7 ms·

Our Thoughts on Bitcoin

80 points by wlj 6y ago

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
The section about the fallacy of limited cryptocurrency supply is one of the key insights missing from many Bitcoin discussions: > For those reasons the “limited supply” argument isn’t as true as it might appear—e.g., if Blackberries were in limited supply they still wouldn’t be worth much because they were replaced by competitors that were more advanced. I agree that Bitcoin is interesting as an alternative asset, but the narratives have outstripped the facts as it becomes just another speculative trading instrument on the non-blockchain exchanges.
- tshaddox 6y ago
  What's the fallacy you're debunking, and who commits it? I'm not aware of anyone arguing that Bitcoin is highly valuable because all things with a limited supply are highly valuable.
  - swagonomixxx 6y ago
    The deflationary nature of Bitcoin is a commonly used property to assert that Bitcoin is designed to increase in value over time due to artificially programmed scarcity. However, I don't think GP's parallel lines up, as another commenter pointed out. In any case, a single satoshi, which is the smallest denomination of Bitcoin (10^-8 of a Bitcoin), is worth about 0.05 cents as of writing this comment. If Bitcoin didn't have such large transaction costs, slow transactions, and price stability, it's scarcity would be way less of an issue due to this really large level of division of a single coin.
    - tshaddox 6y ago
      That doesn't sound right. $50,000 * 10^-8 is $0.0005, or 0.05 cents.
      - swagonomixxx 6y ago
        Oops, my mistake.
- nivertech 6y ago
  I said this years ago, only I used Nokia instead of BlackBerry (see slides ##8-11): https://www.slideshare.net/nivertech/limited-supply#8 https://www.slideshare.net/nivertech/limited-supply#8
- hackinthebochs 6y ago
  The analogy doesn't really work because cryptocurrencies aren't interchangeable the way phones are. A better analogy would be if each phone could only talk to people using the same phone brand. If everyone is on iphone and you need an iphone to talk to anyone you care about, the iphone becomes more valuable because of its scarcity. The network effects of bitcoin and the lack of interchangeability between different cryptocurrencies helps secure bitcoin's spot as the leader.
  - jeremyjh 6y ago
    This would be true if Bitcoin transaction fees put it in reach of every-day transactions, but they don't and likely never will. Bitcoin is for HODLing, not for transacting.
    - swagonomixxx 6y ago
      Bitcoin can be used for transacting if you're not looking for instantly verified transactions. In ye olden days, when Bitcoin was a few cents worth, transaction costs were tiny. I really doubt Satoshi et al predicted Bitcoin to be so unstable, so as to make transaction costs pretty much out of reach for 99% of normal everyday transactions.
  - notahacker 6y ago
    But people almost invariably don't need BTC to transact with people they care about (the number of people with BTC denominated payment obligations is relatively small, and most stuff that can be bought with BTC can be bought with other methods). And as flawed as many exchanges may be, they make cryptocurrencies very interchangeable, especially compared with phones. Blackberry actually did have a proprietary messaging system, it just wasn't anywhere near enough lockin because most people used Blackberry for other reasons, the non-proprietary messaging layers were actually better and Blackberry's popularity turned out to be nearly all down to being first in class.
- lottin 6y ago
  Bitcoin is an asset in the same way that a piece of paper with my signature on it is an asset. Why some people think cryptocurrencies are revolutionary is beyond my comprehension.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - MrPatan 6y ago
    You're absolutely right, it is.
- yks 6y ago
  That’s the underappreciated argument. If we to assume that the collective will power is all it takes to create an alternative asset, e.g. the narrative “gold is old, we need a new one” then it follows that it can and will be repeated. I don’t see why people not born yet would play by the rules of the future “Bitcoin wealthy elites” when they could become elites themselves by hyping another asset/cryptocoin instead. Thus even if the narrative of “store of value” and “hedge against inflation” turns out to be correct, I still don’t believe Bitcoin supremacy will last longer than a single human generation.
- 01100011 6y ago
  I agree but to play Devil's advocate I think the answer is "the network effect". Facebook could be replaced at any time, yet it continues to dominate social media. At some point, BTC could become, if it has not already, big enough to become self-sustaining.
  - rdsubhas 6y ago
    Regarding free services, one could have said the same thing about Orkut or Myspace. Community tends to flock in via one door, and flock out via another door, as long as the product or service is free. In this case however, completely agree with you. BTC is a paid network (a very expensive one at that). It could remain self-sustaining for quite long.
