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$365B wiped off cryptocurrency market after Tesla stops accepting Bitcoin
- encryptluks2 5y agoSEC wouldn't allow this with the stock market, how is this any different? His actions were intentional by the way it is obvious he is manipulating the market intentionally.
- bob33212 5y agoElon has become so big that anything he does manipulates the market.
- advantager 5y agoI'm a big fan of Matt Levine's "Money Stuff" column on Bloomberg - he always has amusing and insightful commentary particularly on Elon - > My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Liam Denning points out that “Musk’s move may also indicate that Teslas weren’t flying off the shelves as a result of accepting Bitcoin payment,” and in fact it’s not entirely clear whether Tesla has sold any cars for Bitcoins.[2] I hope it hasn’t. I hope Musk can make the price of Bitcoin go up or down by 10% by announcing that Tesla will or will not accept Bitcoins for cars, without ever actually accepting any Bitcoins for any cars either way. There’s something pure about that: The price of Bitcoin depends on Elon Musk’s attitude toward it, not on the existence of any grubby commercial transactions in which Bitcoins are exchanged for cars.[3] The source of value for Bitcoin is not its use as a currency or economic importance; the source of value for Bitcoin — for everything — is simple proximity to Elon Musk.
- sp332 5y agoSomeone finally securitized the reality distortion field.
- murgindrag 5y agoHey, I accept pieces of paper (and now bits in a computer) for my valuable work, and bought a valuable home, car, and computer with those papers and bits. Money works purely on belief. If we all suddenly disbelieved in the dollar, the value would be zero. Curiously, most cycles of hyperinflation come more from loss of faith than from money printing. When people lose faith in a currency, they sell it off as a value store. Elon Musk's net worth is $28B. His faith in a crypocurrency as a value store counts for a lot.
- pinkybanana 5y ago> Elon Musk's net worth is $28B. His faith in a crypocurrency as a value store counts for a lot. Not only that, but he has pretty dominating role in various companies whose market caps are in hundreds of billions at least.
- 35fbe7d3d5b9 5y ago> Money works purely on belief. If we all suddenly disbelieved in the dollar, the value would be zero. Is this true? Yes. Are you wildly underselling what "disbelieving in the dollar" means in practice? Also yes. I believe in the dollar because the United States has the worlds largest nuclear arsenal, spends nearly a trillion dollars on its military every year – and that's only what it puts on the books – and has been proven to have an itchy fucking trigger finger. That trust isn't going anywhere without massive global conflict.
- deckard1 5y ago> suddenly disbelieved in the dollar you can disbelieve in the dollar. But you can't disbelieve in the Secret Service/US military showing up and kicking your ass
- bob33212 5y agoAlso democracy. What if Bitcoin went up to $100M/coin? What is the likelihood that both Trump and Biden are going to be like "Well the BTC people were right and now they can buy all the companies and real estate. The rest of you americans will have to just have fun being poor, there is no way we will tax BTC wealth"
- freeopinion 5y agoFor narrow definitions of "market". Has Elon ever caused any movement in the U.S. Dollar?
- BitwiseFool 5y agoI don't want the SEC involved in crypto, at all.
- hannasanarion 5y agoWhy, are hoping to be able to pump and dump like old musky someday?
- BitwiseFool 5y agoWherever the Federal Government goes seeking to protect citizens a litany of intrusive, bloated, and invasive regulations follow.
- totalZero 5y agoThis reads like something you'd overhear at a Sackler family cookout. Surely you can recognize the benefits of government regulations in lopsided markets where small participants lack either the power or the information needed to keep large participants honest.
- sp332 5y agoLaws still apply to individual people even if those people denominate their illegal actions in BTC instead of USD. They're not going after exchanges or miners here.
- exporectomy 5y agoMarket manipulation isn't illegal because it hurts investors, it's illegal because it hurts the market which is important for the economy. The crypto market isn't, so it doesn't need that kind of legal protection.
- totalZero 5y agoBoth points you make are questionable. Hurting the market is no different from hurting investors because bad practices that hurt one investor have a chilling effect on other investors' activity. Moreover, regulators don't have to clear a "does this hurt the whole market" test before taking action. For example, I know a guy who was running a business at an investment bank and got in trouble with FINRA for trading through NBBO on a very small order (retail sized). The crypto market has grown to a size and role that affects the greater economy. We see that in so many ways, not only due to the holdings but also because different economic participants are catering to miners and setting up payment options for holders of crypto. It's no longer a cute side project.
- PeterStuer 5y agoSEC sees crypto as a market dominated by the Chinese. They want to dominate it themselves.
- bob33212 5y agoHow long until other companies take it off their balance sheets? It is amazing how many smart people got sucked into the BTC nonsense. It has always been a libertarian dream currency that was never going to be useful in the real world, other than for buying drugs online.
