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What do you mean? We totally got what we wanted; we have a deflationary currency we trade for goods and services. I'm 100% serious here; it's been working fine

What do you mean? We totally got what we wanted; we have a deflationary currency we trade for goods and services. I'm 100% serious here; it's been working fine for quite a number of years. The fiat conversion is pretty noisy but BTC on average goes up in value in fiat terms at a fast pace. BTC is easy to turn it into stuff. No one has ever censored my transactions or asked for ID. Even if you buy something really expensive or totally illegal. It has literally already worked. It started working the day that guy bought a pizza and it hasn't stopped working.

danhak 5y ago
> we have a deflationary currency we trade for goods and services. Such a vanishingly small percentage of cryptocurrency activity is actually used for trade (as opposed to speculation) that it is a novelty and newsworthy when it actually happens. E.g. We all know about that guy who bought a pizza with BTC. And when Tesla decided to allow purchases via BTC (which they have since backtracked) it was a media sensation and market-moving. This is not normal.
- Baeocystin 5y ago
  Is this really true? I buy stuff with crypto all the time. It's how I learned about crypto in the first place- back ~2015, I ordered legitimate, had-a-prescription medication for my father from overseas using bitcoin, as it was the only way I could get it, as the even-with-insurance price in the states was beyond our means. Wound up doing so for several years, and it was much easier than dealing with the 'normal' ways of payment. A lot of the things I order from overseas in general I pay for in crypto, simply because it's cheaper & easier than doing regular currency conversions. I'm talking about regular things, like specialty foods, or everyday items I can't find in the states. Nothing even close to grey market or sketchy. Just regular financial transactions, using crypto. I'm sure by numbers my <$100-equivalent purchases are small potatoes, but how is that not also true for regular money? There are billions of dollars of capital sloshing around in the markets, but that doesn't make my personal-level spending not useful.
  - OOPMan 5y ago
    Are you being intentionally daft? Or do you genuinely fail to realise thay there is a difference between you and small number of other people relative to the global population using cryptocurrency as money as compared to everyone on the planet doing so?
    - Baeocystin 5y ago
      Ideas start from somewhere, and take time to spread.
      - 908087 5y ago
        Unless something major changes, I'm guessing we can expect to continue hearing about how it's "still early days" and "just takes time to catch on" another decade from now.
      - sidlls 5y ago
        And most of them never get anywhere meaningful.
        samplatt 5y ago
        They certainly don't when they have have otherwise intelligent people using strong emotive language telling them that they're not important. There's facing statistical facts, and then there's just being flat-out negative.
        sidlls 5y ago
        The statistical facts warrant a strongly negative outlook.
    - temptemptemp111 5y ago
      I think they're literally blind. It is biblical.
  - 5y ago
- alanbernstein 5y ago
  What percentage of dollars are used for trade, as opposed to investment? Does it matter?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- DickingAround 5y ago
  I guess I don't totally know how to respond to that; I have no idea what everyone is using it for. That's rather hard to know just looking at the blockchain, or even reading message boards like this. I have no problem spending it; pretty easy to convert it to gift cards that can be spent anywhere (they give you a kick back even), there's some places that do take it directly (not restaurants, or car repair, but like electronics stuff on the internet). And of course you can just sell it for fiat on an exchange then turn around and dump the fiat for stuff (in this case, fiat is kind of the weak asset since no one really wants to hold cash for long). Plus, it can buy some stuff you can't get with fiat (e.g. overseas purchases not tied into USD, or all the dark web stuff people talk about). It feels pretty darn liquid; I've never had a problem turning BTC into stuff. And it is way more so than gold, land, even stocks and bonds; none of which can turn into stuff in under an hour much less without audit/paper-trail/control. Only fiat is more liquid, except no one wants to hold fiat; just turn it into something else actually worth having. The real problem is getting BTC. Lots of roadblocks in acquiring it and generally the people who have it would rather pay you in fiat and keep their BTC.
  - Closi 5y ago
    What’s the point of a currency where you have to convert it to another currency to spend it? (I’ve got an idea, and I think the answer is speculation….) Converting BTC to Fiat and then spending Fiat isn’t the same as buying things with Bitcoin. It’s buying things in Fiat with extra steps.
    - fvdessen 5y ago
      If the extra step means my money doesn't lose value as government print cash like there's no tomorrow, then that step is quite valuable to me
      - FalconSensei 5y ago
        It only loses value when Elon shitpost on Twitter, right?
      - 5y ago
- z3c0 5y ago