CyberDildonics 6y ago
Yesterday bitcoin's average transaction fee was over $31. Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum both exceed bitcoin's transaction count consistently now, with Ethereum far exceeding bitcoin's crippled transaction capacity.
- tmerr 6y ago
  Yes, this was absent from the analysis. Bitcoins security derives from computer power which is currently paid by combination of fees and inflation (mining). We have yet to see what happens to the prices and security when mining dries out. It would also be interesting to see a large market event that causes many people to move bitcoin at once. (What happens to transaction costs? Does this affect perception of bitcoin as a safe store of value?)
  - thebean11 6y ago
    Bitcoin will have to adapt in a big way before inflation stops. It needs to crank transaction volume way up, or otherwise collect fees (for example smart contracts) in order to keep mining profitable. Scaling only the price of transactions is NOT going to work, but it has quite a bit of runway to figure this out.
    - rriepe 6y ago
      Has the price of transactions gone up relative to the value of Bitcoin? (I don't have a dog in this race, just curious.)
      - solotronics 6y ago
        No it goes up and down based on how "busy" the mempool is, its basically a measurement of the overall desire to get a transaction on the blockchain. When bitcoin goes through big price swings this tends to increase number of TX which therefore increases the fee.
    - jcampbell1 6y ago
      I imagine everyone holding bitcoin will wise up and agree to a fork in 2040 to stop the halvings. The people who use bitcoin as a store of value should be willing to pay a bit of inflation to maintain the network. As a bitcoin holder, I really don't want to rely on people transacting on the network to fund its security and existence.
sebastien_b 6y ago
> while those who are against it (which are a few scared souls cowering in a corner) Way to win over your audience.
- thebean11 6y ago
  HN BTC skeptics are not the target audience. This is an ad targeting rich, nontechnical boomers who are unhappy they missed the ride up.
  - cecja 6y ago
    lot of buzzwords little substance.
  - bob33212 6y ago
    Edit. Nocoiner was removed from the previous comment as it was not intended to be taken this way. My Previous Response( Nocoiner sounds a lot like Antifa or MAGA. Is the goal to lump everyone who doesn't agree with you into a group to ridicule?)
    - anm89 6y ago
      The same people lump themselves together as maximalists. Not every piece of language is some micro aggression identity attack.
    - thebean11 6y ago
      Not my intention at all..updated the to BTC skeptics in case others were offended too.
      - sebastien_b 6y ago
        Thanks for the update - while I read your original comment as intended, I could see others having read it differently.
  - notahacker 6y ago
hd4 6y ago
https://archive.is/ryo6d https://archive.is/ryo6d
ra88it 6y ago
I'm surprised that the energy usage axis does not come up in this summary of his thoughts. Isn't that likely to be a factor in bitcoin's growth and long-term survival?
- rafale 6y ago
  I can see Bitcoin hardfork to POS once the tech has been proven in Ethereum. Bitcoiners only care about the 21 millions hard cap and a secure network, not the exact consensus algorithm used.
  - christiansakai 6y ago
    Cardano will prove PoS sooner than Ethereum, and it has hard cap. Yes I am a Cardano shiller.
    - agotterer 6y ago
      Cardano has already demonstrated that it's working. The network is currently 86% decentralized and on Mar 31st will be 100% decentralized.
      - christiansakai 6y ago
        Yes, exciting times ahead.
    - solosoyokaze 6y ago
      How would you recommend acquiring Cardano? Is there an exchange you can buy it on?
      - christiansakai 6y ago
        You can just get it in majority of exchanges. In case your exchange doesn't support it (like me, Coinbase and Gemini, NYC, don't support Cardano), just use swapping service like changenow.io, so buy ETH from Coinbase and use changenow.io to swap it to ADA I've been using changenow.io and it always works. As always, don't send in really large transaction, but one by one, maybe like 3000 ADA each time (this is what I do).
adflux 6y ago
Another company shilling a coin, hoping to convince many more greater fools. Only goal of this article is to convince you to buy, and to transfer a part of your wealth to them.
- anm89 6y ago
  Yes, surely these already billionaires whose entire business revolves around publishing analysis on assets, and who don't claim to be holding any major stake in BTC, could only be writing about it because they are shilling...
  - adflux 6y ago
    The only incentive to write articles like this is to convince others to buy, consequently making more money yourself. This is a pitch, not a fairly supported argument.
    - solosoyokaze 6y ago
      The incentive is to appear informed about an important trend in their industry. It's a pretty good analysis. Do you have a problem with a specific piece of his content?