- marsrover 5y agoNothing makes me happier than to see someone act so condescending about "buying drugs online" while at the same time being so out of touch with reality. Well, nothing other than the fact that I'm a millionaire today because I decided to buy drugs online in 2013.
- uncomputation 5y ago…Congratulations? You didn’t actually address his concerns (although they were troll-y in nature). You just flexed about your own wealth, which just as easily could’ve come from betting on the right stock in 2013. I don’t understand crypto advocates whose only plus-one for crypto is that it made them personally rich. It just as easily could’ve gone nowhere and just because the market happens to be in your favor for now does not validate crypto as a whole in my eyes. What is its genuine value at the moment?
- hd4 5y agoThe media tends to be extremely trigger-happy to blame a correction or dip in crypto on a single event like Tesla not accepting BTC while it's just as likely that this is an effect of the wider market correction that's taking place after the inflation/CPI news this week.
- gradys 5y agoYou'd think an intrinsically deflationary asset like Bitcoin would move differently in the face of USD inflation. Any explanation for why this might be?
- lvs 5y agoBecause it's backed by the full faith and credit of absolute void.
- dboreham 5y ago/dev/null
- BitwiseFool 5y agoAre you talking about the Dollar?
- selectodude 5y agoGotta hold dollars to pay US taxes. Don't need to hold Bitcoin to do anything at all.
- imtringued 5y agoTechnically it is backed by guns, guns that convince other nations to trade in USD and guns that convince US citizens to pay taxes so that the guns are pointed at those who don't pay them. The other factor is that the US has adopted the USD. The actual reason (e.g. guns) doesn't matter, it only matters that the decision has been made. You can buy things in the US with USD. Therefore the value of the USD is tied to how much stuff a dollar buys you. The size of the Bitcoin economy is quite small. There are not many things whose price is denominated in Bitcoin, most shops just convert from the dollar price to Bitcoin, which means there is barely any price stickiness that keeps the value of Bitcoin stable. If anything it supports the instability of the exchange rate.
- liquidise 5y agoMy hot-take having watched the culling from an invested position follows. Disclaimer: i hold both BTC and ETH. While the market in general is down, the major losses in this crash were Bitcoin, Doge and Shiba. Bitcoin is an obvious result given the news. Doge and Shiba have had pretty spectacular gains over the last ~30d and seeing them lose considerable value is unsurprising if you follow crypto markets much. Seemingly new money has been racing in lately (see big rises in Eth Classic and Bitcoin Cash as well), i find these dips also unsurprising given past behavior. As a somewhat meta analysis, i feel BTC could have an interesting summer. BTC plateaued at $1.1T in market cap. Meanwhile, Ethereum has been on a steady rise from 250-500B+. Talk of "the flippening" has returned in a way i didn't anticipate, certainly not this early on. While this news impacted the whole market (the market still follows big BTC swings to some extent), i have found my personal sentiment shifting to be increasingly bearish on BTC and bullish on ETH.
- osenthuortuh 5y agoFrom the charts I'm looking at (market watch), it appears that other cryptos have lost more than bitcoin, by percentage. Am I incorrect?
- nwsm 5y agoIf you're referring to their comment "the major losses in this crash were Bitcoin, Doge and Shiba", they are most likely picking that list by market cap (though I did not try to crosscheck).
- liquidise 5y agoQuite right. The alt-coin market is notoriously volatile even by crypto market standards, and not something i follow close enough to give a strong analysis on. Coinbase's weekly losses chart[0] captures some of what i hoped to express in my parent comment. Bitcoin is interesting because in a way, it hasn't so much lost value lately as not risen with the market the last couple of weeks. 0: https://www.coinbase.com/price/s/top-losers?resolution=week https://www.coinbase.com/price/s/top-losers?resolution=week
- SilasX 5y ago
- kerblang 5y agoSo apparently in february tesla bought 1.5 billion in bitcoin as part of a plan to accept payments, then announced today they won't accept those payments and took a nasty hit on the value of that bitcoin because of it. Do I just interpret this at face value as capricious decision-making?
- adoxyz 5y agoTesla bought BTC when it was around $36k IIRC, so even with the value decrease yesterday-today, they're still up significantly.
- neatze 5y agoProbably, tesla already sold all of crypto holdings, may be they will buy it latter at around 36k, again.
- miked85 5y agoNo, they sold 10% of their holdings to verify liquidity. [1] [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/musk-says-tesla-sold-bitcoin-033042715.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/musk-says-tesla-sold-bitcoin-...
- sakopov 5y agoThey also seemed to have taken some profits. Tesla's Q1 reports a profit of $101 million from Bitcoin sales.
- txsoftwaredev 5y agoWhich he stated was done to prove liquidity.
- cma 5y agoStated intention is almost meaningless.
- 5y ago
- didibus 5y agoThe word "wiped off" seems misleading, it's not like coins were lost or destroyed, the market value just changed based on demand/offer. Edit: Hum, not sure why the downvotes, is my understanding wrong?
