Bitcoin breaks above $20k

It's kinda sad that the pricing or market capitalization is the only thing that is being talked about in the "cryptocurrency community", instead of focussing on how the technology can be useful for society. Like for example if you look at /r/Bitcoin, there's a sidebar with "Submit text/link NOT about price", yet virtually every post is about price, even if just indirectly (Paypal joins the cryptocurrency bandwagon and the top comments are that this is good for the price). Searching for Bitcoin on YouTube is likewise not a good idea unless you want to listen to dudes rambling about the price for hours. Back when I bought my first Bitcoin, I couldn't care less about the price. I spent it almost immediately for servers and other digital services. I don't regret that I didn't "HODL" it. What really counts is whether it is sound money and all the speculation doesn't help in that regard. If anything, the usefulness of e.g. Bitcoin declines due to rising transaction costs and constant price swings.

Let&#x27;s pay tribute to the very first Hacker News thread about Bitcoin back in May, 2009 with this classic comment: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=599852" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=599852</a><p>&gt; Well this is an exceptionally cute idea, but there is absolutely no way that anyone is going to have any faith in this currency.

I am NOT a fan of Bitcoin, but...<p>Watch a real-time visualization of the global Bitcoin transaction flow, as it is happening right now:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dailyblockchain.github.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dailyblockchain.github.io&#x2F;</a><p>Each square is a bitcoin address (like a cryptographic public key)<p>Each graph component is a transaction. The components appear as transactions are broadcast into the bitcoin P2P network (but before they are verified and committed to the blockchain)<p>Each transaction simply transfers bitcoin: from one or more input addresses, to one or more output addresses. In other words, money flows from one or more previous owners, to one or more new owners. That&#x27;s how a currency works<p>Coin ownership flows from green to red (yellow is in&#x2F;out: I pay you and take some change back at the same address)<p>When the output of one transaction becomes an input for a new transaction, the components are pulled together<p>This illustrates how Bitcoin is used. What do you notice?

Just a question, isn&#x27;t all criticism against bitcoin applicable to gold?<p>Money&#x2F;Currency&#x2F;Value in general can&#x27;t be reduced or derived from first principles. You always have to take into account human nature, economic activity, and most unfortunately: psychology. So all criticism about how bitcoin inherently being pointless, sounds like off-tune. I want good reasons to&#x2F;NOT-to buy in.<p>First-world country citizens kind of trust their governments to at least behave lawfully, or at least be eventually accountable. There are systems in place for transactions and accounting, and &quot;everyone&quot; has access.<p>The &quot;Value&quot; of bitcoin, coming from a struggling third-world country (Lebanon), is in the ability to be independent of a currency that is inflating quickly, being able to transact with the outside world (even if only in bulk) without being under the mercy of a failing financial system that is lurking around to take a share in every which way possible.<p>The energy consumption needs of bitcoin are an obvious drawback. But I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s fair to brush away the whole thing for only that reason.<p>Disclosure: I own an embarrassingly small amount of bitcoin (~0.4BTC).

What&#x27;s the carbon footprint of BTC like these days? Has any progress been made on mitigating this fundamental design issue?

What&#x27;s the current thoughts on Tether, and how its speculated potential collapse will affect the rest of the ecosystem?<p>Also, what&#x27;s the latest on scaling? The last time I looked into it, Lightening was a thing, but I don&#x27;t follow it closely.

They just caught the biggest electricity thieves in the Bulgaria - Bitcoin miners in a rural area, stealing electricity straight from the lines and using as much as 4,000 households. And it was a small-scale operation!

But why...?<p>&gt; When this [rally to near $20,000] happened in 2017, there was a real lack of products for the new converts to experience, whereas today there are endless uses, protocols, services across farming, lending, standard trading, etc<p>Is this really true though? My first instinct isn’t at all to go to blockchain&#x2F;cryptocurrency for farming.

Slight deviation: does anybody have recommendations for hardware wallets? Pros&#x2F;Cons?

Previously discussed:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25442377" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25442377</a>

Someone has to feel sorry for Btc. Many people are going to lose money. Bitcoin has value. It is only Btc people that took a very nice technology and crippled it. The put a cap in it&#x27;s block size, and they removed instructions of the Bitcoin Script language.<p>Bitcoin&#x27;s usage lies in it&#x27;s use as an immutable ledger, that no one can change the past. We can put other information inside it,alongside with the money transactions, and we can be absolutely sure that no one messed with that information. An infinite number of use cases.<p>For example say a cop makes an arrest. How can we be sure that the arrest was legitimate? A random person with a video camera may record the arrest, go to his home, edit it however he likes, upload it to the internet, and boom huge civil unrest! The solution lies with the cop recording the arrest by himself, uploading the information right away to the blockchain, and no person on the planet, no state, no goverment, can mess up with that information. The timestamp of the arrest is important too!

