HN user
No it isn't. It has two use cases, a stablecoin platform and a platform for token scams. It's losing market share all the time to other rubbish like Solana. Why would anyone in their right mind hold chuck-e-cheese arcade token Ethereum as actual money. Hint: they won't.
You think they're going to approve an ETF for a premined unregistered security scam? Ethereum is to Bitcoin as dogshit is to gold.
"How do I ensure I don't make any money from a flood of money pouring into an absolutely scarce digital asset"
I'm sure your performative nocoinering will feel really good in a year when you're wrong yet again.
You think that all the Bitcoin believers who buy relentlessly each week without question will suddenlly stop if they can now get 3x as much BTC for their fiat? Oh my sweet summer child...
It can be if you want it to be https://graduallythensuddenly.xyz/pay-me-in-bitcoin-theory/
Good, I hope they dump it suddenly and without warning.
Aww do you? :'(
A record amount of BTC not moved on chain for the long term has reached all time highs, "wash trading" or not, that can't be faked, it's being held as it's primary value proposition, a store of value.
I can't believe the Tether FUD is still widespread after all these years, all completely unproven and wrong time and time again.
If the USG stopped to think for just a second maybe they'd ask themselves why they'd sell absolute digital scarcity for something they can just print out of thin air for themselves.
I'm not talking about "crypto", I'm talking about Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not free to send or trade. The vast majority of Bitcoin is held by long term holders and hasn't moved on chain in years. Saving in hard money is the primary use case. Hashing secures those Bitcon from being reversed out of your wallet right back to the very first block.
No it isn't.
The market cap of Bitcoin is hundreds of billions, and estimates put the number of people owning Bitcoin in the hundreds of millions. You can find the data yourself.
Yeah, and by doing so they got rid of 99.99% of their security and censorship resistance. PoS is Fiat 2.0. It's not worth mentioning in the same breath as Bitcoin, not that it ever was.
Cool. Buying more Bitcoin.
You've said a lot without making any real points there.
How does allowing people to send small tipping amounts of Bitcoin for fun from their hot wallet mean "bad actors ruining things for the rest of us"?
Do you seriously believe, that if Bitcoin becomes the global currency, that crime won't skyrocket due to people getting robbed relentlessly? You just need the PK dawg, and it's very easy to tell if you were told the truth - access to the wallet opens up.
And if people have geographically distributed multi-sig cold storage for the bulk of their wealth? Will they be getting "robbed relentlessly"? If you follow best practice and take self custody seriously you'll be fine so no I don't seriously believe people would be robbed relentlessly.
So I'll ask you too, what's your problem with other people sending small amounts of money P2P in a fun way to each other in a currency they prefer? Just don't use it if you don't like it.
Bitcoiners have a sad, yet fascinating trend to talk about nothing but Bitcoin. Take a look at your comment history.
Again, what's your point? I'm stirred to reply to fiat brained financial authoritarianism, that's what I find weird and sad.
Anything else you want banned just because you don't like it authoritarian? If you don't like it just don't use it. You're financially privileged, just stick to your transactions your bank let you do and let other people do what they want.
Why does sending Bitcoin peer to peer within an app offend you so much? Are there any other areas where you are this authoritarian?
Except he compares Bitcoin's irreversable final settlement transactions per seconds metric to Visa's tps which is more akin to the lightning network. Apples to Oranges.
Yep, Stephen Diehl is not somebody to be taken seriously
Bitcoin has grown to the size it has by people voluntarily opting in. And it continues to grow. What you desribe is happening.
Yes it is. And yes it will.
PoW is the only way to secure a decentralised ledger. It's literally the magic that makes it valuable as money. Thank God it'll never move away from Proof-of-Work.
Bitcoin
"ANY consumption is bad" You really aren't getting this are you. Energy in place A can't be magically transported to place B where it's needed for what you bless as acceptable usage. Bicoin miners aren't using grid energy. They're using energy that CAN'T be connected to a grid. Bitcoin is a fantastic use of energy regardless, just because YOU don't need to use it or think so doesn't make that the case.
Bitcoin mining secures hundreds of billions of value for hundreds of millions of people going back to the very first transaction. It produces security, a forcefield around a financial system, and the miners get paid to do that.
Either the money is permissionless or it isn't. If everyone can use it that means people you don't like can too. Like the internet. If I can send packet to my friend with a message then so can a terrorist.
Not a good or desirable one in your opinion. It is absolutely good and desirable in my opinion to have neutral money that can be used by anybody but controlled by nobody. The US dollar is secured by military force which has a staggering energy footprint. Bitcoin finally settled roughly the same amount as Fedwire last year and uses exactly as much energy as it needs to.
Bitcoin isn't going away. More people are putting their trust in it as their monetary standard every day, not less. Bitcoin, the asset and network are neutral. Scams on top of it, shitcoin affinity scams, or whatever "oodles of other great reasons" don't change that. The majority of Bitcoin mining is already renewable, it already incentivises renewables this isn't a hypothetical future.
If somebody proposed a law tomorrow that bans coal plants being reopened to mine Bitcoin I wouldn't be against it, and Bitcoin would carry on happily regardless.
BUt you're then getting into the dangerous territory of telling people what and what isn't an acceptable use of compute power. Bitcoin is a valid and useful consumer of energy.
Privacy on the base layer means the supply isn't auditable. Lightning network has sender privacy and improvements are being made to receiver privacy. I did smart contracts stuff on Rootstock yesterday. I don't need my base layer doing that thanks. I just need it to be money.
And that's only a problem if those energy sources are fossil fuels. Demand for renewables is a fantastic thing. Bitcoin is a pioneer species, it will use that energy when there's literally no other economically viable use.
"it takes away power from a grid that is then replaced by non-renewable energy."
This idea/delusion that energy that is used for mining should and could have been used for something else. It's just not the case.
A monetary unit that can't be debased running on an open, permissionless financial network anybody can use is the use-case. The big and only use case. Research suggests less than 1% of "crypto" usage is for criminal activity. Energy isn't fungible and it isn't wasted if it's securing hundreds of billions of value for hundreds of millions of people.
So maybe you shouldn't send something to everyone you know if it isn't true.
Bitcoin is money, digital scarcity only needed to be invented once. Shitcoins are scams. LN is growing fast on a solid hard money layer 1 foundation.