Comment by tboyd47 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tboyd47 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

It's important for people to read the actual press release: https://mstr.cd/3tLaPZM There's good info here which will be new info to many.

Why did they do this? It turns out that about a third of Nigerians report using or holding cryptocurrency (!). https://www.statista.com/chart/18345/crypto-currency-adoptio... Second place are Vietnam and the Phillipines. For all, the #1 reason was for remittances.

Haven't we all had it drilled into our heads by CNBC and the likes that crypto was nothing but a big speculative bubble? Woops, I guess that was a big lie.

> Users will also benefit from Wirex’s Cryptoback™ rewards program, which automatically gives customers up to 1.5% back in Bitcoin for every purchase made in-store.

It does appear that they will support transfers to external wallets (!), contrary to what has been claimed elsewhere in this thread -> https://wirexapp.com/help/article/how-do-i-transfer-cryptocu...

The card is not yet available to US customers, although, apparently it is in the works -> https://news.bitcoin.com/wirex-launching-us-after-receiving-...

Set this chart to "all" and tell me that this price movement is not a bubble. There is no earthly reason for why a "BitCoin" is worth $47,459.66 as of this post.

https://www.coindesk.com/price/bitcoin

Cryptocurrency adoption in 3rd world countries like Nigeria, Vietnam, and the Philippines is not a good thing. It's actually really sad, because it means they cannot rely on or trust their country's currency. Therefore, they are forced to place bets in a volatile and dangerous game to keep their life savings. If Bitcoin or Ethereum or Dogecoin go bust, they will still lose everything, because there is no trust, recourse, or regulation tolerated in a decentralized system. Well, not much worse than their home country's currency, I guess.

> Set this chart to "all" and tell me that this price movement is not a bubble

It's a new asset class, of course it's going to see huge gains as it picks up adoption and of course if you zoom all the way out it'll look like a bubble. The bubble goes bust every few years and comes back stronger. That's a healthy market.

> It's actually really sad, because it means they cannot rely on or trust their country's currency.

That's a huge benefit and reason why bitcoin will become popular. It's a portable store of value outside the control of any government. It doesn't have the same issues as the US dollar for example where other countries need to be concerned about how not only their country is performing, but also the US since their reserves are in USD.

This is also why it's gaining popularity around the world. Trust in governments is rapidly decreasing and the world as a whole is destabilizing due to polarization, poverty/wealth gaps, and rising environmental concerns.

> there is no trust

That's the point. It's trustless. You don't need to worry about it.

I can say the same things about artwork or gold.

To me these things are totally useless, paint on a canvas (when I could just look at a photo of the same thing) and a shiny piece of metal, no utility whatsoever, who cares?

Well the value doesn't come from one person's assertion of value, it's supply and demand. Apparently enough people like paint on a canvas and shiny metal for their own reasons.

Paint on a canvas doesn't waste the same amount of electricity as the country of Argentina.

That's a negative externality which doesn't pertain to how valid the current valuation is, which is the subject I was addressing.

Externalities by definition don't feature into the price, although perhaps they do only to a very small extent in the case of BTC because of political/regulation risks leading to a risk premium effect.

Sorry, but in case you don't have much intuition, let me fill you in. People value gold and artwork because it is beautiful and you can have it for yourself. Gold also has several utilitarian uses. Now compare these things to a digital token. Can I frame and admire a digital token? Can I use it for anything? Do I even understand what it is or how it works most of the time? No.

So it therefore has no value for me. Millions of people like me have the same basic intuition. Others, like you, are driven by ideology and see digital tokens as something nice and valuable that can be "kept", for ideological reasons. This value has no basis in anything physical like looks or usefulness, and has no battle-tested authority telling you it is responsible for making it useful.

Decentralization doesn't count, because as I've already said many times there is no trust or recourse in a decentralized system with random people. So you haven't given me a reason for why a "Bitcoin" should be worth $40k+. That's why I say its sad that authorities in other countries are so unreliable that people have to buy into this disreputable game to stay afloat.

Yes you can frame and admire a digital token, or rather the address holding the funds.

Gold's value has nothing to do with its utility.

I don't get your people's arguments. You keep repeating "a digital asset can't have real value" when the last 10 years have proven you wrong. You fool!

So you pay $40k+ for bitcoin just so you can frame some numbers and letters and say you paid $40k+ for those numbers and letters?

Gold's value comes from the fact that it doesn't dull or dim over time, and has many uses in the electronics and jewelry industries. If you have the resources to get gold and own it, that is a clear sign of status and value.

Can't say the same with crypto for any counts. All of crypto's value comes from speculation. Over the last 10 years, I've seen the same tired drum beat, that 'crypto is valuable because of decentralization, supply regulation, and censorship resistance' but these are so vapid and completely different from reality and what people actually need. There is no convenience, no government backing, and no trust. So the only people using these fake tokens are disreputables and hedge funds/speculators looking to exploit and get fun returns.