- lvs 5y agoWiped off its market cap denominated in US dollars. It didn't lose value if you measure its value against some other crypto assets. Everything is relative, but it's not surprising the USD is the root metric considering there isn't much of any real economy that produces anything or pays wages in crypto. Anyway, these articles are generally silly.
- lordnacho 5y agoI didn't downvote you, but your comment is the kind that gets downvoted. You're pointing out something that's true and besides the point. MSFT stock can decrease in value without any shares getting destroyed. The market value is in fact what people mean by "$X wiped off".
- didibus 5y agoOk, I might not have been familiar with the use of the term. I thought in the context of crypto, where coins can actually be "wiped off", in that they can be destroyed and removed from the available pool, it was a little confusing to me. But if this is a common usage to mean a sudden drop in price then I take it back.
- skinnymuch 5y agoGeneral crypto news and talk is pretty lowest common denominator. I agree because of pointing cryptocurrency to null essentially and literally wiping it out, the phrase isn’t the best. But it’s still a common enough phrase. FYI. I know virtually nothing about cryptocurrencies.
- cjsplat 5y agoNot sure about the down votes either, but "wiped off" is a common phrase for this exact sort of thing. A search for "wiped off accounting" hits a pretty large number of pages, including : https://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/wipe-off https://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/w... "to reduce the value of something by a large amount" The dictionary URL implies that it may be US English, but searching for "wiped off accounting uk" shows it is common even in the Queen's English.
- sakopov 5y agoVery perplexing behavior from Musk, I must say. Bitcoin's energy consumption has been front-and-center for a few years now and even more so when the bull market got hot. How does Musk decide to throw $1.5 billion worth of Tesla's cash into BTC without acknowledging this? I was expecting a little bit more due-diligence from him, but he's been absolutely consumed by crypto markets in general.
- notyourwork 5y agoThis looks like a pump and dump scheme in its finest form. Nothing changed over last year in regards to energy consumption. There's no way that Elon or those in Tesla discussing this were not aware of this prior.
- paulpauper 5y agobut in a pump and dump scheme the dump is the result of the orginal pumpers selling, not from the pumpers wanting to make the stock go down. It is in the interests of the pumpers to keep the stock price inflated as long as possible.
- ASalazarMX 5y agoPump and deflate? That evil Elon is at it again.
- 988747 5y agoOk, so what if Elon decided that Tesla's current Bitcoin holdings are too small, and is looking to depress price to buy even more BTC?
- slg 5y agoHow is this a pump and dump? They never dumped. It is certainly stupidity from Musk, but I don't know why you are implying maliciousness when they are still holding Bitcoin and therefore they are equally hurt by this drop in value.
- 5y ago
- bknybkny 5y agoElon just learned that BTC is bad for the environment? Should have googled it before he bought $1.5 billion of it! Honest mistake I suppose.
- unstatusthequo 5y agoHe wants people to buy solar panels and battery power walls. High legacy-created energy cost is good for business, no?
- hinkley 5y agoI mean, in theory someone who owns a big part of a resource distribution system with a high potential waste factor could start a side business that makes use of that resource when it's about to 'spoil'. Be that a condiment factory or BTC mining next to your cubes of lithium. Building battery backup near solar farms and then burning the surplus as BTC mining whenever the batteries get full but it's a windy, sunny day would reduce the footprint of BTC a bit. But like the rest of the grid, those happy stories are built on a bed of lies/coal/natural gas. You can change the ratios all you want but at the end of the day those don't shrink the bad parts very much, and dilution is not the solution. Also, the sad fact is that as much as I wish it were different, having hardware sitting idle is super expensive, both financially and embodied cost. Mining hardware and the buildings to store them have a carbon - and water - footprint even when they are off.
- Ekaros 5y agoLooking at hyper loop his technical chops might not be what some people make them to be... So it might have been...
- nickik 5y agoHave you actually read his paper? Not the bunch of nonsense later published by people like Hyperloop One and other basically scam companies? What is your bases for dismissing it? Is it videos by one youtuber (who gets reference literally by everybody on this topic)? And even if its not the best possible solution, he basically spent some amount of time on an idea did some validation on it with teams at Tesla and SpaceX and said he thinks its a good idea and made it public. Like even if its not the best idea ever, does that prove he is not a good engineer? Some of the greatest engineers ever had ideas that were not actually workable in practice or were wrong about some major thing.
- paulpauper 5y agoMSTR down 10% to $500 (60% off the highs) depsite btc only being down 24% from highs. Put options on MSTR plus being long BTC seems like a good micro-strategy. MSTR is overleverged and at risk of defualt if btc falls below $10k. https://greyenlightenment.com/2021/03/16/microstrategys-bad-strategy/ https://greyenlightenment.com/2021/03/16/microstrategys-bad-... MSTR will probably need to sell more debt to cover existing debt and at very unfavorable terms.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- splithalf 5y agoMusk likes to manipulate Tesla’s value in subtle plausibly deniable ways. He tweets, it dips massively and then dip buying momentum shoots it back up higher. He’s gamified tsla stock buying for the retail investment Reddit crowd.
