• oakey66@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    101
    arrow-down
    12
    ·
    8 months ago

    This is institutional investors driving up price and then pulling out. Bitcoin is propped up by absolutely nothing other than betting. It has no use outside holding a value. Someone will be a bag holder. It’s just a matter of time.

    • Syn_Attck@lemmy.today
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      19
      arrow-down
      56
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      It has no use outside holding a value.

      So… same as fiat then, ey?

      I begrudgingly hold BTC, waiting for the halving in 38 days when all my coins double.

      At least Monero (which is actually private like cash - sender, receiver, and amount aren’t known to anyone viewing the blockchain) has a valuable function.

      • Tachikoma741@lemmy.today
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        15
        arrow-down
        10
        ·
        edit-2
        8 months ago

        I can’t wait to see companies like Visa and Mastercard become obsolete. I think it will really help out my aunt’s family business by cutting crazy high transaction fees she has to pay as a vendor.

          • Null User Object@programming.dev
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            9
            arrow-down
            12
            ·
            8 months ago

            That’s layer 1. Read up on layer 2 options. Lightning Network is the best current example, but there are others and will be more. That’s where most of the innovation is happening now. The media never talks about it because it’s necessarily more technical and they think their readers/viewers are all idiots, so why bother.

          • Syn_Attck@lemmy.today
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            10
            ·
            edit-2
            8 months ago

            Monero (which is actually private like cash - sender, receiver, and amount aren’t known to anyone viewing the blockchain) has transaction fees of a penny or two. It works by mixing every real transaction with 16 decoy transactions. Currently there are supposedly ways to track a small percentage of transactions but it’s so secretive that only approved western government organizations are allowed access, but it doesn’t work well and it only gives a statistical probability. And it’s one of the wider used currencies current at $145 per coin.

            The government hates not being able to track you.

            Also BTC fees do suck but they vary. Most days they’re around $1-$1.50 which isn’t that far off from the $.50 charged (to businesses) by credit card processors.

    • XIIIesq@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      25
      arrow-down
      64
      ·
      8 months ago

      That’s a paraphrase of what they said in 2010 mate.

      Thanks to people like you I’m not a bitcoin millionaire.

  • Lavitz@lemmings.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    50
    arrow-down
    10
    ·
    8 months ago

    It’s estimated that Bitcoin uses the same amount of energy as the entire Internet. Just to put that in perspective that’s roughly 2% of all the energy generated by America every year.

    America produces roughly 14,000,000,000,000 pounds of greenhouse gases in a year and 2% of that is 280,000,000,000 pounds…

    • maynarkh@feddit.nl
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      20
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      8 months ago

      I did some maths back on another thread here: https://feddit.nl/comment/6632730

      The internet is around 40 times bigger than crypto as a whole. Feel free to check it and tell me if I missed the mark.

      However, Buttcoin still eats a disgusting amount of electricity, being 2.5% of the whole internet. All the while, its only utility has so far been to create a completely unregulated commodity market that is unsurprisingly dominated by private equity doing pump and dumps.

      The interesting thing someone brought up in that discussion though is that half of all consumer internet traffic is ads. Which is scary, and I don’t know (or rather do exactly know) why we don’t talk about that.

    • capital@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      8 months ago

      It’s estimated that Bitcoin uses the same amount of energy as the entire Internet.

      I checked out of the bitcoin hype years ago but is there a source for this? On it’s face, it sounds outlandish.

      • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        8 months ago

        It’s not outlandish if you know that mining Bitcoin basically means to waste electricity. The more electricity you use, the more Bitcoin you mine.

        Bitcoin mining consists one brute forcing the inverse of a function that doesn’t have an inverse. You just try every number and if you’re lucky you get paid.

        • capital@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          8 months ago

          I get all that but it’s that compared to all of the infrastructure, worldwide, installed over decades connecting everyone and everything.

          I’m not saying it’s wrong but I’d like to see a source on it.

      • Lavitz@lemmings.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        8 months ago

        Without transportation and freight you could not generate the energy. You are taking the steps to create energy and somehow trying to create a disconnect. This feels very disingenuous.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        26
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        8 months ago

        Weird, my landlord only takes fiat. So does my grocer. And in a funny coincidence I had to pay fiat to my government this year or face legal consequences. But at no point has anything I’ve wanted required me to use a highly volatile or deflationary cryptocurrency such as bitcoin. Oh well I guess I might get in trouble tonight when I go out with my wife and get told they don’t take fiat because it’s dead.

        • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          18
          ·
          8 months ago

          Your landlord doesn’t accept Pesos so I guess that’s not real money either

          Bitcoin briefly rises to record high over $70,000

          • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            7
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            8 months ago

            In my country they aren’t. They’re foreign currency. I get mad if someone slips me them instead of using our currency.

            And yes it’s irrelevant how much a bitcoin is worth to its use as a currency. Currency and investment vehicles are actually conflicting concepts. I don’t want to use my mutual fund to pay taxes. It’s supposed to get added to consistently for a long time then removed from. Currency is for transactions. Bitcoin is bad at transactions.

            • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              8
              ·
              8 months ago

              I agree that bitcoin is currently not good for transactions. There is the lightning network and other cryptos, but Bitcoin is more of a staple name than seemingly the real solution.

    • Death_Equity@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      18
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      9 months ago

      People not selling since before the crash. There will be a fall of about 10% from people wanting to get out after being scared by the last crash, then it will rebound and climb as FOMO sets in with the confidence climb after the dip.

      • Today@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        arrow-down
        6
        ·
        8 months ago

        I bought $276 on the cash app for fun. It’s now worth $1200. Should i cash it out or wait? I really have no idea. I feel bad that I’m part of a super weird system of fake money, but I’m also happy to see an extra $k.

        • honey_im_meat_grinding@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          22
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          8 months ago

          Ask yourself this: has Bitcoin had - or is it trending towards - a net positive impact on our world? In other words, is it worth investing in long term? If it isn’t you should treat it as a short term investment and get out as soon as you’ve made a profit - and you’ve literally 4x’d your investment. The fact that we’re talking about the price in c/News is already a bad bubble sign and reminiscent of all the other times we’ve had crypto bubbles.

        • Xhieron@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          8 months ago

          Similar boat here, and I literally just cashed mine out after seeing this headline. Could I have made more? Probably, but there’s no universe in which my few hundred dollars is going to turn into a million. What’s much more likely is that I would forget about it for another year.

        • Death_Equity@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          4
          ·
          8 months ago

          You have made back your investment plus some. Also you don’t actually own any Bitcoin through CashApp, they sell fictitious potential value based on nothing. Take the cash minus the tax and invest your initial investment via actual ownership via a private wallet if you want to see what Bitcoin can be. Then, you are in profit and the worst case you lose money that doesn’t matter.

          Crypto is no different than stock investment, only invest what you are willing to lose and cash out when you are satisfied.

          I can’t give you legal financial advice, but my personal opinion is that Bitcoin still has value to gain and investing money of no consequence has a potential to be worthwhile beyond what investment in the S&P offers, and likey what realestate offers.