Bitcoin breaks psychological barrier of $50,000

Shawn Knight

Posts: 15,253   +192
Staff member
The big picture: Bitcoin is in uncharted territory. Now more than ever, its future hinges on what happens next. On one hand, it’s not as far-fetched as it once was to imagine crypto going mainstream and becoming a major platform to facilitate the exchange of value and as a legitimate store of value. Skeptics, meanwhile, are concerned that crypto lacks intrinsic value and is a huge bubble that is ripe to burst.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market value reached an all-time high today after flirting with the milestone for the better part of the past week.

Bitcoin briefly passed the $50,000 mark on Tuesday morning. According to data from CoinDesk, Bitcoin’s value topped out at $50,480.77 around 6:30 a.m. Central before dipping back slightly. As of writing, a single coin is trading for $49.429.70.

The milestone is largely psychological as Bitcoin’s value has hovered near the $50K mark for several days now.

Bitcoin’s latest rally was sparked by a $1.5 billion investment in the cryptocurrency from Tesla, which was revealed in an SEC filing on February 8. We’ve since seen heightened interest from other large companies and financial institutions including Twitter and Mastercard. Uber is also considering accepting Bitcoin for services rendered but isn’t interested in using its own money to buy assets.

Images courtesy Visual Generation, Wit Olszewski

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Musk is like that Joker character - "I'm not a monster, I'm just ahead of the curve", meaning he is pumping it now, but the moment will come when he will dump this crap, and it will be the biggest pyramid collapse.


 
Musk is like that Joker character - "I'm not a monster, I'm just ahead of the curve", meaning he is pumping it now, but the moment will come when he will dump this crap, and it will be the biggest pyramid collapse.
...would be what would happen if Musk and Tesla were the only institutions investing in BTC.

News flash: they aren't. You can scream "get a horse!" at auto owners all you want, the world is moving on around you.
 
I never understood "intrinsic value". Paper money has no "intrinsic value", it's only valuable because the governments and banks accept it. Same with gold. Bitcoin IS starting to be accepted as a form of payment by merchants (paypal being the biggest facilitator in 2021). Let's not forget when paper money was first introduced instead of gold people refused to accept it as payment! It was just paper to them!
 
...would be what would happen if Musk and Tesla were the only institutions investing in BTC.

News flash: they aren't. You can scream "get a horse!" at auto owners all you want, the world is moving on around you.
It's just dumb greed talking, as such people never learn. We'll see you on the way down, and guess what - I still will be here.
 
It's just dumb greed talking, as such people never learn. We'll see you on the way down, and guess what - I still will be here.
I HOPE it goes down - I'll never get to 1 BTC at this rate. In the meantime, you'll be bagholding a lot of stocks and USD that you'll be carting by the wheelbarrow full to get a loaf of bread.

EDIT: Or Euros, per your hyper-inflated fiat currency of choice
 
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I HOPE it goes down - I'll never get to 1 BTC at this rate. In the meantime, you'll be bagholding a lot of stocks and USD that you'll be carting by the wheelbarrow full to get a loaf of bread.

EDIT: Or Euros, per your hyper-inflated fiat currency of choice

As opposed to going to buy a loaf of bread with your Bitcoin, only to find that by the time you get to the store you can no longer afford the loaf because Elon decided to sell.
 
As opposed to going to buy a loaf of bread with your Bitcoin, only to find that by the time you get to the store you can no longer afford the loaf because Elon decided to sell.
Good thing there are plenty of stablecoins pegged to everything from the dollar to troy ounces of gold, then.

Every objection I've seen bandied about here is based on early 2010s understandings of bitcoin and crypto. You might as well be criticizing RTX cards by bringing up the limitations of GTX 460s.
 
Good thing there are plenty of stablecoins pegged to everything from the dollar to troy ounces of gold, then.

Every objection I've seen bandied about here is based on early 2010s understandings of bitcoin and crypto. You might as well be criticizing RTX cards by bringing up the limitations of GTX 460s.

You completely missed the point. The point being that aren't the USD, GBP or EUR already stable? What makes you think there's going to be a sudden mass exodus of those currencies?
 