- legerdemain 5y agoMeanwhile, Palantir announces an interest in accepting Bitcoin payments and investing in cryptocurrencies.[1] Leading from behind! [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/3-palantir-allows-payments-bitcoin-151308700.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/3-palantir-allows-payments-bi...
- rawtxapp 5y agoPeter Thiel is full pro-Bitcoin.
- Traster 5y agoIs that the same Peter Thiel who famously talked about how China was pushing bitcoin to destabilize the dollar?
- rawtxapp 5y agoYep, if you listen to the whole exchange and read through the lines, he's essentially saying to US leadership either we innovate and build with this or we let our main competitor take over.
- websites420 5y agoIs that how he feels about surveillance, too? Is that why he's building probably the evilest corporation out there?
- legerdemain 5y agoPalantir shares have been basically bombing for months now. Banks have repeatedly lowered their estimates of where the company's financials are going mid-term. The company's C-level execs have been dumping their stock in huge quantities. At this point, it's looking pretty likely that Palantir went public so that its executives can finally cash out after 18 years of no profits, and then sell itself to someone like IBM.
- Animats 5y agoThe number of Tesla cars purchased with Bitcoins was probably tiny. It's the hype that affected the price, not the actual transactions.
- kordlessagain 5y agoBuy on the dip, due to a Dip.
- whitepaint 5y agoThere's no way they didn't know what kind of backlash it'll cause. So what the hell ACTUALLY happened? Why are they doing this?
- dragoncowman 5y agoI don't really buy the pump and dump take here. Even if it had been an intentional pump, no reason to trigger a selloff. Some Theses: - Elon is a quick decision maker, he could have genuinely been persuaded about energy usage post-hoc. The energy bit does run somewhat contrary to Tesla's core mission. - In line with this, tesla may be about to form a partnership or make a move with another crypto platform, both because the other platforms have more technical advantages and because they are more energy efficient. Maybe they will even launch their own coin/project - Musk decided it was no longer worth the headache. His Bitcoin communications may have brought a lot of behind the scenes regulatory or fed scrutiny that we are not aware of - Some other new information (possibly natsec related) that caused him to change his view on BTC
- rchaud 5y agoI find it hard to believe that a guy who talks non stop about clean energy does not know how much dirty energy cryptomining uses. It is even less likely that he signed off on a $1.5b purchase of it, and that no-one involved in that process brought up its energy use.
- fastball 5y agoIt is not clear at all how much dirty energy cryptomining uses, so...
- Aperocky 5y agocash would be a good reason. and the cycle continues, why pump once when you can do it again?
- ulfw 5y agoSo your argument is that he is just dumb and didn’t even know how dirty bitcoin is mined, even though all of us do. Sorry but I buy more into the pump and dump hype machine together with his CONSTANT never ending tiring relentless need to be the centre of attention in the media. Like his political equivalent Donald T used to be. Proof: open the media every day. I can’t forget how he needed to insert himself into the whole Thai boys in a cave rescue and then needed to be focus of the media again when he called the actual proper saviours pedophiles.
- drummer 5y agoTesla is going to switch to accepting dogecoin that's why.
- noxer 5y agoDaily reminder that the market cap does NOT exist therefore it can not be "wiped off". Its imaginary nonsense. Market cap explained real simple: https://coil.com/p/XRPFax/Understanding-the-Crypto-Market-Cap-and-why-it-does-not-limit-the-Price/eKrRCJ2Pc https://coil.com/p/XRPFax/Understanding-the-Crypto-Market-Ca...
- samatman 5y agoDo you agree that this applies to the market cap of everything? Because the argument is stated in terms of crypto but is in fact completely generic: no one can buy all of AMZN at the market cap price either.
- noxer 5y agoYes, but the market cap for companies serves a different purpose. Its a somewhat funny way to compare which companies people (shareholder) value higher. You cant compare share price ofc because of different numbers of shares so the market cap kinda corrects that. The number itself is meaningless but you can sorta compare it as financial size. It might be more relevant than comparing number of people hired or revenue or other metrics especially for companies form completely different branches.
- noxer 5y agoHow long until he figures out that DOGE also wastes energy?
- paulpauper 5y agoor that electric cars do not actually have zero carbon footprint while we're at it, don't rockets pollute too
- noxer 5y agoNo one suggest they have. As long as they have less than an device that does the same task but uses gas then it reduces emissions. Rockets as well, they pollute but making them reusable pollutes less. Also depending on fuel type its perfectly possible to produce it form solar energy. But DOGE just burns energy it does nothing with it that could not be done without. Its significantly less then Buttcoin but it explodes with popularity as well. And every energy wasted is too much in the end.
