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Comment by viraptor | Hacker News Reader

This is not really newsworthy. Anyone remotely familiar with BTC trends will know this happens every once in a while and so far we got back higher after every single crash. It was likely to happen at some point and it will happen again unless something major changes about the crypto market. Otherwise it's "the thing that happens once a year or so without long term effects happened last week (again)".

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"The price of X always recovers" is one of those statements that's true until it isn't. Bitcoin's a volatile asset with a lot of regulatory and reputational risks.

In a real currency that thing that happens every once in a while (i.e. massive volatility) has very real impacts on food prices and salaries and is highly undesirable.

fundementally this is due to bitcoin's lack of adoption as an actual currency. the larger the user pool the less it would fluctuate.

Yes, something which doesn’t look like changing as it is a dismal currency.

Yes, the impact on people, salaries, etc. would be a very interesting topic indeed. I'm very curious if anyone is being paid BTC salary already and if it was adjusted, or is everyone expecting a quick recovery, or is the reliance on BTC is high enough that the crash changes the fiat prices as well. But that's not what the article is about, or I wouldn't criticize it for being shallow.

Some sports personalities in the states have taken their salary in bitcoin and will lose a lot of money as a result of this crash.

Not sure what is happening in el salvador with that.

El Salvador uses oracle pricing of goods in USD when paying in BTC. Which solves over half of the equation. The other half, of course, is people that choose to continue holding BTC would have wildly fluctuating purchasing power ether way.

By oracle pricing I assume you mean they actually pay salaries in USD (a reasonably stable currency), then convert to BTC at the last minute in order to try to avoid price fluctuations - this doesn't help any of course if it crashes right after they were paid and they can't pay their rent.

What a terrible way to be paid - you get paid and then your salary may drop in price by 10% that day, and you have no idea whether it will happen or not. This is the sort of thing that starts revolutions.

What a great way to be paid - you get paid and then your salary may rise in price by 100% that day, and you have no idea whether it will happen or not. This is the sort of thing that starts vacations.

I would be extremely unhappy to be paid in such an unstable currency without any sort of hedging.

Who's stopping you?

No I wasn’t referring to salaries and no I wasnt referring to just in time asset purchases.

Oracle pricing just determines how much bitcoin - already owned - will be sent for a payment at the time of purchase.

No more, no less.

Oh I see you mean the pricing of assets is actually in USD, but then they convert to bitcoin at the last minute, in an attempt to avoid the instability of bitcoin (which renders it entirely unsuitable for pricing anything). I like the cute name though - oracle pricing.

But this won't help you if you're paid in bitcoin then it crashes, it will make it even worse than if things were priced in bitcoin where at least your spending power for the internal market would not change (even if external goods became more expensive).

> The other half, of course, is people that choose to continue holding BTC would have wildly fluctuating purchasing power ether way.

yeah we covered this. buy puts to stay delta neutral. its not that hard.

*if subject to that system

You're seriously considering ordinary people buy puts against their salary!

Not going to happen.

I'm considering that a service will do it for them. Be the change you want to see.

But I don't want to see this change! I don't want to have to worry about buying puts against my salary whether through a service or not.

I want a stable currency to transact in which isn't a get rich quick scheme and doesn't reward early holders more.

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