      - hanniabu 6y ago
        The issue they have is that they weren't against bitcoin. Clearly their preconceived notions are preventing them from discussing and looking at it objectively. Waiting for PragmaticPulp to join the conversation.....
        anm89 6y ago
        Their asset class analysis has made them billions upon billions over decades but their issue is that they simply don't get what's going on here??
        zachscho 6y ago
christiansakai 6y ago
For those who don’t read, Bitcoin here refers to Bitcoin AND its competitors.
atomashpolskiy 6y ago
Recent discussion from 2 weeks ago (200 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26101937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26101937
fxtentacle 6y ago
Here's my personal Bitcoin prediction for 2021: 1. Some hedge fund will find a way to short Bitcoins. 2. Someone will inject a lot of illegal sh*t into the Blockchain. People already post images, e.g. https://cryptograffiti.info/ https://cryptograffiti.info/ 3. Authorities have to intervene, the price goes down, the hedge fund gets rich. 4. Lots of whining from people who didn't understand how Bitcoin works. Shoulder shrugs from those "in the know" who converted to regular money shortly before the fall.
- solean 6y ago
  It's been trivial to short bitcoin for years
  - fxtentacle 6y ago
    In that case, I wonder why nobody has profited off it yet. I mean the volatility seems very helpful here.
    - EdwardDiego 6y ago
      I wouldn't short BC anymore than I'd short GME, there's a lot of get-rich-quick metooism and as the saying goes, the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
    - kristofferR 6y ago
      Shorting is risky since it's not solely a bet on that the asset value will go down, but rather a bet on when exactly it will go down.
- throwsaways212a 6y ago
  1. Lots of places to do this already exist 2. This has already occurred 3. This could happen still 4. Something about a tide going out and swimming naked
tibiahurried 6y ago
I never bought and never going to buy a single BTC. Reason being its environmental footprint. Not to mention it is uselessness. Most of the energy used to mine BTC are coal-based. Nowadays there are far more fast and energy efficient crypto currencies based on proof-of-stake. The world has gone crazy with BTC, like they have with DOGE, Tesla, all latest tech IPOs, you name it. Non sense stuff with no fundamentals, driven by pure speculation and fan boys. https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
superbcarrot 6y ago
Ray Dalio on Bitcoin in December 2019 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeWcprAJjqs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeWcprAJjqs He says that it isn't an effective medium of exchange or a good storehold of value. I wonder what has changed between then and now.
- solotronics 6y ago
  The richest man on earth bought $1.5B worth to hold as a corporate treasury.
  - superbcarrot 6y ago
    That can't be it - the article from Bridgewater was written before Tesla bought a bunch of Bitcoin.
- seaman1921 6y ago
  nice find!
ralala 6y ago
The rising of Bitcoin can be a threat to working democracies - at least if it is used as a currency. Monetary politics are important for our society to function properly. On the other hand: For broken countries, it can help the people as a temporary replacement.
- superbcarrot 6y ago
  How do people in those broken countries get Bitcoin? To buy Bitcoin in a first world country I need a valid ID, an online exchange that operates in my country, access to the internet and a bank account. And it can take days if you've never done it before. Is that realistic for someone living in a third world country? What does bitcoin give you that you don't already have if you have access to all the items listed above?
  - rawtxapp 6y ago
    You just need a phone, you can buy it p2p (ex: localbitcoins), or get paid for a product/service in crypto as well.
  - wmf 6y ago
    People in "broken" countries are comfortable operating outside the system (or they're already dead) so they can buy crypto person-to-person.
  - kinghajj 6y ago
    There are places to buy bitcoin without KYC enforcement: Localbitcoins still exists; I'm sure there's some dark web site to coordinate in-person OTC trades.
  - ralala 6y ago
    I don't know exactly. There has to be enough liquidity in Bitcoin locally to find enough persons to trade with. Starting a new cryptocurrency in such a situation will be difficult because of deflation. Deflation is extremely dangerous for the economy.
  - mindcandy 6y ago
leshow 6y ago
I didn't see anything on energy consumption or transaction throughput/fees. How can one discuss merits of bitcoin and not talk about any of this?
- teryyy 6y ago
  It's more focused on the merits of Bitcoin as it relates to being a financial asset class, and not on the merits of Bitcoin as a system.
  - leshow 6y ago
    That seems pretty short sighted
    - kukabynd 6y ago
      It’s a piece from a hedge fund. What can we expect?
firebaze 6y ago