- totalZero 5y agoMaking rockets reusable uses more fuel but requires more raw materials to be mined, refined, and fabricated into parts. It's a tradeoff. The chief argument for reuse is cost, not emissions.
- noxer 5y ago"More fuel" is irrelevant its about pollution. You can never make parts without using a fix amount of resources and energy and if they are used they will end up as waste which is pollution too. Fuel however is just energy in a specific form. If the fuel is created with electric energy and it all comes form coal then it pollution is high but there is a clear path to reduce it down the line. There is no such path with rockets parts that have to be fabricated again and again and again. Cost is the reason why it is feasible. But it still reduces pollution. The additional fuel used to land the rocket causes way way less pollution than creating a new one for every launch. Embodied energy (gray energy) is often significantly underestimated. Just transporting the raw material from all around the world to make a final product uses immense amour of energy and very often its in the form of oil. Also down the line the additional fuel to land can be created with low pollution energy so pollution is reduced even further.
- dang 5y agoSome of the major threads in this saga so far: Tesla Makes More Money Trading Bitcoin Than Selling Cars - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27142261 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27142261 - May 2021 (171 comments) Elon Musk: Bitcoin's energy usage trend over the past few months is insane - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27141493 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27141493 - May 2021 (41 comments) Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin due to climate impact - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27139348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27139348 - May 2021 (256 comments) Tesla has suspended vehicle purchases using Bitcoin - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27135776 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27135776 - May 2021 (344 comments) Money Stuff: Tesla Sold Some Bitcoins - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26971773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26971773 - April 2021 (61 comments) Tesla Wants Your Bitcoin Without the Downside - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26612901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26612901 - March 2021 (48 comments) Tesla cars can be bought in Bitcoin - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26566056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26566056 - March 2021 (89 comments) You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26564340 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26564340 - March 2021 (10 comments) Tesla has made $1B profit on its Bitcoin investment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26236072 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26236072 - Feb 2021 (46 comments) Buying a Tesla car in Bitcoins cancels 4 times the CO2 savings for its lifetime - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26164512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26164512 - Feb 2021 (113 comments) Elon Musk wants clean power. But Tesla's carrying Bitcoin's dirty baggage - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26090330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26090330 - Feb 2021 (256 comments) Bitcoin powers towards $50K as Tesla takes it mainstream - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26077118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26077118 - Feb 2021 (112 comments) Tesla spent $1.5B in clean car credits on Bitcoin - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26070744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26070744 - Feb 2021 (156 comments) Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26063920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26063920 - Feb 2021 (1298 comments)
- sillysaurusx 5y agoThis HN library work is so good. Thanks for these types of HN trees. I've been thinking of offering to help your team with some tooling work. But if you needed help, you'd probably find it somewhere. So I'll just cheer you on here. (A fella emailed me about Lumen the other day, asking what I thought about Scheme's (let ((a 1) (b 2)) ...) syntax. I said "If you want to, you can write a macro to implement Scheme. But Lumen's design got it right." So, thanks also if your early design conversations influenced how Lumen's LET turned out. Some days it feels I've written more (let ...) blocks than sentences.)
- rchaud 5y agoMusk blaming excessive energy use for withdrawing from BTC sounds like a ruse, considering that he of all people absolutely knew that going in. I smell Teslacoin in the works. A ostensibly green cryptocurrency, with his face on it.
- aqme28 5y agoThere's too much money in this for him not to. This is absolutely in his wheelhouse and MO.
- hef19898 5y agoIs Tesla into Blockchain already? Because if they are, that would be close to peak hype BS bingo.
- delaaxe 5y agoHe changed his mind because of this: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-firm-revives-zombie-fossil-fuel-power-plant-to-mine-bitcoin/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-f...
- Siira 5y agoYou're either clueless, or an astroturf, or a troll.
- dang 5y agoPlease don't break the site guidelines like this, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. It only makes the community worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- lifty 5y agoI noticed that you keep posting this as the definitive reason as to why they changed their minds. Is this confirmed or just conjecture?
- 5y ago
- delaaxe 5y agoYou cited everything but the most important regarding this news: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-firm-revives-zombie-fossil-fuel-power-plant-to-mine-bitcoin/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-f... (the reason for his change of mind)
- ra7 5y ago> the reason for his change of mind How do you know this?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- xeromal 5y agoHe said it was in a tweet.
- DoingIsLearning 5y agoThis is the third comment in this thread where you've written the same quote, claiming this is what "changed his mind". Do you have any evidence of this claim? I want to keep an open mind and not jump to gaslighting accusations. But something about this thread doesn't sit right.
- vardump 5y agoShrug... did some quick Googling and found this: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1392938133163888640 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1392938133163888640 He might be right.
- DoingIsLearning 5y agoI refuse to accept someone in his position (and with his net worth) did not know their environmental impact _before_ moving into cryptocurrencies.