  ...you do realize that most of the world's money supply exists in the form of derivatives, right? A single-digit percentage is actual cash. You're committing a strawman. They didn't say anything about how the proportionality of crypto's use breaks down - they simply stated that it has achieved the basic use it set out to. And they're 100% correct - I use crypto to buy things quite regularly (email, VPN, etc), and will continue to. Really, the only thing preventing me from doing so more often is hard-headed people refusing to support it, because it's "mostly speculative." Here's an infographic: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-of-the-worlds-money-and-markets-in-one-visualization-2020/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-of-the-worlds-money-and...
  - diamondhandle 5y ago
    Someone is going to make a chart comparing crypto to the already-ridiculous crypto derivatives market, and you’ll realize your point is totally irrelevant. Companies don’t transact in Bitcoin because nobody wants to hold it. Except for companies getting a valuation boost from retail investors.
    - z3c0 5y ago
      No, my point isn't irrelevant, and you thinking it is means you almost certainly missed it. Most of the world's value is speculative in nature (derivatives, credit, real estate, you name it), so I couldn't care less about the crypto derivatives market, or the "normal" derivatives either. Neither are preventing me from using crypto as a store of value. At the end of the day, people speculating the value of crypto does nothing to detract from its core function as a decentralized ledger. I know this to be fact, because I have and continue to use it as money, and no amount of smug pseudo-intellectual retorts can change that. The briefest of cursory internet searches will disprove your idea that companies don't want to hold crypto - there's been massive buy in from very significant companies. Eg Sotheby's, a company that has existed since the 1700s. But they must be fools who don't know what they're doing, right?
      - throwaway2037 5y ago
        You wrote: <<internet searches will disprove your idea that companies don't want to hold crypto - there's been massive buy in from very significant companies. Eg Sotheby's>> I looked into this claim, and I disagree. Google search for <<sotheby's cryptocurrency>>. The first two results for me were: https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/cryptocurrency-payment-information https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/cryptocurrency-payment-... https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy-sell/cryptocurrency-faq https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy-sell/cryptocurrency-faq They are allowing partial cryptocurrency payment for a single Banksy painting. From the FAQ: << Which part of the transaction is payable in cryptocurrency? Sotheby's will accept cryptocurrency for the hammer price of the lot. The buyer’s premium and overhead premium, as well as any taxes, must be paid in USD. >> Sotheby's is simply facilitating the transaction as an auction house. They have zero exposure to cryptocurrency. I assume the cryptocurrency will be transferred to the seller after the auction is paid-in-full. The buyer must pay all non-hammer-price costs in USD to Sotheby's. (As I understand, these fees can be significant.) Like some other posts mentioned, the seller could agree to receive seashells instead of cryptocurrency. All said, this seems like a very good publicity stunt by Sotheby's.
- dheera 5y ago
  > And when Tesla decided to allow purchases via BTC The main reason I don't buy things with cryptocurrency is that it would trigger a liquidation event and short term capital gains taxing. Due to that, for US residents and citizens, it's not functional as a currency in its current form. I'm vehemently against taxing of cryptocurrency or treating it as a security by the IRS, but that's the way it is now.
- samplatt 5y ago
  It was a media sensation because it was Tesla doing it, not because of what was being done. Tesla and Musk are attention-sponges and it's a large part of how they're still operating.
- genidoi 5y ago
  > Such a vanishingly small percentage of cryptocurrency activity is actually used for trade In reality, an overwhelmingly large percentage of tangible trade is fasciliated by one specific cryptocurrency for one particular umbrella of goods and services that may have something to do with onions.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  > Such a vanishingly small percentage of cryptocurrency activity is actually used for trade (as opposed to speculation) that it is a novelty and newsworthy when it actually happens. First, that last part is definitely not true. People do accept Bitcoin and buy things with it, and it’s not newsworthy at all unless it’s a meme-driven electric car company boss doing it. But secondly, why do these percentages actually matter? At what point does my valid use of something become dismissible because another use case which you don’t like gets popular? Do we dismiss people who actually like playing the Pokémon card game because lots of people collect the cards purely for speculation now?
- Geee 5y ago
  You can use bitcoin as a saving mechanism, which is the primary purpose of money, as long as you can trust that it is tradeable to something else. There are hundreds of millions of people who use bitcoin in this way. For using it as everyday currency, there are debit cards that automatically convert your bitcoin to local currency at the time of payment. There are probably millions of people who use these debit cards. Bitcoin itself isn't suitable for everyday payments yet.
- usehackernews 5y ago
  Yeah, I use crypto for purchases quite frequently. From hotel rooms to supplements.
klyrs 5y ago