The headline should be "YOU SHOULDN'T KNOW THIS SECRET ABOUT BITCOIN!". We should upvote this according to the would-be headline, i guess. /s
yourabstraction 6y ago
> For those reasons the “limited supply” argument isn’t as true as it might appear—e.g., if Blackberries were in limited supply they still wouldn’t be worth much because they were replaced by competitors that were more advanced. I still don’t know the answer to why that isn’t a risk, but I would welcome my naïveté being corrected. I think he's missing the mark a bit about the limited supply argument, which I think is as strong as ever, even with so many competing cryptocurrencies. For one, Bitcoin isn't set in stone and can change over time, albeit very slowly. Additionally, network technology is generally built in layers, and the bottom layer doesn't have to be where all the innovative features live. Bitcoin can serve as layer 0 of the future financial system, and we can build fast payments (lightening network), smart contracts (RSK), and other financial services on top of it. The most important thing is to have a robust and secure bottom layer that can serve as a financial clearing house, and Bitcoin has performed flawlessly in that role for 10+ years now. I also wrote the following recently about some of what makes Bitcoin unique, and gives it value even in an ever growing sea of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin has some unique properties that are hard (or even impossible) to recreate in a new cryptocurrency, which form a large part of its primary value proposition. This is why you can't simply fork Bitcoin or create a new crypto from scratch and beat it. 1) Immaculate Conception. The fact that no one ever knew who Satoshi was and that he disappeared (died??) is hugely important. Crypto is all about removing as much trust from the system as possible, and having a leader (or worse, a company) behind a crypto provides a point of potential failure/corruption. I'm also a big fan of Ethereum, but having a figurehead like Vitalik incurs a large risk that he has disproportionate power to drive things in directions that aren't to the benefit of the entire network. It's almost like Bitcoin was a gift from the gods. 2) Extremely hard to change. I hear it all the time, Bitcoin is too slow, has too few features, is too hard to change, etc. Resistance to change is a very good thing for a monetary system. This is a distributed system that's now trusted with over 1 Trillion USD. Do you really want such a system to be easy to add new features to? If I'm Papa Musk and I'm dumping 1.5 Billion into Bitcoin I want security and reliability to be top priorities, not features. Bitcoin has had consistent development over the years by top notch engineers, but the rate of change has always been extremely conservative in an effort to preserve what makes Bitcoin unique and valuable for the long term. 3) Large market cap. Large market cap IS a feature. Imagine you're Tesla and you want to store 1.5B in BTC, you can't do this if the market cap is too small, because there either wouldn't be enough value in the network, or you'd drive prices up wildly acquiring your stake. A high market cap allows individuals, corporations, and governments (next wave of demand I believe) to store very large amounts of wealth. As such, there's a tremendous advantage to being the frontrunner in the crypto game, because you have the largest market cap, and thus attract more investors, which further drives the market cap up. This is a feedback loop that strongly favors the coin with the highest market cap, the highest security, and the longest record of trust. I'm not saying it's impossible to break this cycle, but it's going to be extremely unlikely at this point. 4) A name that's synonymous with cryptocurrency and money. Bitcoin has an enormous branding advantage, in that when people hear it they instantly think crypto/money. Ethereum, eh not so much. I like its name (ETH) more than a lot of other cryptos (Polkadot, WTF!), but it's not even in the same league as the iconic name Bitcoin. A lot of people are simple minded, they don't want to invest in something with a name they can't trust. You always have to keep in mind that money is more a social/psychological phenomenon than a technological one. Yet people get lost debating the merits of various crypto features, and forget about all the social reasons BTC is number one and has set in place the positive feedback cycles that will most likely keep it as number one. People are highly irrational when it comes to trust, and having a reliable brand name that's proven over time is disproportionately valuable. 5) Most secure network in crypto. Bitcoin is by far the most secure, and a double spend attack would be ridiculously expensive at these prices. This is another positive feedback loop that favors the coin with the largest market cap. Higher market cap leads to more people mining, which increases security via increasing the cost to double spend, which increases demand and further increases market cap.
ykevinator 6y ago
Why is someone with 8th grade literacy in this position?

