$105B Electronics Giant Sony to Launch New Bitcoin Exchange | Hacker News Reader

$105B Electronics Giant Sony to Launch New Bitcoin Exchange

bitcoinmagazine.com

43 pointsaustinallegro44 comments

And Sony's decline continues. This move reeks of desperation.

I used to buy a lot of Sony products. Lately. Zilch. I know they still make some movies and PS5. But, man, they used to be so much bigger than that.

They make good headphones too. I think that's the only Sony hardware in my house.

The only Sony product left in my house. The iPod/iPhone made the Walkman obsolete, and that was way back then. I had a PS3, but only because it was the best Blu-ray player on the market that also just happened to play a few games (as used in my house). After that, nothing. Not even a cinema camera any more either. Sony is the ghost in the shell at this point.

I bought a Sony TV a couple days ago. It’s just a Samsung panel identical to a current Samsung TV but placed into Sony innards. Which means no stupid terrible Samsung software! That’s really why I chose it. So seeing this comment tree points out the irony that the value of Sony for me was that it’s essentially repackaging someone else’s known-good product.

Japan is utterly desperate. They are selling out the whole country to tourists, investment funds, and whomever has a penny to spare. The political class is going for broke, grasping at every penny they can now, before the mountain of debt comes crashing down, or the population has enough of hidden immigration, inflation, and tourists driving go-carts on the streets of Ginza.

While that seems to be a bit of a dim characterization of the place, who isn't trying to do that?

Seems like we are in the last decade or two of trying an accounting trick possible to ignore the grim reality of growth based economics. Cannot go on forever.

Their stock valuation and chart is looking strong over the past decade. Is Japan playing with their currency valuation that much that it's making failing companies look like rockstars on the charts?

The Yen is the lowest it's been in a long time so probably not.

Or Hacker News sentiment isn't representative, and the business has performed well.

I'm sure the Sony patent portfolio has been something they've leaned on for some time, but even that has to start running out at some point. They do make a lot of the camera sensors that everyone else uses[0], and they do excel at that. They used to lead in video monitors, but I think even that has slipped below some of the Korean manufactures like LG or Samsung. Do they still make other chips? I'm not sure what all their portfolio contains, but it is definitely thicker than my knee jerk reaction of them would joke. I thought Sony might have had a hand in the blue LED, but I don't see their name any where in the wiki of Shuji Nakamura[1].

[0] https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/sony-aims-for-60-sha...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuji_Nakamura

Sony camera business seems very strong. They’re clearly the leader in mid-range video in their A7 line and are quite commonly discussed in Hollywood blockbuster making-of, I think the recent Top Gun was shot on all Sony hardware. They’re the sensor in iPhone.

"$105B Electronics Giant Sony" is such a bizarre thing to put in a headline.

Everybody knows who Sony is. And their current exact market cap is utterly irrelevant to the article.

Is this some type of subliminal editorial ploy to (falsely) suggest that the exchange would similarly handle hundreds of billions, or something?

Bitcoin price pump when ever they can

In actuality the headline was probably written by AI.

It is a little strange. I had to stop and think if there is a non $105B Electronic Giant.

At last we can declare cryptocurrency truly dead.

$2.3T market cap seems like a lot for a dead thing. Market cap is crude metric for anything, but still.

https://coinmarketcap.com/charts/

What year is it?

Maybe they heard Masayoshi Son's on the lookout for his next big play..

Right? I'm really not sure there has ever been such insane hype around such outdated technology.

The tech for zero mining, zero fee, sub second transfer, and 'quantum resistant' decentralized transfer has been around for like 8 years.

This is like building a whale-oil station next to a solar farm. The fuck you doing Sony?

Bitcoin's strength is censorship-resistance.

In what way do you think BTC has an advantage over any other cryptocurrency in this regard?

Most cryptocurrencies are controlled by a small number of insiders. Bitcoin's high level of decentralization makes this not the case. Although the increasing centralization of mining, mining pools, and mining hardware is becoming a concern.

So you are saying that literally garbage features like Runes and Ordinals were introduced in the codebase by some voting or other democratic decentralized process? Or was it done by some small cartel of people controlling this system?

Those are unfortunate, IMO. But miners would support those because they increase transaction fee revenue. Hopefully they'll get priced-out of the fee marketplace eventually, either by the network getting more legitimate use (moving money instead of creating NFTs) or by people losing interest in NFTs.

The foremost thing about Bitcoin that is censorship-resistant is the ledger itself, which is a boon to anyone interested in tracking transactions.

Yes, it is a public ledger. This ensures that no inflation is occurring (other than the expected decreasing miner subsidy).

It also ensures a rich source of data for those who are interested in punishing publishers of wrongthink (aka "censors"). I'm not sure what inflation has to do with censorship.

Being Sony. Unfortunately, the Sony of the 1960-2000's seems to long gone now. Apart from Playstation and their headphones, they just don't have the mind share or innovative spark any more. And even Playstation is starting to a look a little odd as they have continued to moved exclusives over the PC.

Maybe their movie businesses are still doing well?

when you install the wallet, does it also come with a free rootkit?

Hopefully, the security team for the crypto play isn't the same security team from their studio content:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Sony_Pictures_hack

I don't know if this will be the thing that changes the narrative for Sony but I do know that, historically, Sony have been quite resilient over time.

This exchange always existed so it ain’t like it’s new

Satoshi got bored of retirement.

If the PSN is anything to go by, this is primed to be the next Mt. Gox.

Strokes beard.

...why? I mean I guess the primary reason is to make money but still...why now?

Probably just trying ANYTHING to see what sticks.

It must have been some nft craze they tried to latch onto years ago and finally corporate fatassery moooooves slowly

But that can't really be it either because bitcoin is generally not NFT, that would be ethereum... maybe they somehow got a bunch of the mtgox pay out through many rootkit installations? "bad music consumer! we are taking your bitcoin as punishment!"

Wow, congrats Sony!

I watch videos of a 50 year old Japanese man who thinks his life is meaningless because his financial situation dictates he will have to work around 30 more years to pay off his debts.

Government debt steals from future generations. Inflation, Quantitative Easing etc. steals the value of money from everyone. Bitcoin is the one money Government can't touch, and I think this is a great sign of hope for Japan.

The govt can definitely touch bitcoin if you ever want to cash it out, or have ever connected a wallet to your irl identity. It's the most traceable money in history. Monero ftw.

Can you point on the blockchain to the lightning network payment I’ve just sent?

No, but the government can if you give them an incentive.

Let the Bitcoin privacy arms race begin.

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