Transaction fees were north of $50 a couple of weeks ago. Who's buying a pizza with that overhead? Genuinely asking, because I've a bridge to sell Before the edit window closes... 5 workarounds and counting. Are they interoperable, or is all this a thick layer of bullshit that users need to wade through to spend their "currency"? I see the plurality of "solutions" here indicative of a problem. Yes, you can fix anything with duct tape, but then it gets sticky
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- grubles 5y ago
  You can use Lightning (a Bitcoin technology) to send BTC which is extremely cheap in comparison. Talking fractions of a cent.
  - throwkeep 5y ago
    How do you use the Lightning network?
    - randomhodler84 5y ago
      Check out strike app, it is a managed lightning wallet denominated in USD that allows venmo/cashapp style pay to user transactions; and payments on the lightning network. All funded from a bank account.
    - pablovidal85 5y ago
      Use muun or phoenix wallets, they're very usable.
  - crocodiletears 5y ago
    Isn't that only for Bitcoin Cash?
    - CameronNemo 5y ago
Ma8ee 5y ago
And why would you want a deflationary currency? If you see it as an investment, then of course. But for the general economy it is better when people spend their money sooner rather than later, and capital gets invested where it does something useful.
- ptr2voidStar 5y ago
  Ah, the old Keynesian argument...
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    Um yes? And reality consistently confirms Keynsian/demand-side modeling.
    - 988747 5y ago
      Keynsian demand-driven economy is the root of all evil, i.e. market bubbles that pop eventually. Everyone except market speculators would be much better of with supply-driven economy and small deflation. For one it would provide incentive to save money and spend it wisely, instead of mindlessly buying all that unnecessary crap.
      - longwick 5y ago
        Ah another free market neoliberalist. You do know that government intervention during Keynesian’s time was incredibly helpful for the macro economy - providing jobs and investment into long running avenues. Neoliberalism purports that the private sector will invest diligently but really we’re seeing companies use shortermism as a technique to just make profit.
      - yellowapple 5y ago
        > Everyone except market speculators And debtors. The very notion of taking out a loan for something becomes nigh impossible with a deflationary currency, particularly one as deflationary as Bitcoin. Seeing as how the lower and middle class tend to take out loans for all sorts of reasons (since if they had the sort of cash lying around to buy homes and cars and appliances and such outright, they probably would be neither lower nor middle class), the direct harm such a currency would have is readily apparent.
andrewzah 5y ago
"or asked for ID" That ship sailed long ago in the US if you use any exchange. Not using an ID is much, much harder now. And is kind of besides the point with a public ledger.
- skoopie 5y ago
  He was talking about paying w/bitcoin. You don't need KYC for that.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ptr2voidStar 5y ago
The level of delusion when it comes to cryptocurrencies - is unreal. As a market practitioner of many decades, I must say I have never witness this level of froth and delusion before. I'm studying it with great interest (and a touch of disdain about my fellow humans unbounded rationality/irrational exuberance about cryptos)
- drexlspivey 5y ago
  Ah yes the typical HN commenter who sees hundreds of millions of people doing something and assumes that he knows better.
  - porknubbins 5y ago
    All crypto posts poke the hornets nest of angry engineers here at HN because (I think) crypto is now 90% a finance/economic/social phenomenon. There is little new to say from a technical perspective but people who are super smart in one field think it should generalize to a vaguely adjacent one. I’ve spent quite a lot of time on this stuff and the potential of Defi is massive compared to 99% of trad fintech startups but its impossible to even keep up with.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- neatze 5y ago
  Seems like cryptocurrency mania is substantially more insane then tulip mania.
- ziml77 5y ago
  It's because once people put their money into a cryptocurrency they have a stake in not seeing it fail. The more they have in the cryptocurrency, the more they need it to retain value. If your life savings were at risk of becoming worthless, you would also be defending cryptocurrencies as rabidly as these people.
- throwaway2037 5y ago
  "As a market practitioner of many decades" -- I like that phrase. In the first phase, it was purely retail speculation. However, we are now entering into a new phase. ETFs are being issued. This makes it easier for institutional money to buy. Also scary. I'm not concerned about "fast money" (hedge funds), but rather "slow money" like pension funds. Final phase: I notice that investment banks are slowly beginning to open cryptocurrency trading desks. They may trade directly, but mostly they are interested in derivatives. That is my biggest fear. How is that any different than CDS on MBS/ABS/CDO? (Credit default swap on sub-prime mortgage bonds) In short: The underlying was junk loans. Derivs on crypto feels like the same wolf, but in a different skin!
wpietri 5y ago