- Rapzid 5y agoIt's possible Musk just wasn't paying close attention to the power aspect of it and recently did, or recently had his mind changed about it. If we want to go the conspiracy route though.. Maybe he is buying up ETH and this is priming the market for a later announcement about how ETH is the green future of crypto currency.
- steveBK123 5y agoI wonder how much BTC is actually mined with fossil fuel. Even at the record prices, with efficient ASIC/GPU miners, you need some extremely cheap electricity to make it work. I suppose owning the power plant might work, as in the example ars article linked in this thread of a company spinning a bankrupt fossil fuel plant up for crypto. I think you can attribute a lot of other factors to crypto volatility than just Musk tweeting, such as: * Statements this week by SEC that put doubt on crypto currency ETFs being approved in US markets.. which blows up one of the major bull cases- that crypto would become more main streamed, crypto linked products would hit traditional US exchanges and brokers.. increasing accessibility / addressable market. * More US probes in crypto space - this time of Binance
- matchagaucho 5y ago75% of BTC mined in China. 53% of China's power is coal. Some fossil-fuel plants in the US are reopening specifically to serve BTC data centers. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-firm-revives-zombie-fossil-fuel-power-plant-to-mine-bitcoin/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-f...
- DonHopkins 5y agoBitcoin is China's way of exporting coal through the atmosphere.
- mondoveneziano 5y agoYou cannot regulate what energy sources are being used for mining Bitcoin. If any particular energy source is available at the right cost somewhere, be it in a remote location with a defunct government, miners will use it.
- Consultant32452 5y agoI find it hard to believe that Tesla invested $1+ Billion in Bitcoin without doing the most basic due diligence. This isn't like a WSB trader burning their stimulus check. A team of lawyers, accountants, etc. had to be involved in this. Concern for energy consumption is one of the most obvious things you'd run across when researching Bitcoin. This definitely feels like something unspoken happened behind the scenes for the rapid 180. I'm not suggesting any crazy conspiracy theory, like I don't think government spooks are involved or anything like that. It just seems like normal corporate speak excuse for this change where they aren't going to really discuss what happened.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- brutal_chaos_ 5y agoSo many comments in this thread suggest Musk is an all knowing individual. "How could he miss this?" "I can't believe someone so wealthy can miss something so important!" And so on. This is a really sad view, IMHO. Wealth may provide more opportunities to learn and expand, but that doesn't mean the wealthy know everything. He should have done his research, maybe he did and decided to go that route anyway, but wealth is only correlated to knowledge, not causative. Edit to add: No defense for Musk here, I just hate seeing wealth equated to smarts.
- i_have_an_idea 5y agoHe may not be all-knowing, but my retired, former customer service employee grandmother knows Bitcoin is produced with dirty energy in China. It's not exactly secret knowledge. So, it's obviously a pump and dump.
- brailsafe 5y agoAnd how the hell did she come to know that?
- i_have_an_idea 5y agoShe watches TV
- redisman 5y agoIt’s not unreasonable to expect a CEO to delegate adding a new payments option to people who do their due diligence?
- agnosticmantis 5y agoMusk is not a random wealthy dude. His wealth comes mainly from Tesla shares, a company that (apparently) aims to accelerate the transition to renewable energy. So this reasoning doesn’t seem correct.
- arbuge 5y agoI personally feel that Musk's strategy is that any publicity for his companies is good publicity, so he puts himself out there trying to connect popular themes like cryptocurrency to them in any way possible. Other practitioners of this strategy that come to mind are Richard Branson in business and Donald Trump in politics. Their number one priority above all is to dominate the news cycle, which equates to free marketing. Given the above, I highly doubt that this (or the original adoption of Bitcoin earlier this year) is due to any deep feelings he may have about the merits or otherwise of Bitcoin itself. I also predict that he'll soon reverse himself publicly all over again.
- kevinbache 5y agoHe has 1) Shown us what his word is worth to the speculative market club 2) Brought about two news cycles in which Americans will be taught about cryptocurrency 3) Made the right long-term move for the environment. If crypto is indeed the currency of the future then there's absolutely no reason for us to all pile on to any version of it that requires us to pollute. Sound familiar? Welcome to the wide world of symbolic lessons. If this blows your mind, wait 'til you take a long look at Republicans.
- princeharry86 5y agoI think 500B or more market cap was added, when Tesla Started accepting Bitcoin and nobody talks about that. Media is so useless and biased !
- lwhi 5y agoWill this really destroy the market?
- jokoon 5y agoFunny title, seen how volatile bitcoin is, to express it in dollars.
- pedalpete 5y agoHow many people were buying Tesla's with bitcoin? Tesla hasn't sold their bitcoin, as far as I can tell, they are still holding a portion of their cash in BTC. The hedge against inflation still exists. The future potential for international industrial payments in BTC for Tesla is still there. I'm sure there are some accounting tricks there too. Plus, the tweet from Elon clearly states that they are looking at other crypto's with better carbon footprint...ETH moving to Proof-of-Stake (or any DeFi built on ETH) sounds like a good opportunity. I musk be missing something here.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y agoMy guess: Offering Bitcoin payments has attracted fewer buyers than it has deterred (because there are all kinds of people who find proof-of-work cryptocurrencies bad, e.g. for environmental reasons or because of the GPU shortages, and some might actually boycott a company over supporting those).