80 points by wlj 6y ago

The section about the fallacy of limited cryptocurrency supply is one of the key insights missing from many Bitcoin discussions: > For those reasons the “limited supply” argument isn’t as true as it might appear—e.g., if Blackberries were in limited supply they still wouldn’t be worth much because they were replaced by competitors that were more advanced. I agree that Bitcoin is interesting as an alternative asset, but the narratives have outstripped the facts as it becomes just another speculative trading instrument on the non-blockchain exchanges.

tshaddox 6y ago
What's the fallacy you're debunking, and who commits it? I'm not aware of anyone arguing that Bitcoin is highly valuable because all things with a limited supply are highly valuable.
- swagonomixxx 6y ago
  The deflationary nature of Bitcoin is a commonly used property to assert that Bitcoin is designed to increase in value over time due to artificially programmed scarcity. However, I don't think GP's parallel lines up, as another commenter pointed out. In any case, a single satoshi, which is the smallest denomination of Bitcoin (10^-8 of a Bitcoin), is worth about 0.05 cents as of writing this comment. If Bitcoin didn't have such large transaction costs, slow transactions, and price stability, it's scarcity would be way less of an issue due to this really large level of division of a single coin.
  - tshaddox 6y ago
    That doesn't sound right. $50,000 * 10^-8 is $0.0005, or 0.05 cents.
    - swagonomixxx 6y ago
      Oops, my mistake.
nivertech 6y ago
I said this years ago, only I used Nokia instead of BlackBerry (see slides ##8-11): https://www.slideshare.net/nivertech/limited-supply#8 https://www.slideshare.net/nivertech/limited-supply#8
hackinthebochs 6y ago
The analogy doesn't really work because cryptocurrencies aren't interchangeable the way phones are. A better analogy would be if each phone could only talk to people using the same phone brand. If everyone is on iphone and you need an iphone to talk to anyone you care about, the iphone becomes more valuable because of its scarcity. The network effects of bitcoin and the lack of interchangeability between different cryptocurrencies helps secure bitcoin's spot as the leader.
- jeremyjh 6y ago
  This would be true if Bitcoin transaction fees put it in reach of every-day transactions, but they don't and likely never will. Bitcoin is for HODLing, not for transacting.
  - swagonomixxx 6y ago
    Bitcoin can be used for transacting if you're not looking for instantly verified transactions. In ye olden days, when Bitcoin was a few cents worth, transaction costs were tiny. I really doubt Satoshi et al predicted Bitcoin to be so unstable, so as to make transaction costs pretty much out of reach for 99% of normal everyday transactions.
- notahacker 6y ago
  But people almost invariably don't need BTC to transact with people they care about (the number of people with BTC denominated payment obligations is relatively small, and most stuff that can be bought with BTC can be bought with other methods). And as flawed as many exchanges may be, they make cryptocurrencies very interchangeable, especially compared with phones. Blackberry actually did have a proprietary messaging system, it just wasn't anywhere near enough lockin because most people used Blackberry for other reasons, the non-proprietary messaging layers were actually better and Blackberry's popularity turned out to be nearly all down to being first in class.
lottin 6y ago
Bitcoin is an asset in the same way that a piece of paper with my signature on it is an asset. Why some people think cryptocurrencies are revolutionary is beyond my comprehension.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- MrPatan 6y ago
  You're absolutely right, it is.
yks 6y ago
That’s the underappreciated argument. If we to assume that the collective will power is all it takes to create an alternative asset, e.g. the narrative “gold is old, we need a new one” then it follows that it can and will be repeated. I don’t see why people not born yet would play by the rules of the future “Bitcoin wealthy elites” when they could become elites themselves by hyping another asset/cryptocoin instead. Thus even if the narrative of “store of value” and “hedge against inflation” turns out to be correct, I still don’t believe Bitcoin supremacy will last longer than a single human generation.
01100011 6y ago
I agree but to play Devil's advocate I think the answer is "the network effect". Facebook could be replaced at any time, yet it continues to dominate social media. At some point, BTC could become, if it has not already, big enough to become self-sustaining.
- rdsubhas 6y ago
  Regarding free services, one could have said the same thing about Orkut or Myspace. Community tends to flock in via one door, and flock out via another door, as long as the product or service is free. In this case however, completely agree with you. BTC is a paid network (a very expensive one at that). It could remain self-sustaining for quite long.

