Bitcoin surges past $100k for first time
bbc.co.uk11 years ago I sold 100 BTC, and made pretty good money.
With that said, the more I think about BTC, the less sense it makes to me. Exceedingly few people actually use it for anything practical. The “store of value” functionality has completely eclipsed the practical use that Bitcoin maxis were preaching back then.
Since 2016-2017, it seems like people have bought it for the sole purpose of seeing someone else pay more for it.
It will never become some “universal” currency that overtakes national fiats. Right now it seems like people are only hoping for governments to hoard up BTC, to moon the price and provide exit liquidity for early holders - which IMO would be reckless spending.
It is the ultimate make-believe asset.
Edit: also, when I ran the numbers, I figured a realistic max value for 1 BTC would be 500k-1M. So the big money has been made, imo.
> The “store of value” functionality has completely eclipsed the practical use that Bitcoin maxis were preaching back then.
Right, but that use case could be enough to see the price continue to increase. Gold is also generally used as a store of value. The average person hasn't been going into a store using gold to buy things in the US in more than 100 years. But gold's market cap (~ $17T) is still greater than Bitcoin (~$2T). So, if Bitcoin is a better store of value than gold (debatable), then the price still has plenty of room to grow.
Big B Bitcoin as it exists today, you're 100% right. The fire burned too hot. But little b bitcoin, peer to peer electronic cash, that has a place in the world and it will do just fine given time. It's something we desperately need in an age of global networking. Bitcoin isn't it, and I don't see a ton of utility for web3 or whatever, but there are projects slowly chipping away making progress to actual internet money that can be used widely without unreasonable expense.
Help me seeing that way. Good references?
Few people use it for trade because few people accept it. Right now there are more people campaigning to have bitcoin not be used than there are campaigning to use it.
Perhaps that will change one day, perhaps it won't. Unless the price keeps going up greater than 20% per year perpetually(no exponential growth is perpetual) the electricity use will eventually drop. The people who are angry about the idea of it will eventually not care enough to be angry.
>* I figured a realistic max value for 1 BTC would be 500k-1M. So the big money has been made, imo.*
I agree that the big money has been made. If it did actually replace money it might be worth a few million. That's not going to happen anytime soon though, even if things went well for bitcoin it would take decades more to reach that point. It's a high risk investment with a possible yield of 10x to 100x in a timeframe that you could probably get a better return from something far more secure.
Sure you could make heaps buying and selling at just the right time, but trading on volatility can be done in any market, and usually results in people losing all their money to the inside traders.
> the less sense it makes to me
All sorts of thugs use bitcoin. 14 years ago it was gamblers and drug users. Now it is for people who want to steal billions.
Like when London real estate was used by Russian oligarchy 20 years ago.
Value is there, it is just sad state of things.
I just see it as a legal way to hedge your position with organized crime.
Cope
Discussion (134 points, 15 hours ago, 314 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42324263
Bitcoin Cash is what I wanted Bitcoin to become... cheap transactions, inclusive to all at the on chain layer. Unfortunately, that fork did not gain majority following.
No competent government should be allowing the continued use of Bitcoin. Proof of Work is climate Arson, its burning tremendous amounts of energy for the shittiest database you could imagine at a time when we desperately need to reduce Carbon emissions.
How much warmer do you think the world would be from running Bitcoin for 100 years?
Assuming that Bitcoin is still 100k per coin in 100 years time, a ludicrous suggestion considering its history, we'd have roughly 0.0125 degrees warming, its generating around 98 megatons of CO2 emissions at the moment.
Are you going to reply pretending that isn't a big deal?
How did you come to that figure? I'm honestly curious on some of the required factors, I have spent a considerable amount of time trying to find a good electricity generation to temperature rise formula. I think there are currently better estimates on CO2 equivalent emissions on temperature rise than there are on future electricity generation producing CO2 equivalents.
The mining reward currently dictates how much one can spend on electricity and still turn a profit. The mining reward halves every 4 years. The total usage over time woul be the area under the curve. If the price were 100k in 100 years time, the bulk of the electricy used mining would probably already have been spent.
To maintain its generation rate it would have to double in value every 4 years, forever, that comes to about a 20% rise on average per year.
0.0125 is hard to imagine as a big warming, however it becomes part of an overall contribution to global warming. Everything we do contributes in some fashion to warming (or occasionally cooling). Everyone has their own opinion on the value of things as well.
Some people believe that Bitcoin will be transformational to the world economy, some people feel like it is worthless. Who are we to decide if 0.0125 degrees is an acceptable cost to pay or not? Feeling that you are right and others are wrong cannot be a basis for dictating the behaviour of others.
The best we can do is provide the most accurate data we can so that the costs are clear for people to make their own value judgements.
If you believe bitcoin is, as they say, going to the moon, the answer to the energy cost is obvious. Buy bitcoin and sell at the top and use the money to build solar plants, carbon credits, environmental repair etc. Proponents of bitcoin believe that this will happen anyway as a product of the global economic benefit of bitcoin.
I am more skeptical of the future price, and of the future economical benefit. Nevertheless I still don't think it is my place to say they can't try and make the world a better place even if I don't think it will work. Many massively beneficial things came from endeavours that others thought were futile before those things occurred. If we had nomalised cancelling things that others didn't believe in, we would be much worse off now. We certainly wouldn't have most of the infrastructure that supports this platform to communicate on