> we have a deflationary currency we trade for goods and services. You do not, not really. Merchant adoption is microscopic. Even prominent Bitcoin fans admit it's terrible as a payment system. E.g., Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures: https://avc.com/2017/08/store-of-value-vs-payment-system/ https://avc.com/2017/08/store-of-value-vs-payment-system/ Or look at Overstock, one of the few large retailers that accepts it. Something like 0.1% of their business is done using it, which explains why most other merchants don't bother. Even there, they price everything in dollars, so if the Bitcoin price shifts between you purchasing something and you returning it, you'll get the dollar equivalent, not the Bitcoin you gave them: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/style/what-can-you-actually-buy-with-bitcoin.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/style/what-can-you-actual... This is especially obvious when you contrast it with something like M-Pesa, an e-cash system that launched around the same time. It's hugely popular in the countries it operates in. (Along the way, it did a lot for banking the unbanked, one of the mirage-like goals that Bitcoin is always approaching but never arrives at.) The transaction volume is orders of magnitude higher than Bitcoin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa Sure, it technically works; you can probably still buy a pizza somewhere. But "technically works" is a shaky standard even for something that just launched. It's no standard at all for something that launched the same time as Android or Uber.
kaba0 5y ago
Why is illegal transactions a goal? You can hate on governments all you want, but that is the only way currently known where we can have a reasonable say into the laws made and uphold — and order is not a bad thing in my opinion. Why circumvent that, instead of voting someone in who will create reasonable laws to protect us all?
- throw123123123 5y ago
  I cant vote in the US. In argentina, however, the government seized my bank accounts and made it illegal to trade foreign currencies.
- glennvtx 5y ago
  Government has always been the principal enabler of every war, genocide, and mass abuse of human rights through history. Divorcing them from control of money is a massive human rights advancement, and most people recognize this.
  - kaba0 5y ago
    Disagree. Power was and is the enabler of said things. And currently, democracy with proper separation of powers is the best we have to manage said power.
    - reedjosh 5y ago
      The government is just another name for whoever has a monopoly of said power (and violence).
- reedjosh 5y ago
  This assumes your vote matters. Governments around the world are consumed by regulatory capture and corruption.
  - kaba0 5y ago
    True, but at the point of a dictatorship, all is lost, unless you leave the country - and that’s why democracy should be protected at all cost. I don’t see how circumventing the whole thing help the regular people, considering the potential increase due to easier availability in illegal activity like human trafficking, child porn, weapons trade, etc. We have laws against them for very good reasons.
triceratops 5y ago
> we have a deflationary currency I've never understood why this is an explicit goal of any currency. Money is a way of keeping score of economic value produced. The economy is expected to create more value over time. That means you need more points, aka money, to represent that value.
- skoopie 5y ago
  I hate it when the government sneaks around back and lowers my score all the time. It'd be nice to retire someday before I'm dead.
  - triceratops 5y ago
    It's not the government doing that, though, it's the economy. The government just provides the points for keeping score. If the economy grows by x% this year and all your money is in cash, then your relative share in the economy has declined. So of course the value of your cash has now reduced. The government was only indirectly involved insofar as it issued the currency that the value was measured in. If you want your money to stop losing value, stop the economy from creating more value.
    - mannerheim 5y ago
      This is nonsensical. There was practically no inflation in the United States during the 19th century[0], the major exception in that period being the Civil War, a period of when the government needed to generate more revenue by printing more money. Following the war, deflation brought prices lower so that price levels at the end of the century were roughly equal to those at the start of it (and it should go without saying that there was certainly economic growth between 1800 and 1900). With economic growth, you would expect the economy to produce more items, thereby being able to buy the same things for cheaper. E.g., if we get better at producing electronics, you would expect their price to decline - and that's precisely what we've seen in the past couple of decades. It is true that a period of economic growth could induce inflation in the short run if the growth resulted in an expansion of credit, which increases the money supply even if M1 is stable. But there's only so far you can stretch the money multiplier. And on the other hand, monetarists believe that increasing the money supply could resolve a recession, but for one, an increasing money supply clearly isn't required for economic growth (the 19th century in the US is emblematic of this, but in particular there were decades of deflation within that century with economic growth), and for another, increasing the money supply in the monetarist framework is brought about by a central bank, not caused by the growing economy. [0]: Figure 1 of https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/second-quarter-2017/a-short-history-of-prices-inflation-since-founding-of-us https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/s...
scrubs 5y ago
It's not a currency. It doesn't even pass macro encon 101 definitional smell test of currency

