
All You Need to Know About Bitcoin's Rise, from $0.01 to $11,000 - qu4ntumturk
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-01/understanding-bitcoin-s-rise-0-01-to-11-000-quicktake-q-a
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erikb
Many people discuss how much one could buy from the bitcoins today that where
used for the first pizza purchase. Few people consider though, that today's
value of a bitcoin might not exist without that order.

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jstanley
Yep. The most astonishing thing to me about the price of Bitcoin isn't that it
went from $1000 to $11000 this year, it's that it ever made it above $0 in the
first place!

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backtoyoujim
> , a Nobel laureate in economics, said recently that bitcoin "ought to be
> outlawed” because it’s designed to evade regulation and "doesn’t serve any
> socially useful function."

A world where if something is not required it is forbidden is not a world that
I want any part of Nobel winner or otherwise.

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bitxbitxbitcoin
The Nobel prize in Economics isn't a real Alfred Nobel prize as set aside in
his 1985 will, either... So you're not the only one :).

~~~
emodendroket
For anyone who cares to follow up here's a good article about it:
[https://www.alternet.org/economy/there-no-nobel-prize-
econom...](https://www.alternet.org/economy/there-no-nobel-prize-economics)

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eqmvii
Something I rarely see discussed is the gender breakdown of bitcoin ownership.

I'd be surprised if it wasn't something like 90%+ men mining, trading, and
owning bitcoin. If bitcoin really takes over the world, it's going to look
like a bunch of dudes printed themselves a fortune and then convinced the rest
of the world to buy it from them.

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influx
What do you see as the barriers for women to participate in bitcoin?

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to_bpr
>What do you see as the barriers for women to participate in bitcoin?

Why do you want to have a discussion involving logic when all I want to do is
signal my virtues?

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dang
It's against HN's rules to use this site primarily for political or
ideological battle. We ban accounts that do that, so please stop doing that.
Flamebait, like the comment you posted here, is particularly against the
rules.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

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NiklasMort
"Bitcoin’s current estimated annual electricity consumption stands at 29.05
Terawatt hours"

I just leave that here...

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bitxbitxbitcoin
Do you know what the estimated annual electricity consumption of VISA as a
corporation is? What about the Treasury portion of the US government, let
alone all the other parts.

I'll just leave that there :).

~~~
lawn
You could also compare it to how much Google consume.

And you should realize the mining electricity usage is in no way related to
scaling Bitcoin.

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NiklasMort
"Google’s many data centers around the world burn through 260 million watts"
way less, besides Google's DC are rather modern and often are rather
environmental friendly. Bitcoin on the other hand is mostly mined in China
where the energy comes largely from fossil fuels

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StavrosK
I am really sad that Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency that ever managed to
touch "mainstream" (it's on Steam, it has Stripe support, etc) and we fucked
it up so hard that you need a $4 fee _just to pay for one thing with it_. I
was really hoping it would catch on as a medium of exchange, because there's
value in being able to pay for things quickly, cheaply and without giving
people a bunch of info, but nope. Digital tulips.

~~~
tr4cefl0w
Like many, you’re not aware that the Lightning Network is on its way and will
solve most of these issues.

Moreover, transactions between Segwit-compatible wallets is pretty fast and
cheap.

I’m kind of tired to hear people complain about the fees while all they have
to do is use a different wallet that supports Segwit.

Edit: Ah, the downvotes. I was expecting them.

~~~
Joeboy
Maybe I don't fully understand it but from what I've gathered, the Lightning
Network is a plan to enable people to do transactions outside of the main
blockchain and eventually sync them back. It seems to get touted as a magical
plan to solve Bitcoin's scaling problems, but unless I'm missing something
(which tbf is very possible) it seems more like a plan for bitcoin to abrogate
its primary original purpose of handling end-user transactions.

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
Lightning Network seems to me to be a hybrid solution that uses the best of
both worlds: the security and stability of the main block chain for the
overall holding and occasional transfer of large amounts of wealth between
large organizations, while having offchain networks to experiment with
different solutions for handling lots of small transactions quickly, while
address still bring compatible with the main block chain.