CyberDildonics 6y ago

Yesterday bitcoin's average transaction fee was over $31. Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum both exceed bitcoin's transaction count consistently now, with Ethereum far exceeding bitcoin's crippled transaction capacity.

tmerr 6y ago
Yes, this was absent from the analysis. Bitcoins security derives from computer power which is currently paid by combination of fees and inflation (mining). We have yet to see what happens to the prices and security when mining dries out. It would also be interesting to see a large market event that causes many people to move bitcoin at once. (What happens to transaction costs? Does this affect perception of bitcoin as a safe store of value?)
- thebean11 6y ago
  Bitcoin will have to adapt in a big way before inflation stops. It needs to crank transaction volume way up, or otherwise collect fees (for example smart contracts) in order to keep mining profitable. Scaling only the price of transactions is NOT going to work, but it has quite a bit of runway to figure this out.
  - rriepe 6y ago
    Has the price of transactions gone up relative to the value of Bitcoin? (I don't have a dog in this race, just curious.)
    - solotronics 6y ago
      No it goes up and down based on how "busy" the mempool is, its basically a measurement of the overall desire to get a transaction on the blockchain. When bitcoin goes through big price swings this tends to increase number of TX which therefore increases the fee.
  - jcampbell1 6y ago
    I imagine everyone holding bitcoin will wise up and agree to a fork in 2040 to stop the halvings. The people who use bitcoin as a store of value should be willing to pay a bit of inflation to maintain the network. As a bitcoin holder, I really don't want to rely on people transacting on the network to fund its security and existence.

sebastien_b 6y ago

> while those who are against it (which are a few scared souls cowering in a corner) Way to win over your audience.

thebean11 6y ago
HN BTC skeptics are not the target audience. This is an ad targeting rich, nontechnical boomers who are unhappy they missed the ride up.
- cecja 6y ago
  lot of buzzwords little substance.
- bob33212 6y ago
  Edit. Nocoiner was removed from the previous comment as it was not intended to be taken this way. My Previous Response( Nocoiner sounds a lot like Antifa or MAGA. Is the goal to lump everyone who doesn't agree with you into a group to ridicule?)
  - anm89 6y ago
    The same people lump themselves together as maximalists. Not every piece of language is some micro aggression identity attack.
  - thebean11 6y ago
    Not my intention at all..updated the to BTC skeptics in case others were offended too.
    - sebastien_b 6y ago
      Thanks for the update - while I read your original comment as intended, I could see others having read it differently.
- notahacker 6y ago

hd4 6y ago

https://archive.is/ryo6d https://archive.is/ryo6d

ra88it 6y ago

I'm surprised that the energy usage axis does not come up in this summary of his thoughts. Isn't that likely to be a factor in bitcoin's growth and long-term survival?

rafale 6y ago
I can see Bitcoin hardfork to POS once the tech has been proven in Ethereum. Bitcoiners only care about the 21 millions hard cap and a secure network, not the exact consensus algorithm used.
- christiansakai 6y ago
  Cardano will prove PoS sooner than Ethereum, and it has hard cap. Yes I am a Cardano shiller.
  - agotterer 6y ago
    Cardano has already demonstrated that it's working. The network is currently 86% decentralized and on Mar 31st will be 100% decentralized.
    - christiansakai 6y ago
      Yes, exciting times ahead.
  - solosoyokaze 6y ago
    How would you recommend acquiring Cardano? Is there an exchange you can buy it on?
    - christiansakai 6y ago
      You can just get it in majority of exchanges. In case your exchange doesn't support it (like me, Coinbase and Gemini, NYC, don't support Cardano), just use swapping service like changenow.io, so buy ETH from Coinbase and use changenow.io to swap it to ADA I've been using changenow.io and it always works. As always, don't send in really large transaction, but one by one, maybe like 3000 ADA each time (this is what I do).

adflux 6y ago

Another company shilling a coin, hoping to convince many more greater fools. Only goal of this article is to convince you to buy, and to transfer a part of your wealth to them.

