mrb

35 ms·

541.
by mrb 6y ago
« No retail investor has accounts directly with the NYSE » That's a good point. So a fairer comparison would be to compare Coinbase to the market cap of NYSE ($66B) + a stock broker who has roughly the same userbase as Coinbase. For ex
542.
by mrb 6y ago
Nitpick: this was not an IPO, but a DPO (Direct Public Offering). In other words no new capital was raised today. Coinbase's existing shareholders (investors and employees) were simply allowed to sell their shares on the public market.
543.
by mrb 6y ago
I remember this paper. A major flaw that was pointed out to the authors (and never corrected) is that Bitcoin tumbling services—popular among illicit users—artificially increase the transaction volumes. So if tumbling services puts the BTC
544.
by mrb 6y ago
« As far as I can tell, hundreds of millions in drugs and contraband are regularly transacted using Bitcoin. Billions in global capital controls and taxes are evaded every day with Bitcoin » That is completely unsubstantiated. You have no e
545.
by mrb 6y ago
dragontamer is still correct. He quotes correct bandwidth numbers. EPYC's 8 channels of DDR4-3200 gets it to 204.8 GB/s (and, yes, that's bandwidth ) Whereas Nvidia's A100 has over 2000 GB/s of memory bandwidth. Th
546.
by mrb 6y ago
Yes it can survive the HN hug of death. I speak as a software engineer whose blog has hit the HN frontpage multiple times, and who has optimized my blog to be static & lightweight, just like the author. In my experience, a front-page HN
547.
by mrb 6y ago
« US likely to ban crypto soon » I have been hearing that for 11 years.
548.
by mrb 6y ago
It's interesting that in the chart we even see an expected peak around 1600-1700 that correspond to the Little Ice Age period https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age (colder weather = late cherry blossom seas
549.
by mrb 6y ago
If we count only missed revenues for Egypt, this incident cost them about US$100 million. Canal revenues were US$27.2 billion in the last 5 years ( https://www.reuters.com/article/egypt-economy-suezcanal/egyp... )
550.
by mrb 6y ago
shudders ;)
551.
by mrb 6y ago
I suppose what he meant is it's ironic due to the insane overhead. When the end-user double clicks calc.exe, types in 1+1, and sees the result on the screen, the CPU has executed on the order of tens of millions of instructions (filesy
552.
by mrb 6y ago
Usually the factory default WiFi network that IoT devices create during setup is open. No password required. It seems the author left the device in that state when he reverse-engineered the API. So anyone in the vicinity of the network can
553.
by mrb 6y ago
What does this sentence mean: « The charts below show these payback periods for holding cash » What's the payback period for holding cash ? By definition if you hold cash you can be "paid back" immediately in full.
554.
by mrb 6y ago
It doesn't seem to be a typo. AMD offers many variations of each core configurations, with different base frequencies. It's just that there are simply pricing overlaps between some low-core high-freq version and some higher-core l
555.
by mrb 6y ago
« has the benefit of not providing your address. » Little known fact: you can have a PO BOX address on your driving license (California). When you give the DMV your physical residence address, and a different mailing address, they will prin
556.
by mrb 6y ago
« could never replace a national currency » There are plenty of scenarios for Bitcoin to succeed and be useful without necessarily replacing national currencies. « transaction times in the tens of minutes » Wires take hours/days. Credi
557.
by mrb 6y ago
« For one that’s horrifyingly wasteful - you say it like it’s a good thing but it’s really not. » It is a great thing: it means Bitcoin can scale without increasing energy consumption. See, that's my problem with the way you phrased
558.
by mrb 6y ago
« it doesn’t make sense to break that down on a per transaction basis with division » Because the division result is meaningless as it just reflects how full a block was, not the cost of a transaction. Again: miners expend the same amount o
559.
by mrb 6y ago
« Can someone explain how transactions are not insanely cost prohibitive » Because the comments above yours are misleading. Transactions don't consume mining energy. Miners expend the same amount of energy regardless if they are valida
560.
by mrb 6y ago
The point is about making a comparison. When Bitcoin's energy consumption is equaled to that of a single dam, it just doesn't seem that impressive.
561.
by mrb 6y ago
That is still a single dam. A whole country could be powered by a single dam.
562.
by mrb 6y ago
Please realize that Argentina uses slightly more energy than a single hydroelectric power station like the Itaipu Dam (103 TWh/year). A single dam. So, really the comparison is more a testament of how little electricity Argentina uses.
563.
by mrb 6y ago
That sounds very impressive, until you realize that Argentina uses slightly more energy than a single hydroelectric power station like the Itaipu Dam (103 TWh/year). So comparing Bitcoin to Argentina really is more a testament how l
564.
by mrb 6y ago
« a single Bitcoin transaction consumes 165kWh » This needs to be repeated in every HN thread about Bitcoin: no, transactions don't consume energy. The proof-of-work is completely independent of the number of transactions. A block coul
565.
by mrb 6y ago
« it's going to go away when » I've been hearing that for 10 years. From a purely compliance/surveillance viewpoint, government authorities tend to prefer Bitcoin over cash, because they can monitor and run all sorts of analy
566.
by mrb 6y ago
Not exactly. Verification is needed because money transfers can be reversed (fraudulently, or legitimately in response to fraud), so remittance companies need to be reasonably sure to reduce fraud risk to an acceptable level. However with B
567.
by mrb 6y ago
Cash-to-cash in under an hour would definitely be possible but only if I had immediate access to a Bitcoin ATM (I would "withdraw" directly to the recipient, by giving my ATM the recipient's ATM's deposit address)
568.
by mrb 6y ago
Not true. Bitcoin ATMs allow this.
569.
by mrb 6y ago
I said "large" damn, not an average dam. But fair enough—I should have said "around as much as the largest dam".
570.
by mrb 6y ago
No. Recipient was unbanked, under severe financial hardship.

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