danhak 5y ago

> we have a deflationary currency we trade for goods and services. Such a vanishingly small percentage of cryptocurrency activity is actually used for trade (as opposed to speculation) that it is a novelty and newsworthy when it actually happens. E.g. We all know about that guy who bought a pizza with BTC. And when Tesla decided to allow purchases via BTC (which they have since backtracked) it was a media sensation and market-moving. This is not normal.

Baeocystin 5y ago
Is this really true? I buy stuff with crypto all the time. It's how I learned about crypto in the first place- back ~2015, I ordered legitimate, had-a-prescription medication for my father from overseas using bitcoin, as it was the only way I could get it, as the even-with-insurance price in the states was beyond our means. Wound up doing so for several years, and it was much easier than dealing with the 'normal' ways of payment. A lot of the things I order from overseas in general I pay for in crypto, simply because it's cheaper & easier than doing regular currency conversions. I'm talking about regular things, like specialty foods, or everyday items I can't find in the states. Nothing even close to grey market or sketchy. Just regular financial transactions, using crypto. I'm sure by numbers my <$100-equivalent purchases are small potatoes, but how is that not also true for regular money? There are billions of dollars of capital sloshing around in the markets, but that doesn't make my personal-level spending not useful.
- OOPMan 5y ago
  Are you being intentionally daft? Or do you genuinely fail to realise thay there is a difference between you and small number of other people relative to the global population using cryptocurrency as money as compared to everyone on the planet doing so?
  - Baeocystin 5y ago
    Ideas start from somewhere, and take time to spread.
    - 908087 5y ago
      Unless something major changes, I'm guessing we can expect to continue hearing about how it's "still early days" and "just takes time to catch on" another decade from now.
    - sidlls 5y ago
      And most of them never get anywhere meaningful.
      - samplatt 5y ago
        They certainly don't when they have have otherwise intelligent people using strong emotive language telling them that they're not important. There's facing statistical facts, and then there's just being flat-out negative.
        sidlls 5y ago
        The statistical facts warrant a strongly negative outlook.
  - temptemptemp111 5y ago
    I think they're literally blind. It is biblical.
- 5y ago
alanbernstein 5y ago
What percentage of dollars are used for trade, as opposed to investment? Does it matter?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
DickingAround 5y ago
I guess I don't totally know how to respond to that; I have no idea what everyone is using it for. That's rather hard to know just looking at the blockchain, or even reading message boards like this. I have no problem spending it; pretty easy to convert it to gift cards that can be spent anywhere (they give you a kick back even), there's some places that do take it directly (not restaurants, or car repair, but like electronics stuff on the internet). And of course you can just sell it for fiat on an exchange then turn around and dump the fiat for stuff (in this case, fiat is kind of the weak asset since no one really wants to hold cash for long). Plus, it can buy some stuff you can't get with fiat (e.g. overseas purchases not tied into USD, or all the dark web stuff people talk about). It feels pretty darn liquid; I've never had a problem turning BTC into stuff. And it is way more so than gold, land, even stocks and bonds; none of which can turn into stuff in under an hour much less without audit/paper-trail/control. Only fiat is more liquid, except no one wants to hold fiat; just turn it into something else actually worth having. The real problem is getting BTC. Lots of roadblocks in acquiring it and generally the people who have it would rather pay you in fiat and keep their BTC.
- Closi 5y ago
  What’s the point of a currency where you have to convert it to another currency to spend it? (I’ve got an idea, and I think the answer is speculation….) Converting BTC to Fiat and then spending Fiat isn’t the same as buying things with Bitcoin. It’s buying things in Fiat with extra steps.
  - fvdessen 5y ago
    If the extra step means my money doesn't lose value as government print cash like there's no tomorrow, then that step is quite valuable to me
    - FalconSensei 5y ago
      It only loses value when Elon shitpost on Twitter, right?
    - 5y ago
z3c0 5y ago
...you do realize that most of the world's money supply exists in the form of derivatives, right? A single-digit percentage is actual cash. You're committing a strawman. They didn't say anything about how the proportionality of crypto's use breaks down - they simply stated that it has achieved the basic use it set out to. And they're 100% correct - I use crypto to buy things quite regularly (email, VPN, etc), and will continue to. Really, the only thing preventing me from doing so more often is hard-headed people refusing to support it, because it's "mostly speculative." Here's an infographic: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-of-the-worlds-money-and-markets-in-one-visualization-2020/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-of-the-worlds-money-and...