anm89 6y ago
Yes, surely these already billionaires whose entire business revolves around publishing analysis on assets, and who don't claim to be holding any major stake in BTC, could only be writing about it because they are shilling...
- adflux 6y ago
  The only incentive to write articles like this is to convince others to buy, consequently making more money yourself. This is a pitch, not a fairly supported argument.
  - solosoyokaze 6y ago
    The incentive is to appear informed about an important trend in their industry. It's a pretty good analysis. Do you have a problem with a specific piece of his content?
    - hanniabu 6y ago
      The issue they have is that they weren't against bitcoin. Clearly their preconceived notions are preventing them from discussing and looking at it objectively. Waiting for PragmaticPulp to join the conversation.....
      - anm89 6y ago
        Their asset class analysis has made them billions upon billions over decades but their issue is that they simply don't get what's going on here??
      - zachscho 6y ago

christiansakai 6y ago

For those who don’t read, Bitcoin here refers to Bitcoin AND its competitors.

atomashpolskiy 6y ago

Recent discussion from 2 weeks ago (200 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26101937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26101937

fxtentacle 6y ago

Here's my personal Bitcoin prediction for 2021: 1. Some hedge fund will find a way to short Bitcoins. 2. Someone will inject a lot of illegal sh*t into the Blockchain. People already post images, e.g. https://cryptograffiti.info/ https://cryptograffiti.info/ 3. Authorities have to intervene, the price goes down, the hedge fund gets rich. 4. Lots of whining from people who didn't understand how Bitcoin works. Shoulder shrugs from those "in the know" who converted to regular money shortly before the fall.

solean 6y ago
It's been trivial to short bitcoin for years
- fxtentacle 6y ago
  In that case, I wonder why nobody has profited off it yet. I mean the volatility seems very helpful here.
  - EdwardDiego 6y ago
    I wouldn't short BC anymore than I'd short GME, there's a lot of get-rich-quick metooism and as the saying goes, the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
  - kristofferR 6y ago
    Shorting is risky since it's not solely a bet on that the asset value will go down, but rather a bet on when exactly it will go down.
throwsaways212a 6y ago
1. Lots of places to do this already exist 2. This has already occurred 3. This could happen still 4. Something about a tide going out and swimming naked

tibiahurried 6y ago

I never bought and never going to buy a single BTC. Reason being its environmental footprint. Not to mention it is uselessness. Most of the energy used to mine BTC are coal-based. Nowadays there are far more fast and energy efficient crypto currencies based on proof-of-stake. The world has gone crazy with BTC, like they have with DOGE, Tesla, all latest tech IPOs, you name it. Non sense stuff with no fundamentals, driven by pure speculation and fan boys. https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

superbcarrot 6y ago

Ray Dalio on Bitcoin in December 2019 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeWcprAJjqs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeWcprAJjqs He says that it isn't an effective medium of exchange or a good storehold of value. I wonder what has changed between then and now.

solotronics 6y ago
The richest man on earth bought $1.5B worth to hold as a corporate treasury.
- superbcarrot 6y ago
  That can't be it - the article from Bridgewater was written before Tesla bought a bunch of Bitcoin.
seaman1921 6y ago
nice find!

ralala 6y ago

The rising of Bitcoin can be a threat to working democracies - at least if it is used as a currency. Monetary politics are important for our society to function properly. On the other hand: For broken countries, it can help the people as a temporary replacement.

superbcarrot 6y ago
How do people in those broken countries get Bitcoin? To buy Bitcoin in a first world country I need a valid ID, an online exchange that operates in my country, access to the internet and a bank account. And it can take days if you've never done it before. Is that realistic for someone living in a third world country? What does bitcoin give you that you don't already have if you have access to all the items listed above?
- rawtxapp 6y ago
  You just need a phone, you can buy it p2p (ex: localbitcoins), or get paid for a product/service in crypto as well.
- wmf 6y ago
  People in "broken" countries are comfortable operating outside the system (or they're already dead) so they can buy crypto person-to-person.
- kinghajj 6y ago
  There are places to buy bitcoin without KYC enforcement: Localbitcoins still exists; I'm sure there's some dark web site to coordinate in-person OTC trades.
- ralala 6y ago
  I don't know exactly. There has to be enough liquidity in Bitcoin locally to find enough persons to trade with. Starting a new cryptocurrency in such a situation will be difficult because of deflation. Deflation is extremely dangerous for the economy.
- mindcandy 6y ago

leshow 6y ago

I didn't see anything on energy consumption or transaction throughput/fees. How can one discuss merits of bitcoin and not talk about any of this?

