5 ms·
Bitcoin Breaks $60k
- masswerk 6y agoSee also: "Bitcoin may consume as much energy as all data centers globally" [1] – BTC begins to become a real problem. [1] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-may-consume-as-much-energy-as-all-data-centers-globally https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-may-consume-as-much-energy-...
- _fs 6y agoAre you posting this to start a flame war? Has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
- mey 6y agoThe nature of Bitcoin's power use does directly matter to the pricing. The availability of "cheap" power is directly related to the price floor due to mining costs. If you can't afford to mine coins at a profit the network will shut down. That means either higher transaction fees, more efficient mining hardware, or a change to the network design (proof of work). Power consumption is very central to the future of Bitcoins and how you should consider pricing it. Edit: fixing some sentence wording :)
- DennisP 6y agoThe difficulty can adjust downward. If the price goes below miner costs, then some miners quit, difficulty decreases, and remaining miners become profitable again. The network keeps going just fine, without needing any changes.
- spiorf 6y agoA 50% hashrate dump right after a difficulty adjustment would result in the next epoch running at half-speed for 4 weeks. Network would keep going, but if would not be "just fine".
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- masswerk 6y agoNo, certainly not: the ramp-up in price directly corresponds to trade and the load on the mining network. Hence, we've seen quite a significant increase in energy consumption, recently. The problem isn't going away, as long as BTC is traded in volume (for which valuation is an indicator).
- matheusmoreira 6y agoIt's not even 1% of global energy consumption. There are much bigger problems out there that should be prioritized such as fossil fuels. By the time we've solved those, cryptocurrencies will hopefully have moved on to less expensive proof systems.
- DennisP 6y agoCryptocurrencies besides Bitcoin are already moving on. By marketcap, the second through fourth-largest blockchains either don't use miners or are getting rid of them within a year.
- matheusmoreira 6y agoIndeed. Honestly bitcoin is already outdated technology. It enjoys its current position by virtue of being the first and most well-known cryptocurrency. Ethereum and Monero are much more important technologies, I hope they'll one day be able to switch to cheaper proofs so that we can spend less energy as well as less money in fees.
- wcoenen 6y agoIndeed, and this is strongly determined by the price. As long as bitcoin doesn't influence the price of electricity, the relationship between its electricity consumption and price should be roughly linear. Meaning that if the price doubles, miners can afford to spend twice as much energy on proof-of-work in their competition to find blocks. We're already at a price level where miners could afford to spend on the order of 2% of the world's electricity consumption (assuming an electricity cost of $0.05/kWh [1]). If the price rise continues, then bitcoin will start to push electricity prices up. Electricity grids may even become strained. [1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28%286.25+bitcoin+%2F+10+minutes%29+%2F+0.05+dollar%2Fkwh%29 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28%286.25+bitcoin+%2F...
- spiorf 6y agoEnergy is the only physical thing you can put into the internet, and is the price to pay for having noone in control of this new permissionless fixed-supply global currency. Think about how global resources are allocated on large scale, and how much control on this allocation have those who control the global money supply. What would happen if there was a way to have a leveled playing field?
- sschueller 6y agoPeople have set oil fields on fire and killed millions of people to protect fiat currencies. Bitcoin is a mere blip in my opinion. Prof of stake is coming and eventually bitcoin will not be able to keep up with others that have switched. So it will be fork or die.
- matheusmoreira 6y ago> People have set oil fields on fire and killed millions of people to protect fiat currencies. Bitcoin is a mere blip in my opinion. Agree completely. I simply don't understand all this noise about bitcoin energy consumption. It doesn't add up to even 1% of the damage these entrenched organizations cause. The only explanation I can come up with is they are too powerful to be messed with while cryptocurrencies are a safe target. > Prof of stake is coming and eventually bitcoin will not be able to keep up with others that have switched. So it will be fork or die. Absolutely! Once they all switch to better proof systems, we'll enjoy lower transaction fees and even higher decentralization. Proof-of-stake is already threatening to fork Ethereum, hopefully the miners will lose in the long run. Bitcoin is outdated tech by now. Only reason it's still around is its history as the first and most well-known cryptocurrency.
- puddingnomeat 6y agoTulips Break 150ƒ
- brighton36 6y agoEveryone needs a thneed.
- nix23 6y agoGo Tulips...hail to the Nederlands ;)
- spiorf 6y agoTulip mania lasted a few months. Bitcoin is 12 years old going strong. I think that this could settle the argument for good.
- Ologn 6y agoSo? I've sustained a bubble for 20 years - that an old, now ripped shirt I used to wear is worth $1000, because I would always be willing to pay $1000 for it if I did not own it. My ripped shirt - 20 years old going strong. I think that this could settle the ripped shirt argument for good. In 2013 (less than 8 years ago), the market cap of all Bitcoins was under one billion. The float was much smaller. Sergey Brin alone could have bought the entire market with less than 2% of his wealth. With the float small, the price could be propped up with a much smaller percentage than that. Now the market cap of Bitcoins is over one trillion. Which means the bubble is more than one thousand times harder to prop up. Quantitative easing - 12 years old going strong.