- Shadonototro 5y agothey cashed out they crash the market they'll buy the dip rince repeat
- christophilus 5y agoAka Thursday.
- deckard1 5y agoMatt Levine already pointed out the environmental hypocrisy of Tesla. To which I quoted 15 days ago... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26973193 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26973193 > -2 points by deckard1 15 days ago nice.
- nickik 5y agoLiterally 1000s of people have been pointing this out since the very second Tesla started talking about it.
- Lramseyer 5y agoI'm surprised that nobody's mentioned it here, but this crypto boom has sent demand for mining hardware through the roof, which has contributed in no small part to the chip shortage. Miners are buying up ASICs, GPUs and FPGAs at a premium. In the short term, crashing the crypto market can ease demand for semiconductors, but in the long term, getting cryptos to move to Proof of Steak will hopefully ease it up for good (But don't quote me on that!) It's no secret that one of their biggest supply chain constraints is chips right now (aside from batteries.) So it's not all that ridiculous to imagine them pulling this kind of publicity stunt off so that they can actually produce and sell more cars. And if they can profit off of it at the end of the day, even better!
- chrismorgan 5y ago> Proof of Steak There’s so much scope for word play humour here that I’m paralysed by choice. Vegetarianism, steak and chips…
- treeman79 5y agoSuch humor is rare, usually put out to pasture. But this joke is well done. Hopefully it ages well.
- danielheath 5y agoYes, it’s a rare medium for conveying information.
- kamyarg 5y ago> Decentralized networks are a rare medium well-done. https://steak.network/ https://steak.network/
- angry_octet 5y agoIt's obvious that steak needs chips, hence proof of steak will inevitably lead to a chip shortage.
- locallost 5y ago
- S_A_P 5y agoThe knee jerk reaction is to criticize cnbc. But the fact is that Elon’s strategy is working.
- user-the-name 5y agoNothing was wiped off from the cryptocurrency market, because none of that money every existed in any reasonable form. "Market cap" for cryptocurrencies is nonsense. It represents absolutely nothing real, least of all value.
- rblion 5y agoI own $0 crypto. Good in theory but if you look at it very closely, the whole thing is a racket that enriches a few people manipulating the market and enchants millions of speculators who want to 'get rich quick'. My gut says it's best to invest in myself and build things that are universally appealing and useful.
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- deevolution 5y agoIt's not much different from the current fiat monetary regime. Those closest to the money spigot benefit the most... cryptocurrency opens it up to individuals rather than limiting it to governments.
- fortran77 5y agoI've always wondered why people say crypto isn't a "fiat currency." It only has value because some people say it does. And it doesn't have an Army, Navy, and Air Force to defend it, like the U.S. Dollar has.
- pavlov 5y agoIt's part of the cult-like mind game that underlies cryptocurrency communities. The in-group must signal its faith by using certain words in the opposite sense of their usual meaning. Bitcoin is following the Scientology playbook here.
- gjs278 5y agoit has immutable transactions that back it up making it possible for online payments without a middle man
- schoen 5y agoPresumably the fiat part comes from the power to create legal tender laws or the power to collect taxes denominated in a currency, or both. Cryptocurrencies don't have either of those powers. That is, a fiat currency's value isn't based only on objective or subjective/speculative value, but also, to an extent, on the issuing state's power to require people to use or accept it in certain transactions.
- fortran77 5y agoI wonder if anyone is worried about the liability of dealing with "dirty" money?
- dnprock 5y agoElon Musk will learn that Bitcoin is difficult to control. He seems pretty confused about the market. My guess is Elon has been using Dogecoin to reign in Bitcoin. He's somewhat got what he wanted. Bitcoin has been stagnant for a few months. However, his promotion of Dogecoin pumps other crypto, like Ethereum and their meme tokens. Elon Musk probably didn't expect this. Promoting Dogecoin doesn't directly hurt Bitcoin. It strengthens other altcoins. At some point, it'll hurt Dogecoin. Bitcoin is shaking Elon Musk off. It has a history of sending thought leaders to the trash bin.
- Proven 5y agoStore of value, lol Who has ever stopped accepting gold or silver?
- nikolay 5y agoEasy come, easy go!
- BenoitEssiambre 5y agoI still don't think the environmental damage is the scariest part of cryptocurrencies since there are likely technological solutions. As even Douglas Adams tried to warn, it's the deflation that is worrisome: https://benoitessiambre.com/specter.html https://benoitessiambre.com/specter.html
- logicchains 5y agoAmerica was in a deflationary environment for much of the 1800s and GDP grew at faster rate than the 1900s, with smaller crashes (nothing as big as the Great Depression or the GFC). Anti-deflationary propaganda is just FUD funded by an entire industry heavily invested in the current system: https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-cantillon-effect-why-wall-street https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-cantillon-effect-why-...