Good thing there are plenty of stablecoins pegged to everything from the dollar to troy ounces of gold, then.

Every objection I've seen bandied about here is based on early 2010s understandings of bitcoin and crypto. You might as well be criticizing RTX cards by bringing up the limitations of GTX 460s.

What about power usage and it's linkage to carbon emissions? Most of the big coins use as much power as entire countries and it's all for the benefit of care free speculation.

As a matter of principle, the principle of NOT DYING DUE TO GLOBAL WARMING should supercede any libertarian principle that says it's ok to basically, under the best case scenarios (That is, 100% of hash done under the most energy efficient latest ASICs that haven't even shipped as many units as it would be needed for current numbers anyway) it's just going to cause irreversible damage to the planet.
 
You completely missed the point. The point being that aren't the USD, GBP or EUR already stable? What makes you think there's going to be a sudden mass exodus of those currencies?
You mean like the mass exodus that's ongoing right now that's fueling this unprecedented spike in BTC prices?

What about power usage and it's linkage to carbon emissions?
Do you have any decorative RGB in your case?
 
You mean like the mass exodus that's ongoing right now that's fueling this unprecedented spike in BTC prices?

You mean the unprecedented spike that one billionaire facilitated? Sounds like a stable investment to me. Please also provide proof of this mass exodus of and the sudden drop in the value of traditional currencies. Your conjecture alone isn't proof I'm afraid.

I think I'll stick to traditional currency for now and leave you to speculate with your Bitcoin. Wishing you all the best.
 
I think I've invested just enough money into Bitcoin where half of me wants to see the price rise exponentially and the other half wants to see it crash and burn just to see all the loss-porn, like a financial equilibrium. I don't care how stupid this sounds.
 
You mean the unprecedented spike that one billionaire facilitated? Sounds like a stable investment to me. Please also provide proof of this mass exodus of and the sudden drop in the value of traditional currencies. Your conjecture alone isn't proof I'm afraid.
You people keep hanging on Musk and it's not just him:


Institutions are moving into crypto now, Musk is just the most visible and garish one to do so yet.

And I don't speculate BTC, I hold it (and on occasion, spend it on NewEgg). I speculate with Dogecoin because that's a lot more fun.
 
The real problem with Bitcoin is not, that
- in the financial sense its nothing like a currency, and more like playing lottery,
- it fosters illegal activities, like drug and weapons trade, tax evasions for the rich, etc.
but that
- it's doing an absurd amount of environmental damage.

It uses about 500.000x (yes, five-hundred-thousand times) more energy per dollar for every transaction, than credit card payments, and is already contributing to the global CO2 emissions as much as some smaller countries, despite only accounting for a marginal amount of financial transactions. And that this will only get worse with time, and the environmental damage will only increase as long as the system is kept running, and will exponentially get worse as long as the exchange rate is increasing and/or more and more entities will trade using it.

If for nothing else, for that (ie. the environmental damage done) alone Bitcoin should be banned and outlawed all over the world.
 
The real problem with Bitcoin is not, that
- in the financial sense its nothing like a currency, and more like playing lottery,
- it fosters illegal activities, like drug and weapons trade, tax evasions for the rich, etc.
but that
- it's doing an absurd amount of environmental damage.

It uses about 500.000x (yes, five-hundred-thousand times) more energy per dollar for every transaction, than credit card payments, and is already contributing to the global CO2 emissions as much as some smaller countries. And that this will only get worse with time, and the environmental damage will only increase as long as the system is kept running.

If for nothing else, for that alone Bitcoin should be banned and outlawed all over the world.
Good thing there are plenty of stablecoins pegged to everything from the dollar to troy ounces of gold, then.

Every objection I've seen bandied about here is based on early 2010s understandings of bitcoin and crypto. You might as well be criticizing RTX cards by bringing up the limitations of GTX 460s.
 
I never understood "intrinsic value". Paper money has no "intrinsic value", it's only valuable because the governments and banks accept it. Same with gold.

Okay, nitpicking, but gold has intrinsic value: it a better conductor than copper (by ~50%). At the very least it has value as an industrial material. There is also the aesthetic value gold has because of its tarnish resistance. It has scientific usage as a deposit layer in electron microscopes and as a mirror substrate.
 