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almost_usual
Interesting, are individuals factoring in the possible existence of quantum
computers in the future? If Bitcoin does become a trillion dollar space I’d
feel uncomfortable knowing there are technical limitations already in place.

Also, what does the end of Bitcoin generation look like? If Bitcoin is truly
deflationary why would anyone trade it? The interesting thing about inflation
is it requires investment to ensure your money doesn’t lose value over time.
Would Bitcoin be incentivizing a market where growth is extremely limited due
to greed?

Not taking any sides, trying to understand the long term reprucussions of a
substantial Bitcoin market.

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yolobey
I got an international payment recently via bitcoin and the fee was under £2
on the sender side. If it had gone through my bank It would've costed me £7 to
receive and way more on the other end to send.

So I do get the criticism about high fees when paying for a coffee, but maybe
that's not the ideal use case for bitcoin. It could've been cheaper with
another cryptocurrency but it's a tolerable enough percentage at the moment
compared to another widely used solution for international transfers.

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jimmies
I haven't been understanding bitcoin for the longest time: It has been more
than five years since I first heard about it. I tried to look it up, I can
never quite get the overall picture, why it works the way it is.

I finally understood the bitcoin mechanism and I can explain the original
paper well just two days ago. I feel dumb reading this paper. Intellectually,
I think it's a hallmark of many great inventions in the 20th and 21st century:
public-key cryptography (to verify transactions), micro economics - game
theory (to incentive people to mine), hashing (bounty), macro economics (to
combat inflation), distributed computing synchronization (to trust the system
while not trusting any single computer), statistics (to combat fake chains).
Only when one has all the pieces of the puzzle together then the whole thing
is possible to conceive.

But I feel a sense of achievement when I finally figured the whole thing by
myself. If you don't understand bitcoin, I think you should understand bitcoin
as a hacker, even you don't need to use it or intend to store money in it.

I only own a small fraction of a coin, I'm not a risk taker. I'm not going to
be rich from bitcoins, I have no reason to shill it with memes. It's unlike
anything you have encountered before, notably that the only reason why bitcoin
is worth money, is because we are better off with it. I do believe the world
is a better place when everyone agrees that bitcoin has values and can be
traded, because that means many people can buy their own "insurance" should
wars happen, which they do. Your money might turn into paper, you might get
killed if you smuggle cows, gold, and diamond when you're running for life,
but no one can know if you have bitcoins.

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DenisM
Why wouldn’t those same people running for their lives store their money in a
numbered bank account? If they need to hide from their own government they
could use banks of one of the major players: US, EU, China, Russia. Whomever
is the least friendly with your oppressor.

~~~
jimmies
Store how? I was from a country that the money inflated 25% over a year, and
the government made it extremely hard to send the money abroad.

In the US, it's not possible to open a bank account without a SSN. How do you
get an SSN if you don't work in the US?

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Kiro
Why was this thread nuked from the front page? It was like #2 when I checked
and now a few minutes later it's gone.

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jstanley
Wow, another obnoxious self-playing video in the corner. No thanks.

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dreamdu5t
Bitcoin is what’s wrong with our society: An obsession with money over health,
community, housing, food, etc. Bitcoin epitomizes our embrace of the new
capitalist dystopia.

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Top19
I’ve also seen this connected with the rise of individualism that’s been going
on since the early 80’s.

Allegedly though, according to the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr, societies
tend to move in 40 year periods of either community or individualism. Assuming
individualism started in 1980, this would have it end in 2020.

These two books sum it up well:

The Cycles of American History
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/0395957931/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_hYSi...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0395957931/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_hYSiAbHA3RN8Q)

The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393313719/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_CXSi...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393313719/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_CXSiAbCKES8Z9)

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lurcio
Bloomberg? lol

Blockchain may be different. Deviousness is not:
[https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/spoiler-alert-the-
institution...](https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/spoiler-alert-the-institution-
buying-tethers-is-bitfinex-themselves-f56af29ce60c)

