on cryptocurrency taxes due to excessive transactions and being able to buy a Tesla could be a nice parachute to exit their situation. The most rational part of this situation is Tesla deciding to accept cryptocurrencies for payment. Appreciating currencies boost the balance sheet more than depreciating currencies.
- godelzilla 6y ago> pumping a silly cryptocurrency joke called Dogecoin The irony is thick in this Tesla article.
- blhack 6y agoTo the people on HN who constantly try to talk about how stupid cryptocurrencies are, or how it's all a pyramid that's going to collapse, it's all stupid etc. What do you know that Tesla doesn't know? If you could sit down with the board of Tesla and explain to them what they've missed, what would you tell them?
- boublepop 6y agoYour asking the wrong question. What does the board of Tesla know that the average investor doesn’t know? Obviously that no matter the value, news like this will spike the price of Bitcoin. So they just made a huge profit just by slowly aquiring a security, then pumping its price and eventually dumping it. Quite an ingenious scheme there. You have to wonder how it will play out long term though.
- ad31mar 6y ago> You have to wonder how it will play out long term though. Wow, second-order thinking! I bet no one considered this.
- totaldude87 6y agoHow does the taxation work with bitcoin domestically, this is always one point that I never understood. Globally , how does a global currency like bitcoin would hold for international taxation.
- xnx 6y agoCertainly convenient to have the two most popular financial bubbles join forces.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- msloan7 6y agoThis post has 629 pts, 1039 comments, and was posted 5 hours ago. Why is it slipping to 2nd page of HN already?
- Someone 6y agoWhy, o why? If they intend to be paid in Bitcoin, they don’t need to own any. Unless they also intend to pay with Bitcoin, I also can’t see how this can be a hedge against exchange rate fluctuations (or do I overlook something?) So, it seems this is gambling on Bitcoin becoming worth more. I don’t think that’s something a car company should do, as it can end badly. As an example, Volkswagen lost about $400 million in 1987 when some employees bet on the exchange ge rate of the dollar (https://archive.macleans.ca/article/1987/3/30/computer-fraud-at-vw https://archive.macleans.ca/article/1987/3/30/computer-fraud.... That wasn’t following management orders, to put it mildly, but if it had been, it would have ended similarly) Also, it surprises me they have that much cash, but reading https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/static/1LRLZK_2020_Q4_Quarterly_Update_Deck_-_Searchable_LVA2GL.pdf https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/static/1LRLZK_2020_Q4_Quarterly_..., they have almost $20 billion.
- shuaib 6y agoCryptocurrencies are a decentralised P2P digital version of Bernie Madoff.
- Solvitieg 6y agoBlockchain technology creates object permanence in digital spaces.
- naebother 6y agoMeme stock company buys meme currency, such surprise.
- freediver 6y agoYFFA (your favorite fintech app) still has many advantages over Bitcoin. When sending money: YFFA free, Bitcoin not free YFFA instant, Bitcoin not instant YFFA has fraud protection, Bitcoin does not YFFA approved by government regulation, Bitcoin still not However, there is one thing YFFA does not give you, a shot at 10x or 100x your money.
- simonebrunozzi 6y agoAnd most people in the world can't sign up for an YFFA. (not that Bitcoin is simpler or without its problems, but at least anyone could use it).
- freediver 6y agoTrue, nice catch.
- averynicepen 6y agoWorth noting is that one of the original goals of Bitcoin (in the whitepaper) was to eliminate fraud that results from a system that allows reversible transactions (for example, charge backs, a check that appears to deposit but then bounces, etc.) Fraud protection is a result of these types of problems being unavoidable, and needs to be mediated by the financial institutes. Bitcoin's proposed solution is a (cryptographically) permanent one-way transaction, that can only be initiated by the person who owns the Bitcoin. The analogy would be an in-person cash transaction - $100 in my pocket can only be handed over if I choose to do so, and no amount of begging or pleading with the receiving party will allow me to convince them to give it back. I think any fraud that can be committed in cash though, would probably be applicable to Bitcoin. But I can't seem to think of any examples off the top of my head, so LMK if you think of any.
- eecks 6y agoYFFA can also just ban you for any reason
- freediver 6y ago
- stunt 6y agoTesla needs it. Next few years are going to be rough for the Tesla with all big auto makers selling EVs.
- ffggvv 6y agoso they basically just cancelled out any carbon footprint reduction their company does
- yumraj 6y agoBut if people expect Bitcoin value to rise, it is not a currency it is an asset and as such why would anyone ever use it as a currency. They will just hoard it. And if no one would use it as a currency where is the value in it? It’s always seemed like a chicken and egg thing to me.
- mleonhard 6y agoI thought Tesla was an pro-environment company. Bitcoin mining produces a lot of CO2 [0] [1]. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542435119302557 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511... [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.02612.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.02612.pdf
- therealdrag0 6y agoThere’s a lot of things to debate about Bitcoin, but this makes me morally against it. People can chase a million other bubbles and it’s whatever, but this is ridiculous.
- neop1x 6y agoThis is actually a very good point in contrast to many other "hater" arguments here. But isn't it partly self-regulating? I mean transaction consts are getting higher so it is becoming impractical to transfer small amounts often, that should reduce the total transaction numbers, maybe? The other thing is that people waste energy and produce CO2 in many other areas - stock market trading consumes energy too, so does excessive traveling, world-wide shipping, playing games on your GPU instead of watching movies, etc. But it is still a good argument, IMO.
- kgin 6y agoA currency that fluctuates in value by 4x in a single year doesn't seem like a great store of value.
- xtat 6y agoWith many corporations to follow
- gge 6y agoBitcoin bears in the comments here can have fun staying poor.
- ionwake 6y agoI just don't understand why after a decade bitcoin, a simple concept, is still so divisive amongst - of all places - here in the tech community? I just don't get what the problem is.