Okay, nitpicking, but gold has intrinsic value: it a better conductor than copper (by ~50%). At the very least it has value as an industrial material. There is also the aesthetic value gold has because of its tarnish resistance. It has scientific usage as a deposit layer in electron microscopes and as a mirror substrate.
True enough. But gold isn't terribly fungible - have you ever tried to buy a pizza with a troy ounce of gold? You'd either be massively overpaying or trying to count out specks of gold dust.
 
- it's doing an absurd amount of environmental damage.

It uses about 500.000x (yes, five-hundred-thousand times) more energy per dollar for every transaction, than credit card payments, and is already contributing to the global CO2 emissions as much as some smaller countries, despite only accounting for a marginal amount of financial transactions. And that this will only get worse with time, and the environmental damage will only increase as long as the system is kept running, and will exponentially get worse as long as the exchange rate is increasing and/or more and more entities will trade using it.

If for nothing else, for that (ie. the environmental damage done) alone Bitcoin should be banned and outlawed all over the world.
Such a weak and disingenuous argument against crypto. Using energy ≠ CO2 emissions. Don't conflate the two, especially when not all energy is created with emissions.

You might as well be telling people to stop using and ban the internet, because servers use energy and create CO2 emissions lol
 
Such a weak and disingenuous argument against crypto. Using energy ≠ CO2 emissions. Don't conflate the two, especially when not all energy is created with emissions.

You might as well be telling people to stop using and ban the internet, because servers use energy and create CO2 emissions lol

So everybody should just shut up and hurry up and die because it's not the fault of the coin speculators that they are literally creating more energy demand than any renewable energy source we have available at this time?

People not wanting to create a climate apocalypse is not a "weak argument" to oppose anything that directly demands energy that we are not controlling. I am all for putting wasteful uses like Crypto back on the table once say, we roll out thousands of new nuclear reactors all around the world we can discuss the merits of libertarian logic at that time. At this time, your concerns should be secondary to climate change and yes: That means that I think you shouldn't get to just drive a huge gas guzzling truck everywhere or have a crypto mine that consumes as much powers as 10 regular households.

Your freedom should not directly intervene with our general survival no matter how "indirectly" related coins are.
 
The real problem with Bitcoin is not, that
- in the financial sense its nothing like a currency, and more like playing lottery,
- it fosters illegal activities, like drug and weapons trade, tax evasions for the rich, etc.
but that
- it's doing an absurd amount of environmental damage.

It uses about 500.000x (yes, five-hundred-thousand times) more energy per dollar for every transaction, than credit card payments, and is already contributing to the global CO2 emissions as much as some smaller countries, despite only accounting for a marginal amount of financial transactions. And that this will only get worse with time, and the environmental damage will only increase as long as the system is kept running, and will exponentially get worse as long as the exchange rate is increasing and/or more and more entities will trade using it.

If for nothing else, for that (ie. the environmental damage done) alone Bitcoin should be banned and outlawed all over the world.
What did they use for illegal activity before crypto?
 
So everybody should just shut up and hurry up and die because it's not the fault of the coin speculators that they are literally creating more energy demand than any renewable energy source we have available at this time?

People not wanting to create a climate apocalypse is not a "weak argument" to oppose anything that directly demands energy that we are not controlling. I am all for putting wasteful uses like Crypto back on the table once say, we roll out thousands of new nuclear reactors all around the world we can discuss the merits of libertarian logic at that time. At this time, your concerns should be secondary to climate change and yes: That means that I think you shouldn't get to just drive a huge gas guzzling truck everywhere or have a crypto mine that consumes as much powers as 10 regular households.

Your freedom should not directly intervene with our general survival no matter how "indirectly" related coins are.
Anyone and anything can be judged wasteful energy demand, including your posts here. It's inherently special pleading and can be dismissed on it face.

Considering at my first job I walked there every day for five years, moved to be closer to two other jobs, and now take public transit for my current job, I've probably done a hell of a lot more for the environment in my lifetime than you armchair eco-warriors, so stuff it.
 
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