We are seeing inflation in many assets due to QE. Probably just a matter of time till milk and gas similarly &quot;appreciate&quot;.

I remember reading that the Lightning network can be attacked by people spamming it with withdrawal requests, resulting in funds being stolen from users. Furthermore, I remember reading that this attack is to some extent not solvable. I need to find a link. [EDIT: I think this might be it: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;decrypt.co&#x2F;33917&#x2F;bitcoin-stolen-lightning-network-attack-warn-researchers" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;decrypt.co&#x2F;33917&#x2F;bitcoin-stolen-lightning-network-at...</a>.]<p>I&#x27;m pro-Bitcoin, and I own some, but what worries me is whether the scalability problem will ever be satisfactorily solved. It&#x27;s been 5 years since Lightning was first suggested and it&#x27;s still only at Alpha stage.<p>And if the scalability problems are never overcome, will Bitcoin still maintain whatever value it has now?

You can&#x27;t conveniently pay with it so after the &quot;digital cash&quot; idea didn&#x27;t pan out people settled on it being &quot;store of value&quot;. But if that was what people really wanted, they&#x27;d be cheering for less volatility, not more; people really want it to be a get rich quick scheme (and I get that).<p>There is no decentralized social network in spite of people being dissatisfied with the centralized alternatives. The last time I tried an IPFS website it didn&#x27;t load. The last time I tried Scuttlebutt it couldn&#x27;t connect. It&#x27;s been 12 years now and everything in crypto feels perpetually broken, unusable, beta-grade and stagnant, and it&#x27;s very disappointing because I really wanted these solutions to exist.<p>Ironically, I think &quot;crypto&quot; would have fared better if it was without monetary value, and its development was optimized for utility (like most other computer programs) instead of buying Lambo&#x27;s. The way I see it, BitTorrent is still the most successful and useful decentralized tech of the last few decades. It&#x27;s useful, ubiquitous, safe, clients can be maintained by a lone hobbyist out in Nebraska, and it requires no propaganda whatsoever to prosper because its value proposition is evident to anyone. With crypto, the perpetual funding of technologies that are never going to work ironically makes it a very un-libertarian economy.<p>That said, I like having it around as an emergency payment system, and with the devaluation of fiat money and general downturn, BTC provides an attractive asset class next to stocks, gold and real estate.

I see lots of comments suggesting that BTC is a constant store of value and that it is rising in USD terms because of ‘money printing’.<p>If that was the case, wouldn’t we see inflation in USD prices for a basket of goods? Isn’t inflation very close to zero?<p>Others say they are sick of talking about BTC price and would rather focus on its utility. This makes sense, but for the same reason above it cannot happen since on a basket of goods basis BTC is deflationary. Your options if you hold it are to buy something with it today or to hold onto it for a short period of time and buy 2 things with it later.<p>If BTC is actually viable as a currency, shouldn’t the goal be to get it to some kind of CPI stability?

The real test is if this is still true by mid-Jan. The 2017-18 peak had a similar trajectory--Oct to Dec spike then fell by Jan--suggesting some weird tax related activity. I&#x27;m curious to see if things play out the same way.

Bitcoin is a pure computer-science phenomenon. Regardless of whether you personally feel this is a good or bad investment, I think the magnitude of this success over such a short time frame, the impact on the world, and the interest it and the wider crypto ecosystem receives from the non-tech world, is absolutely stunning. HN should accept that Bitcoin is an achievement of massive proportions.

Adjusted for inflation and dollar printing it’s probably flat actually

Pump and dump by some trillion dollar colluding whales. They&#x27;re hoping people start going &quot;huh- this might be my last chance to get in because there&#x27;s probably NOT going to be a crash this time&quot;<p>It&#x27;s the largest vacuum cleaner in the world.

And yet the general interest (per google trends) is only twice as much as in 2013 when it first became popular. IMO this shows more speculation than actual demand.

There are two types of posters on HN. Tesla pumpers, and Bitcoin pumpers.

It&#x27;s always goes how around the end of the year and crashes in the beginning of the next. Where&#x27;s the news?

Good thing its just a fad, will fail, is rat poison, is already dead, and will be the biggest scam ever, etc. etc.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;99bitcoins.com&#x2F;bitcoin-obituaries&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;99bitcoins.com&#x2F;bitcoin-obituaries&#x2F;</a>

The appreciation and depreciation of Bitcoin is one of the things I don’t really understand. I get currency, capital flow, and asset to capital conversions. But for Bitcoin, where exactly is the value? Why is holding one Bitcoin appreciating so much faster compared to the USD? Is it because us as a society is perceiving the value of Bitcoin to appreciate (even though it’s illogical IMO to think so)?

I wonder where the money comes from that funds this price.<p>I&#x27;m very afraid that people who should know better, like pension funds, start buying this crap, in search for any return.<p>This game of musical chairs will come down eventually.