I think there isn't really hate for it anyway, it's just that there is obviously a large amount of downside risk, so it is frustrating to people that see the risk to also see people talking about how Bitcoin is a great and safe investment (and there's nothing unique to Bitcoin about that frustration).
A better example of recent history is how TSLA raised a bunch of money through stocks to build the Gigafactory. $5 Billion USD was raised through a combination of debt (aka: old-school banks) + Stock offerings, and now there's a working factory in Nevada churning out batteries and cars.
What does buying BTC do aside from increase the price? When you give USD to a BTC holder, all you did was reward that person for mining.
I think we can confidently say that all of the servers that were given to Google ended up creating something more than a a simple data-center. Google, as an entity, has more value than the sum of all of the servers that it runs.
Can the same be said about BTC mining equipment and BTC? No. Because at the end of the day, the value of BTC doesn't "grow" if you pump it full of USD. We already know the secret of blockchain.
Google's value grew in the 90s because buying more servers in the 90s allowed it to search more web-sites and build a better search algorithm. Putting $1000 into Google Servers made MORE than $1000 of gains later (as services like Google, GMail, Youtube, etc. etc. were all made on top of those servers).
In contrast, investing money into BTC doesn't actually do anything. There's no company that actually benefits, aside from bigger-and-bigger mining centers. The innovation is dead: the BTC community has become too bulky and politicized to accept even minor changes (like Segwitx2).
Besides, Segwitx2 doesn't need us to pump money into BTC miners for it to work or innovate. If BTC crashes tomorrow, the lightning network will STILL be developed and no harm will come to the innovators in the community.
Ethereum, golem, decentraland, storj, ICONOMI,steemit, Basic Attention Token
funded buy bitcoin.
Tell me. If all the money in BTC markets dried up tomorrow, would the cryptocurrency innovation stop?
I argue that innovation would continue, even if BTC crashes to $5 tomorrow. Because cryptocurrencies, as they are currently implemented, don't require money for people to improve them. The entire concept of "equity" and "market cap" is completely, and utterly devoid of meaning in this space.
If you buy up Google or TSLA stock, those companies have more money to actually make factories, data-centers, or buy computers. This happens through a mechanism called stock offerings. Ex: https://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/20/tesla-raises-146b-in-stock-s...
If you buy up BTC, the innovators do NOT get money. Only the miners do. Its way better to just Paypal the money directly to BTC foundation or directly to Etherium developers if you actually care about "funding" those projects.
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As it stands right now, the Winklevoss Twins are getting more BTC money than the BTC core developers. The "investment" scheme of the BTC world is broken. BTC "market cap" does NOT benefit the devs.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/winklevoss-twins-become-first...
The value is in the network. Not the code. Should devs get paid? yes.
why should a dev get any premium over any other early adopter that contributed value to a network?
In my opinion the work(dev, qa, docs etc) of a network should be put out for bid with a minimal as possible funded by trx fees.
Bitcoin already served it's purpose to get money into the crypto ecosystem.
Stock can be worthless, but the resulting company can still provide a useful service and job to many.
Still, high stock prices provide a benefit to the company. Everyone knows TSLA's stock is overpriced, but that's basically a good thing for TSLA.
BTC is the opposite. At $20,000 per BTC, it was impossible to transact BTC for less than $30 per transaction. The network grew less and less valuable as the price of BTC goes up (and as BTC Transaction Fees are typically paid in... BTC... higher USD/BTC means higher transaction fees).
A high-stock price is beneficial to the company. A high BTC price is detrimental to the BTC community.
BTC will survive this crash. Cryptocurrencies will survive. AND they will become more useful when the prices drops down to something reasonable (Watch as transaction fees are dropping with these lower prices). It sure sucks for the "investors" who were suckered into believing otherwise. But seriously, there's very little value in attracting "dumb money" investors who would have lost their money in the next dumb penny-stock herd-mentality scheme anyway.
Google wasn’t even founded until 1998, and didn’t IPO until 2004. It wasn’t part of the dot-com bubble. Amazon would have been a better example (1994, IPOed in 1997).
Otherwise, good post.
But, of course, the internet bubble allowed all the fiber to be laid that formed the backbone of the internet & that gave rise to the great internet companies.
I'm long cryptocurrencies and I believe the technology is going to persist. It would be nice though to be able to do it without a whole bunch of people losing their life savings in a bubble, but perhaps that's wishful thinking.
I think you are discounting how fucked some people will be when bitcoin inevitably drops to zero. A lot of people are putting their nestegg into it.
Also, food futures are almost certainly a good thing. It lets farmers hedge risk, which leads to more farming and overall lower prices.
Over that Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, and mining bitcoin is a huge energy drain! To a lot of people this is reminiscent of the gold rush and dotcom bubble of the yesteryears.
I recently opened a stock trading account. Before being allowed to make a single trade, I had to complete a survey about my knowledge of the markets I'd be trading in. To start trading Crypto, you just need an account (often in shady markets, because it's easier to create an account) and money. And you only need like $100 in stead of 200k to speculate on the price of an apartment.
There is certainly some VR hype, but its relatively tame compared to anything blockchain related and there are also multiple companies (Samsung, FB, Valve, Sony) that have produced successful (though, not blockbuster level) VR products.
AI is certainly considerably hype-driven and there are definitely some far-fetched prognosticators in the AI camp (e.g. AI singularity evangelists), however, the technology that is commonly referred to as "AI" has been integrated into and greatly enhanced the function of many software products with crosscutting effects on multiple industries. We also don't see AI enthusiasts trying to drive hype among the masses and encouraging them to get in early and put money into AI.
Blockchain tokens have demonstrated unique and interesting properties and have been an ideal tool for facilitating darknet commerce, but that is where the usefulness has ended. On the other hand, the blockchain proselytizers spread all sorts of nonsense about blockchains completely reshaping the entire political landscape, liberating the people from the tyranny of government, ending all wars blah blah blah. This is a stark contrast to what blockchains have actually been shown to be good at doing, which is pretty much just being a bitcoin. With most technologies, development continues over time and people get excited about the technology as it becomes more and more capable over the years, with blockchains the opposite is true where the enthusiasts are constantly trying to exclaim why everyone should BUY BUY BUY, come on, don't get left behind, are you some kind of luddite? If you don't love blockchain tokens its likely that you're just feeling threatened by the blockchain revolution and how it is disrupting existing power structures, sorry you're bitter that you didn't get in on the ground floor, these negative reactions to the blockchain are clearly the results of jealousy surrounding the 3000% ROI that crypto-investors were smart enough to take advantage of.. blah blah blah
Alot of these technologies have 10-20 or more years on most blockchain projects.
To me the usefulness blockchains is moving the power from the network owner to the network nodes.
But I want as few broke people as possible in the society I'm part of. Each one adds a bit of stress to every social system.
Envy and regret probably explains a lot of it. I wish Bitcoin would join politics in HN's off-topic list... the threads are generally crap and emotionally charged.
In short, real estate speculation benefits the greater economy far more than coin speculation. That being said there are definitely downsides, such as vacancy, but that's more of a symptom of capitalism in general than real estate speculation in particular.
TLDR: Real estate speculation helps the surrounding local economy more than bitcoin, however both are unideal.
However the price does affect energy use, which for BTC is more than many (most?) countries now.