- diamondhandle 5y ago
  Someone is going to make a chart comparing crypto to the already-ridiculous crypto derivatives market, and you’ll realize your point is totally irrelevant. Companies don’t transact in Bitcoin because nobody wants to hold it. Except for companies getting a valuation boost from retail investors.
  - z3c0 5y ago
    No, my point isn't irrelevant, and you thinking it is means you almost certainly missed it. Most of the world's value is speculative in nature (derivatives, credit, real estate, you name it), so I couldn't care less about the crypto derivatives market, or the "normal" derivatives either. Neither are preventing me from using crypto as a store of value. At the end of the day, people speculating the value of crypto does nothing to detract from its core function as a decentralized ledger. I know this to be fact, because I have and continue to use it as money, and no amount of smug pseudo-intellectual retorts can change that. The briefest of cursory internet searches will disprove your idea that companies don't want to hold crypto - there's been massive buy in from very significant companies. Eg Sotheby's, a company that has existed since the 1700s. But they must be fools who don't know what they're doing, right?
    - throwaway2037 5y ago
      You wrote: <<internet searches will disprove your idea that companies don't want to hold crypto - there's been massive buy in from very significant companies. Eg Sotheby's>> I looked into this claim, and I disagree. Google search for <<sotheby's cryptocurrency>>. The first two results for me were: https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/cryptocurrency-payment-information https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/cryptocurrency-payment-... https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy-sell/cryptocurrency-faq https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy-sell/cryptocurrency-faq They are allowing partial cryptocurrency payment for a single Banksy painting. From the FAQ: << Which part of the transaction is payable in cryptocurrency? Sotheby's will accept cryptocurrency for the hammer price of the lot. The buyer’s premium and overhead premium, as well as any taxes, must be paid in USD. >> Sotheby's is simply facilitating the transaction as an auction house. They have zero exposure to cryptocurrency. I assume the cryptocurrency will be transferred to the seller after the auction is paid-in-full. The buyer must pay all non-hammer-price costs in USD to Sotheby's. (As I understand, these fees can be significant.) Like some other posts mentioned, the seller could agree to receive seashells instead of cryptocurrency. All said, this seems like a very good publicity stunt by Sotheby's.
dheera 5y ago
> And when Tesla decided to allow purchases via BTC The main reason I don't buy things with cryptocurrency is that it would trigger a liquidation event and short term capital gains taxing. Due to that, for US residents and citizens, it's not functional as a currency in its current form. I'm vehemently against taxing of cryptocurrency or treating it as a security by the IRS, but that's the way it is now.
samplatt 5y ago
It was a media sensation because it was Tesla doing it, not because of what was being done. Tesla and Musk are attention-sponges and it's a large part of how they're still operating.
genidoi 5y ago
> Such a vanishingly small percentage of cryptocurrency activity is actually used for trade In reality, an overwhelmingly large percentage of tangible trade is fasciliated by one specific cryptocurrency for one particular umbrella of goods and services that may have something to do with onions.
tshaddox 5y ago
> Such a vanishingly small percentage of cryptocurrency activity is actually used for trade (as opposed to speculation) that it is a novelty and newsworthy when it actually happens. First, that last part is definitely not true. People do accept Bitcoin and buy things with it, and it’s not newsworthy at all unless it’s a meme-driven electric car company boss doing it. But secondly, why do these percentages actually matter? At what point does my valid use of something become dismissible because another use case which you don’t like gets popular? Do we dismiss people who actually like playing the Pokémon card game because lots of people collect the cards purely for speculation now?
Geee 5y ago
You can use bitcoin as a saving mechanism, which is the primary purpose of money, as long as you can trust that it is tradeable to something else. There are hundreds of millions of people who use bitcoin in this way. For using it as everyday currency, there are debit cards that automatically convert your bitcoin to local currency at the time of payment. There are probably millions of people who use these debit cards. Bitcoin itself isn't suitable for everyday payments yet.
usehackernews 5y ago
Yeah, I use crypto for purchases quite frequently. From hotel rooms to supplements.