- dkjaudyeqooe 6y agoWe're not in the mania phase yet. Lots of things build in price over a long period before they go crazy.
- m3kw9 6y agoThe amount of FOMO and The fear of 1.7T flooding the system is a big factor in the run up. Wouldn’t chase it
- core-questions 6y ago1.7T? Can you elaborate?
- sharedfrog 6y agoUSA stimulus package.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- disruptalot 6y agoYou wouldn't chase a store of value asset when money is being flooded into the system at record levels? Doesn't sound like very good advice. Indeed stocks, real estate etc. are being bought up for the same reason. Some people use Bitcoin for that purpose.
- dkjaudyeqooe 6y agoYou've got that the wrong away about. People buy stocks and assets because interest rates are low: the leverage of borrowing easily overcomes what people holding cash are doing. Since the stimulus has passed the dollar has strengthened, and will probably continue to. People are assuming that interest rates will be going up due to increased spending and employment. As interest rates start to bite the value of stocks and real estate will slow down or reverse since they become more expensive to buy (with leverage), so it's not a great bet going forward.
- elmerfud 6y agoI don't buy in to this. People aren't buying due to the helicopter money fallout from the sky. If that was the case you'd also see gold going up. That's your classic value store and hedge against inflation. This is more interest rates driving speculation. If I can borrow money at less than 3% it makes sense to borrow and lock it in to an asset for 20+ years. It's a good return on the investment for people who have an excess of wealth. Conversely the helicopter money is placing yet another squeeze on the poor and middle class. They're wanting to take advantage but not from their excess wealth so they can't ride out the shifts when it turns on them.
- sschueller 6y agoHave those US stimulus checks arrived already?
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoThe government says direct deposits are set to start going out this weekend, so I guess if you're trying to front run now would be the time to do it.
- wtf_is_up 6y ago$60k is nothing. Reckon it goes to $100k this run, or maybe even overshoots. prepares for seething
- fasteddie31003 6y agoI personally would love to see the Federal Reserve make the USD a more attractive store of wealth by bringing back some sort of gold standard. Once I bring up the gold standard people kinda react like I'm some nut. I really don't understand why people think having a gold standard is such a backwards idea. Bitcoin's rise is an example of what happens to an asset when there is a fixed supply.
- DennisP 6y agoActually neither gold nor Bitcoin has a fixed supply. The gold supply increases by about 2.5% annually, and Bitcoin by 1.8%. Bitcoin's inflation will gradually decrease and it has an ultimate limit that will be reached in 2140, and gold will reach some limit if we don't start mining asteroids for it, but I don't think either limit is economically relevant today.
- matheusmoreira 6y ago> Actually neither gold nor Bitcoin has a fixed supply. It does. There's an upper limit to how many bitcoins can be mined. We haven't reached this limit yet but it will eventually happen.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoWhich was acknowledged, but it's not clear why that upper limit would be relevant to economic decisions today. Nobody's investing today based on predictions of exactly what the world will look like in 2140; they're making predictions over at most a couple decades, and over that period the Bitcoin supply will see a significant continual increase.
- imhoguy 6y agoBy that time we either break SHA256 or burn the entire planet to fuel the virtual greed.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 6y ago
- kemonocode 6y agoAs much as I'm bullish on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general in the longer term, this feels like too much, too quickly. I don't really expect this bull run to last that much longer.
- matheusmoreira 6y agoNo economy survives a sudden injection of trillions of dollars. People are going to want their golden parachutes eventually and a mess will be left behind. Reminds me of government student loans.
- Finnucane 6y ago>No economy survives a sudden injection of trillions of dollars Really? Why not? The current package and the last one amount to about 10% of the total economy. That seems survivable, especially when the alternative is a lot of people not surviving.
- matheusmoreira 6y agoBecause if you inject trillions of dollars into the economy, people are going to notice and they will immediately move to capture as much of it as possible. No system remains honest when faced with such temptation. Student loans are responsible for destroying academic integrity. Schools raise tuition because the government is paying for it. Students will be left with the debt after graduation but by that point they are no longer the school's problem. They also do everything possible to prevent students from dropping out, including interfering with the work of teachers. School administrators are getting rich off of the trilions of dollars being injected into the economy. Meanwhile privileges such as tenure are being abolished because they don't serve the administrator's interests.
- etrautmann 6y agoI think the situation with grade inflation and loans, and the set of incentives in higher ed is a little more nuanced that you're portraying here. Universities have always had to compete for students, and the argument that the incentives pushing for student retention would disappear if student loans didn't exist seems speculative and unsupported.