- BenoitEssiambre 5y agoI gave you textbook macro about deflationary currencies and you gave me hand wavy talking points about the 1800s that are easily verified as lies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States#Free_Banking_Era_to_the_Great_Depression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_Unit.... But that doesn't even matter since that era's global financial system was too different to draw much parallels. In particular, asset prices weren't globally and instantly synchronized so financial crises were more regional. People still widely relied on barter instead of cash back then, ffs! As soon as the markets became global and connected enough in the early 1900s, gold became the memetic deflationary asset of the time and when it got intertwined enough with the financial system, went on to cause the great depression, fuel WWII etc. You provided an article about the unrelated Cantillon effect instead of deflation? Maybe you mean to meant to paste another link?
- logicchains 5y agoThe link you provided doesn't even mention the GDP effect of those recessions, but if you look it up you'll find that none had as severe an effect on GDP as the great depression. The Cantillon effect is how the financial industry profits from inflation in its current format, which you'd know if you read the link. This incentivises it to produce FUD against deflation.
- ComputerGuru 5y agoHonestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the SEC investigates him (again), this time for what was quite possibly a pump-and-dump. Personally, I don’t think he started accepting BTC in good faith, it seems like a (pretty transparent) move to manipulate the price.
- detaro 5y agoIs that something the SEC is even responsible for?
- ComputerGuru 5y agoI think so? He didn’t personally invest in BTC, he had Tesla (which is publicly traded) do it.
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- ezoe 5y agoI got a thinking. Tesla sold CO2 emission right which is a considerable amount of revenue for them. Then, they traded their car with bitcoin which is a very inefficient use CO2. Thinking about this, I think Tesla should have had to buy CO2 emission right rather selling it based on where that bitcoin was mined or transaction processed.
- hacknat 5y agoHow long is it going to take Americans to realize that their elites do not play by the same set of rules as everyone else? It’s getting tiresome listening to people talk about current events like we didn’t just all live through the last 4 years of the most cleptocratic behavior of our lifetime. Wake up! Seriously. I have no solutions to offer, but I’m sick of this repetitive public shock. I’d rather do anything else than witness these feckless conversations repeat themselves over, and over again. I guess I’d like us all to disconnect from it a bit and find the funny in it. Maybe if we could all take a break from our collective outrage and focus on one thing we might get somewhere.
- vmception 5y agoSorry what shock? Seeing someone calculate the number or marketcap change is fun, like a leaderboard.
- hacknat 5y agoThere are many people expressing anger and outrage at his manipulative tweets. :shrugs:
- vmception 5y agoAh okay. When you were talking about kleptocracy and playing by different rules, manipulation only applies to the securities market in some small circumstances that can be mitigated with tiny tiny disclaimers. I personally have completely aligned expectations for what occurs in markets without any investor or consumer protection. Its the “markets” fault for deriving confidence from one person. If Michael Saylor wanted to buy the dip at above market prices, he can. If $49,300 is not a price many people really want to buy a lot of bitcoin at, then so be it. Idk its easy for me to just laugh and move on. To everyone else, don’t trade on leverage maybe?
- supermatt 5y agoWhy are so many people complaining about musks “180” on Bitcoin? A recent study has shown that Bitcoin uses more than 2000x more energy per transaction than the likes of Dogecoin. We all knew that Bitcoin was a power hog, but did we really appreciate how much compared to other PoW blockchains? I certainly didn’t. Maybe musk didn’t either, and now he does and has changed his position.
- HeadHonchoSP 5y agoWill mining the last few % of available bitcoin make the power draw drop? Or is it the same for all transactions, accounting for after all the bits are mined.
- MomoXenosaga 5y agoThe fact that a single company not accepting BTC can have this impact tells you all you need to know about this payment revolution... I'll stick with the €.
- EvilEy3 5y agoNo-no, Bitcoin is not a scam! I promise! It's the currency of the future!
- 3327 5y agoTldr: Papa elon wipes his ass with Btc, wiping off 365bn
- znpy 5y agoAt this point it kinda looks like a "pump&dump" operation.
- maxekman 5y agoElon should just help ETH 2.0 by staking.
- boublepop 5y agoMusk might be claiming this is about the environment, but it might also be a concern about real liquidity of Bitcoin assuming Tether is a scam and will collapse. Of cause if that was the case you wouldn’t say it out loud, but instead find some way of stopping the exchanges of tether backed Bitcoin for Tesla’s, while quietly trying to offload as many bitcoins as possible in the floating market before it implodes. Probably you’d find some silly excuse for doing this like saying your trying to save the trees of something. Because being honest would push the implosion closer.