klyrs 5y ago

Transaction fees were north of $50 a couple of weeks ago. Who's buying a pizza with that overhead? Genuinely asking, because I've a bridge to sell Before the edit window closes... 5 workarounds and counting. Are they interoperable, or is all this a thick layer of bullshit that users need to wade through to spend their "currency"? I see the plurality of "solutions" here indicative of a problem. Yes, you can fix anything with duct tape, but then it gets sticky

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
grubles 5y ago
You can use Lightning (a Bitcoin technology) to send BTC which is extremely cheap in comparison. Talking fractions of a cent.
- throwkeep 5y ago
  How do you use the Lightning network?
  - randomhodler84 5y ago
    Check out strike app, it is a managed lightning wallet denominated in USD that allows venmo/cashapp style pay to user transactions; and payments on the lightning network. All funded from a bank account.
  - pablovidal85 5y ago
    Use muun or phoenix wallets, they're very usable.
- crocodiletears 5y ago
  Isn't that only for Bitcoin Cash?
  - CameronNemo 5y ago

Ma8ee 5y ago

And why would you want a deflationary currency? If you see it as an investment, then of course. But for the general economy it is better when people spend their money sooner rather than later, and capital gets invested where it does something useful.

ptr2voidStar 5y ago
Ah, the old Keynesian argument...
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  Um yes? And reality consistently confirms Keynsian/demand-side modeling.
  - 988747 5y ago
    Keynsian demand-driven economy is the root of all evil, i.e. market bubbles that pop eventually. Everyone except market speculators would be much better of with supply-driven economy and small deflation. For one it would provide incentive to save money and spend it wisely, instead of mindlessly buying all that unnecessary crap.
    - longwick 5y ago
      Ah another free market neoliberalist. You do know that government intervention during Keynesian’s time was incredibly helpful for the macro economy - providing jobs and investment into long running avenues. Neoliberalism purports that the private sector will invest diligently but really we’re seeing companies use shortermism as a technique to just make profit.
    - yellowapple 5y ago
      > Everyone except market speculators And debtors. The very notion of taking out a loan for something becomes nigh impossible with a deflationary currency, particularly one as deflationary as Bitcoin. Seeing as how the lower and middle class tend to take out loans for all sorts of reasons (since if they had the sort of cash lying around to buy homes and cars and appliances and such outright, they probably would be neither lower nor middle class), the direct harm such a currency would have is readily apparent.

andrewzah 5y ago

"or asked for ID" That ship sailed long ago in the US if you use any exchange. Not using an ID is much, much harder now. And is kind of besides the point with a public ledger.

skoopie 5y ago
He was talking about paying w/bitcoin. You don't need KYC for that.

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ptr2voidStar 5y ago

The level of delusion when it comes to cryptocurrencies - is unreal. As a market practitioner of many decades, I must say I have never witness this level of froth and delusion before. I'm studying it with great interest (and a touch of disdain about my fellow humans unbounded rationality/irrational exuberance about cryptos)

drexlspivey 5y ago
Ah yes the typical HN commenter who sees hundreds of millions of people doing something and assumes that he knows better.
- porknubbins 5y ago
  All crypto posts poke the hornets nest of angry engineers here at HN because (I think) crypto is now 90% a finance/economic/social phenomenon. There is little new to say from a technical perspective but people who are super smart in one field think it should generalize to a vaguely adjacent one. I’ve spent quite a lot of time on this stuff and the potential of Defi is massive compared to 99% of trad fintech startups but its impossible to even keep up with.
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neatze 5y ago
Seems like cryptocurrency mania is substantially more insane then tulip mania.
ziml77 5y ago
It's because once people put their money into a cryptocurrency they have a stake in not seeing it fail. The more they have in the cryptocurrency, the more they need it to retain value. If your life savings were at risk of becoming worthless, you would also be defending cryptocurrencies as rabidly as these people.
throwaway2037 5y ago
"As a market practitioner of many decades" -- I like that phrase. In the first phase, it was purely retail speculation. However, we are now entering into a new phase. ETFs are being issued. This makes it easier for institutional money to buy. Also scary. I'm not concerned about "fast money" (hedge funds), but rather "slow money" like pension funds. Final phase: I notice that investment banks are slowly beginning to open cryptocurrency trading desks. They may trade directly, but mostly they are interested in derivatives. That is my biggest fear. How is that any different than CDS on MBS/ABS/CDO? (Credit default swap on sub-prime mortgage bonds) In short: The underlying was junk loans. Derivs on crypto feels like the same wolf, but in a different skin!