No, Gold value comes from the fact that we all agreed that it should have a value, and it's scarce. Same for Bitcoin.

And yes you can parade the fact that you own a bitcoin address, this is after all probably the only reason most people know about Craig S. Wright

> There is no convenience, no government backing, and no trust

convenience is in stablecoins, government backing is in CBDC, trust is anchored at the foundation of any cryptocurrency project...

Let me put it this way: as long as people will find ways to do things with Bitcoin (remittances, darkmarket, etc.) that they couldn't do with Gold or USD or whatever, then it'll have value. 40k of value? I don't know, but it will still have value.

A little bit of value. But as a decentralized utopian panacea? Nope. If I was given the choice between a Bitcoin and a bar of gold, I'd definitely take the bar of gold.

Do you know what is actually worth more NOW? Because what matters is really what is worth more NOW.

I can look at artwork on my computer for free, or print out a high resolution image that's indistinguishable for a few dollars. Yet people pay a fortune for the "real thing", even though their eye doesn't know the difference.

Tell me again how this is in any way rational or logical? It's not, you've just bought into the narrative that artwork has legitimate value but haven't bought into the narrative that BTC has legitimate value.

You are trying to push your subjective opinion of value as an assertion. Just because you derive utility from original art but not bitcoin doesn't mean there's value in the former and not the latter. Value is assigned by supply and demand, not by an authoritative top-down council composed of u/nexthash.

It may well be the case that the market's opinion of BTC's value changes and the price drops to near nothing. But then again maybe people will wake up to the fact that an original artwork is indistinguishable from a photo, and the art market collapses too :-)

I pay my Spanish teacher in Latin America using crypto. Can't do that using gold, or paintings.

Blockchain is a global consensus network. The consensus is on a data structure's definition, rules and it's actual data.

They can, and are, holding stablecoins [1]

1. https://businessday.ng/sponsored/article/how-nigerians-are-u...

> Stablecoins enjoy a one-to-one ratio. For Nigerians, this means stablecoin prices are pegged to a certain ratio with the U.S. dollar.

I'm new to stablecoins and trying to understand the situation. Is this not the same thing Brazil did with the URV [0] -- that is, replacing their ruined state currency with a temporary one pegged to the USD -- only coming from the private sector instead of the government?

> Other benefits of buying into stablecoins include: (snip) ...has no central authority which could breach payment... (snip)

How is it possible to "peg" one currency to another without a centralized issuing body? Bitcoins can be mined by anyone with enough computing power, and stability is only achieved via an engineered stalemate between miners, node operators, and exchanges. How do these "stablecoins" achieve their stability without controlling issuance of coins at the top level?

My understanding is that altcoins derive their value from their fungibility with Bitcoin; that's why when Bitcoin tanks, it brings the entire ecosystem down with it. How are these stablecoins any different? If Bitcoin's value fell by 80% tomorrow, bringing down Ethereum, LTC, and Doge, what keeps these stablecoins' value from falling down with it?

---

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidade_real_de_valor

There are multiple ways to achieve stablecoins.

- centralized issuing authority backs the coins with dollars, here although the trust is the same as in a central authority, for people in Nigeria and Brazil, its asymmetric compared to people in the US. For Americans, a central authority is a central authority. For Nigerians, a central authority in US (or Carribean etc) is vastly different from a central authority in Nigeria. Example: USDC, USDT, PAX

- Seigniorage-style stablecoins, these coins try to algorithmically issue or reduce the total coins to keep the price stable. This seems to have never worked. Most stablecoins in this design failed.

- collateralized stablecoins - These stablecoins try to hold a certain amount of collateral in 'unstable' currency (like ETH/BAT etc) and try to maintain that collateral. If the price of the stablecoin moves away from $1, then it creates profit opportunities for people to benefit from it and help bring the price down. For example: Dai, Havven. These are experimental but seems to be working well.

> Set this chart to "all" and tell me that this price movement is not a bubble.

If all that was necessary to reliably predict a price was looking at a chart, we would all live in a very different world.

Oh and BTW, phrase `why a "BitCoin"` makes it very clear that you are not familiar with this field and have done very little research.

Demand grows, but the bitcoin supply is limited. Price increases. Also, after each halving the bitcoin miner payout gets cut in half, so price has to increase for the network to stay alive.

BTC follows the stock-to-flow model pretty accurately https://www.lookintobitcoin.com/charts/stock-to-flow-model/

> Therefore, they are forced to place bets in a volatile and dangerous game to keep their life savings

Is there any evidence that people in these countries are rushing to transfer their cash into Bitcoin? Not just a couple people that some news reporter found, but actual statistics?

Realistically, if these people have access to out-of-country transfers they're going to switch to USD, not transfer to a Bitcoin exchange and switch to digital money that they can't actually use for any transactions.

On the other hand, Bitcoin would be a very attractive vehicle for oppressive governments to embezzle funds out of their country at scale, as they control the strings to the banks and the regulations. Their only concern is not getting caught or seeing their money confiscated.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com