I don’t think I’d be making decisions on risk for BILLIONS of dollars based on something “usually” being in my favor.
Also, stablecoins staying “stable” is a huge risk you are taking on if you use them.
Again, if you have billions of dollars, you are going to be doing a lot more risk analysis and want a lot less uncertainty than you are going to get with any sort of cryptocurrency that exists today.
This reply should be mostly discounted because the author doesn't really seem to be able to do basic research. Tether imploding would actually be good for Bitcoin.
What is the strawman here? I've had bitcoin since 2012, and this wasn't as much of a pressing issue back then. Perhaps blindly, I then believed it had the potential to serve as a global, decentralized, stateless currency. I still want those things, but bitcoin transaction fees have gotten too high for it to make sense as a currency for the majority of real-world transactions. There's no solution there. And as a store of value it poses a real threat to the planet. There are better technologies now; the only real advantage bitcoin has , is wider acceptance by people and institutions as a payment mechanism, due to its longer history. But, with the transaction fees being what they are, and the potential for innovation with Ethereum and other more sophisticated cryptocurrencies, that's bound to change over the next few years.
I honestly don't understand how people can continue to defend it. The only explanation I can think of is that the masses who showed up to the party late don't care if it's gotten out of hand and is now in danger of trashing the place or setting the building on fire. They just made the trip out there.
Maybe? I'm sitting on the sidelines very comfortably hoping a bunch of people don't get hurt. I feel as if the bulls are ignoring the fundamentals and limitations of Bitcoin.
I agree with Bitcoin being neither money nor commodity - nor anything else, really. To me Bitcoin is Gamestop on a grander scale, a bunch of people deciding something has value that really has none (or in the case of Gamestop very little). I don't regret "missing" the hype in either case, preferring investments that make sense based on the fundamentals (assets, cashflow, profits, etc) instead of bets on pure speculation.
I do, of course, want to be "right" about Bitcoin (who doesn't like being right?) but it's far more of a curiosity for me than anything else.
It's just a divisive topic and people repeat the same things over and over again about those (including versions of what you've said here). It's been the same for many years already.
I think these mindless copy-paste criticisms don't even deserve a thoughtful reply. They are the reason there's tribalism in Bitcoin - it's just an efficient way to cope with (endless) ignorance and trolls.
I've seen this comment before, and honestly I think it's cheap. This article is about a clear, real problem with the current implementation of Bitcoin, namely that it requires enormous amounts of energy. I am not "anti-Bitcoin", I am anti a payment and financial storage protocol that requires gargantuan amounts of energy.
So if you have a problem or comment on the article in question, please make it, we're all ears. But responding to valid criticisms of Bitcoin with hand-wavy "oh HN is so anti-Bitcoin" is not discussion, it's tribalism.
Valid criticism is one thing, but this wave of criticism ignores so many basic facts about Bitcoin mining and energy generation/transportation/storage it's unbelievable. It also ignores the benefits, handwaving them away as if they didn't exist at all (it's all nice and easy for the firstworlders they can't even imagine there's a world without reliable banks, but there is!) while offering no alternative. Why would people use Bitcoin if there was a better alternative, isn't one of the arguments that it costs so much? Try to find out how much does it cost to transfer money to Ghana or Congo by other means and how reliable it is...
To be 100% clear, I believe your comment is exactly the type of valid counterargument I'm talking about, i.e. you bring up unique issues that Bitcoin solves, and point out that other monetary systems have high costs as well. Those are things one can have an honest debate about.
That is very different than the "HN is so anti-Bitcoin bringing up decade old strawmen" comment I responded to. Perhaps most obviously by the fact that there are many in the crypto community itself that believe the energy usage of BTC is a real problem and are attempting to come up with viable alternatives like proof of stake.
The Chapwood index looks a bit weird. It's based on only 500 items (compare to CPI which uses 94,000 according to [1]). And those 500 items[2] include things like "cat grooming", "horseback riding lessons" and "first class airfare" (but not economy class airfare?). Tennis is apparently very important because there's "tennis lessons", "tennis racquet" and "tennis ball" in there separately. Something similar is going on for golf: we find "golf shoe", "round of golf" and "golf lessons". I could not find information on how these items are weighted.
Can it get you to Marc Rebillet's [0] level in 5 years of a few hours per day practice? He makes it look so effortless and I can't even begin to imagine the flow state he's experiencing.
I feel like there's two different skill-sets at play--the ability to learn a piece, as printed, and play it back accurately, and then this, which is more improvisational skills. The two skill sets intertwine but mastery of one does not necessarily transfer.
To learn the latter quickly, I find it easiest to build a catalogue of music you like listening to, and then figure out how to transcribe it (by ear) on your piano. Maybe just the most overt melody lines at first, before you can grok chords all that well.
In time, you start building your own internalized library of "licks", little musical gestures that are automatic, and to achieve what Marc is doing, is to just string those gestures together. It sounds musically complex but when you're doing it, it almost feels like cheating, because you're leaning so hard on these "tropes" that you've built up over time.
Yeah, I just wish he'd veer off more often to these incredible improv jazz lands (like the one I posted) in his live streams. They might not be as catchy as the short loops he's currently pushing out, but damn, aren't they just delightful!
Long-time self-taught improviser here[0]. 5 years is, I think, a reasonable time frame if you're passionate. My suggestion would be to go through a beginner's course, then as soon as you can start copying and analyzing. Find things like licks and styles and little bits here and there that you like, then try to learn them by ear.
I know the "music is a language" troupe is tired, but it really does help me explain. It's sort of like muscle memory, but with a musical vocabulary.
Look up basic Chord theory, then look around youtube for theory videos on the kind of music you like. After a while, you remove thinking from the equation, and then it gets kinda hard to explain in a comment
Anyways, there are plenty of stablecoins if that's your thing and you can use Bitcoin (the network) for the rails only.