wpietri 5y ago

> we have a deflationary currency we trade for goods and services. You do not, not really. Merchant adoption is microscopic. Even prominent Bitcoin fans admit it's terrible as a payment system. E.g., Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures: https://avc.com/2017/08/store-of-value-vs-payment-system/ https://avc.com/2017/08/store-of-value-vs-payment-system/ Or look at Overstock, one of the few large retailers that accepts it. Something like 0.1% of their business is done using it, which explains why most other merchants don't bother. Even there, they price everything in dollars, so if the Bitcoin price shifts between you purchasing something and you returning it, you'll get the dollar equivalent, not the Bitcoin you gave them: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/style/what-can-you-actually-buy-with-bitcoin.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/style/what-can-you-actual... This is especially obvious when you contrast it with something like M-Pesa, an e-cash system that launched around the same time. It's hugely popular in the countries it operates in. (Along the way, it did a lot for banking the unbanked, one of the mirage-like goals that Bitcoin is always approaching but never arrives at.) The transaction volume is orders of magnitude higher than Bitcoin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa Sure, it technically works; you can probably still buy a pizza somewhere. But "technically works" is a shaky standard even for something that just launched. It's no standard at all for something that launched the same time as Android or Uber.

kaba0 5y ago

Why is illegal transactions a goal? You can hate on governments all you want, but that is the only way currently known where we can have a reasonable say into the laws made and uphold — and order is not a bad thing in my opinion. Why circumvent that, instead of voting someone in who will create reasonable laws to protect us all?

throw123123123 5y ago
I cant vote in the US. In argentina, however, the government seized my bank accounts and made it illegal to trade foreign currencies.
glennvtx 5y ago
Government has always been the principal enabler of every war, genocide, and mass abuse of human rights through history. Divorcing them from control of money is a massive human rights advancement, and most people recognize this.
- kaba0 5y ago
  Disagree. Power was and is the enabler of said things. And currently, democracy with proper separation of powers is the best we have to manage said power.
  - reedjosh 5y ago
    The government is just another name for whoever has a monopoly of said power (and violence).
reedjosh 5y ago
This assumes your vote matters. Governments around the world are consumed by regulatory capture and corruption.
- kaba0 5y ago
  True, but at the point of a dictatorship, all is lost, unless you leave the country - and that’s why democracy should be protected at all cost. I don’t see how circumventing the whole thing help the regular people, considering the potential increase due to easier availability in illegal activity like human trafficking, child porn, weapons trade, etc. We have laws against them for very good reasons.

triceratops 5y ago

> we have a deflationary currency I've never understood why this is an explicit goal of any currency. Money is a way of keeping score of economic value produced. The economy is expected to create more value over time. That means you need more points, aka money, to represent that value.

skoopie 5y ago
I hate it when the government sneaks around back and lowers my score all the time. It'd be nice to retire someday before I'm dead.
- triceratops 5y ago
  It's not the government doing that, though, it's the economy. The government just provides the points for keeping score. If the economy grows by x% this year and all your money is in cash, then your relative share in the economy has declined. So of course the value of your cash has now reduced. The government was only indirectly involved insofar as it issued the currency that the value was measured in. If you want your money to stop losing value, stop the economy from creating more value.
  - mannerheim 5y ago
    This is nonsensical. There was practically no inflation in the United States during the 19th century[0], the major exception in that period being the Civil War, a period of when the government needed to generate more revenue by printing more money. Following the war, deflation brought prices lower so that price levels at the end of the century were roughly equal to those at the start of it (and it should go without saying that there was certainly economic growth between 1800 and 1900). With economic growth, you would expect the economy to produce more items, thereby being able to buy the same things for cheaper. E.g., if we get better at producing electronics, you would expect their price to decline - and that's precisely what we've seen in the past couple of decades. It is true that a period of economic growth could induce inflation in the short run if the growth resulted in an expansion of credit, which increases the money supply even if M1 is stable. But there's only so far you can stretch the money multiplier. And on the other hand, monetarists believe that increasing the money supply could resolve a recession, but for one, an increasing money supply clearly isn't required for economic growth (the 19th century in the US is emblematic of this, but in particular there were decades of deflation within that century with economic growth), and for another, increasing the money supply in the monetarist framework is brought about by a central bank, not caused by the growing economy. [0]: Figure 1 of https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/second-quarter-2017/a-short-history-of-prices-inflation-since-founding-of-us https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/s...

scrubs 5y ago

It's not a currency. It doesn't even pass macro encon 101 definitional smell test of currency