teryyy 6y ago
It's more focused on the merits of Bitcoin as it relates to being a financial asset class, and not on the merits of Bitcoin as a system.
- leshow 6y ago
  That seems pretty short sighted
  - kukabynd 6y ago
    It’s a piece from a hedge fund. What can we expect?

firebaze 6y ago

The headline should be "YOU SHOULDN'T KNOW THIS SECRET ABOUT BITCOIN!". We should upvote this according to the would-be headline, i guess. /s

yourabstraction 6y ago

> For those reasons the “limited supply” argument isn’t as true as it might appear—e.g., if Blackberries were in limited supply they still wouldn’t be worth much because they were replaced by competitors that were more advanced. I still don’t know the answer to why that isn’t a risk, but I would welcome my naïveté being corrected. I think he's missing the mark a bit about the limited supply argument, which I think is as strong as ever, even with so many competing cryptocurrencies. For one, Bitcoin isn't set in stone and can change over time, albeit very slowly. Additionally, network technology is generally built in layers, and the bottom layer doesn't have to be where all the innovative features live. Bitcoin can serve as layer 0 of the future financial system, and we can build fast payments (lightening network), smart contracts (RSK), and other financial services on top of it. The most important thing is to have a robust and secure bottom layer that can serve as a financial clearing house, and Bitcoin has performed flawlessly in that role for 10+ years now. I also wrote the following recently about some of what makes Bitcoin unique, and gives it value even in an ever growing sea of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin has some unique properties that are hard (or even impossible) to recreate in a new cryptocurrency, which form a large part of its primary value proposition. This is why you can't simply fork Bitcoin or create a new crypto from scratch and beat it. 1) Immaculate Conception. The fact that no one ever knew who Satoshi was and that he disappeared (died??) is hugely important. Crypto is all about removing as much trust from the system as possible, and having a leader (or worse, a company) behind a crypto provides a point of potential failure/corruption. I'm also a big fan of Ethereum, but having a figurehead like Vitalik incurs a large risk that he has disproportionate power to drive things in directions that aren't to the benefit of the entire network. It's almost like Bitcoin was a gift from the gods. 2) Extremely hard to change. I hear it all the time, Bitcoin is too slow, has too few features, is too hard to change, etc. Resistance to change is a very good thing for a monetary system. This is a distributed system that's now trusted with over 1 Trillion USD. Do you really want such a system to be easy to add new features to? If I'm Papa Musk and I'm dumping 1.5 Billion into Bitcoin I want security and reliability to be top priorities, not features. Bitcoin has had consistent development over the years by top notch engineers, but the rate of change has always been extremely conservative in an effort to preserve what makes Bitcoin unique and valuable for the long term. 3) Large market cap. Large market cap IS a feature. Imagine you're Tesla and you want to store 1.5B in BTC, you can't do this if the market cap is too small, because there either wouldn't be enough value in the network, or you'd drive prices up wildly acquiring your stake. A high market cap allows individuals, corporations, and governments (next wave of demand I believe) to store very large amounts of wealth. As such, there's a tremendous advantage to being the frontrunner in the crypto game, because you have the largest market cap, and thus attract more investors, which further drives the market cap up. This is a feedback loop that strongly favors the coin with the highest market cap, the highest security, and the longest record of trust. I'm not saying it's impossible to break this cycle, but it's going to be extremely unlikely at this point. 4) A name that's synonymous with cryptocurrency and money. Bitcoin has an enormous branding advantage, in that when people hear it they instantly think crypto/money. Ethereum, eh not so much. I like its name (ETH) more than a lot of other cryptos (Polkadot, WTF!), but it's not even in the same league as the iconic name Bitcoin. A lot of people are simple minded, they don't want to invest in something with a name they can't trust. You always have to keep in mind that money is more a social/psychological phenomenon than a technological one. Yet people get lost debating the merits of various crypto features, and forget about all the social reasons BTC is number one and has set in place the positive feedback cycles that will most likely keep it as number one. People are highly irrational when it comes to trust, and having a reliable brand name that's proven over time is disproportionately valuable. 5) Most secure network in crypto. Bitcoin is by far the most secure, and a double spend attack would be ridiculously expensive at these prices. This is another positive feedback loop that favors the coin with the largest market cap. Higher market cap leads to more people mining, which increases security via increasing the cost to double spend, which increases demand and further increases market cap.

ykevinator 6y ago

Why is someone with 8th grade literacy in this position?