Tesla suspends purchases using Bitcoin citing energy concerns

[decolon]

16 hours ago, SlidewaysZ said:

Yeah it's pretty bad at this point how much market manipulation he gets away with. Luckily for him crypto is unregulated so he doesn't have to deal with those pesky SEC people keeping him from tweeting random stuff. 

Musk is a genius visionary who doesn't know how to be a proper CEO of a publicly traded company. He honestly needs to become chief visionary officer or something and get an actual CEO lol

[wanderingfool2]

13 hours ago, Kisai said:

A Pump and Dump always has a Dump phase.

Except in a pump and dump scheme you don't state that you will be holding onto the item in question (which they have stated as their intended plan)...if it was a pump and dump, I don't think they would be dumb enough to tank the stock prior to selling out of it.

 

11 hours ago, Maticks said:

using the same brush, will Telsa stop selling cars because the power being used to fill them is from coal in most countries?

A 75kWh battery is a lot of power but most people plug them in when they get home that's well after the sun went down?

How many mining rigs equals a Telsa car recharging every day?

 

Sad publicity stunt to be in the news...

Well electric cars overall have a smaller footprint than ICE vehicles.  Even if using coal as a source, as the scale of coal plants allow them to scrub more than gas.  More power stations will migrate to renewables as well, as the push to become green becomes more important.

 

As for bitcoin, it will tend to go to the cheaper power which typically isn't green yet.  With that said though, bitcoin is primarily mined in China at the moment which gets power from coal (66%).  As of today the estimate is 149 tWh of electricity as the estimated number (but the upper bound of 514 tWh) [https://cbeci.org/].  That's about 1986 full charges, or the equivalent of 494680 miles per day....or about 17,000 vehicles (based on average) daily drive.

 

To put it in perspective, based on the average a Tesla consumes about 8.8kWh per day.  A tuned 3060TI apparently runs at 115W (without power loss via the power supply), for 24h a day.  That's 2.76 kWh per day per card, so to answer your question about a 4 3060TI mining rig would equal the average driving.  (Untuned it's about 4.6kWh/day, so only 2 cards needed)

[Brooksie359]

9 hours ago, tikker said:

This can't be the real reason...  energy usage is just about the most known thing about Bitcoin.

 

Yep, discount BTC right now. Buy the dip!

Most cryptos are sort of tied to BTC. If BTC plummets, so will most alts.

This. It's neither irregular nor a big deal, but the dips don't happen wholly without reason. Playing the devils advocate it might even be the play. Tesla stops accepting BTC > people lose faith and sell > price drops > Tesla/people buy the dip.

But that would be market manipulation. Oh wait cryptocurrency is an unregulated shitshow so it doesn't matter. Honestly I don't see much point in cryptocurrency over standard stocks if you are just trying to use it as a means to keep value. At least with stocks you have some protection against people manipulating the market. I know some use it for other reasons but alot of people bring up people using it to fight against inflation of their country's currency and I really don't get why they wouldn't just do stocks instead. 

[tikker]

13 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

But that would be market manipulation. Oh wait cryptocurrency is an unregulated shitshow so it doesn't matter. Honestly I don't see much point in cryptocurrency over standard stocks if you are just trying to use it as a means to keep value. At least with stocks you have some protection against people manipulating the market.

Market manipulation is as old as markets itself. Even the stock market is not safe from that, see GME, AMC, Robin Hood recently and probably more less obvious ones.

13 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

I know some use it for other reasons but alot of people bring up people using it to fight against inflation of their country's currency and I really don't get why they wouldn't just do stocks instead. 

Because stocks don't do +1000% (or even x1000 in rare cases) in a year or less. Stocks are percectly fine for stability, store of value and relatively slow (very) long term growth. Crypto at the moment is for those who seek more excitement and are willing to take a big(ger) risk in return for the chance at much higher reward.

[Brooksie359]

5 minutes ago, tikker said:

  Market manipulation is as old as markets itself. Even the stock market is not safe from that, see GME, AMC, Robin Hood recently and probably more less obvious ones.

Because stocks don't do +1000% (or even x1000 in rare cases) in a year or less.

Also stocks don't dip as wildly as cryptocurrency either in norma circumstances. Sure cryptocurrency dips and leaks wildly so you can make big gains sometimes but you can also lose alot as well. Stocks are much better if you are trying to keep your money value because they are fairly consistent compared to cryptocurrency. Sure they dip and rise but not nearly as much as cryptocurrency and if you need money now and have to sell your cryptocurrency then you could be out alot of money so it simply doesn't make sense to use it as a means to keep your money value. 

[dalekphalm]

1 minute ago, Brooksie359 said:

Also stocks don't dip as wildly as cryptocurrency either in norma circumstances. Sure cryptocurrency dips and leaks wildly so you can make big gains sometimes but you can also lose alot as well. Stocks are much better if you are trying to keep your money value because they are fairly consistent compared to cryptocurrency. Sure they dip and rise but not nearly as much as cryptocurrency and if you need money now and have to sell your cryptocurrency then you could be out alot of money so it simply doesn't make sense to use it as a means to keep your money value. 

Crypto is gambling, basically.

 

At least with stocks, there are essentially guaranteed ways to at least match inflation, if not actually make money long term (well diversified portfolio, typically something like an ETF that's broad). Historically the market has always recovered and surpassed every drop. People who try to time the market almost always have weaker returns than someone who just buys a diversified portfolio and holds long term.

 

Crypto is fine if you want to put "money I can lose" into it. You can even work a small percentage of it into your otherwise well diversified portfolio. But people who think it's the be-all-end-all of money and investing are either trying to get you to buy in so their prices go up, or they're just part of the cult.

[tikker]

32 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Also stocks don't dip as wildly as cryptocurrency either in norma circumstances. Sure cryptocurrency dips and leaks wildly so you can make big gains sometimes but you can also lose alot as well. Stocks are much better if you are trying to keep your money value because they are fairly consistent compared to cryptocurrency. Sure they dip and rise but not nearly as much as cryptocurrency and if you need money now and have to sell your cryptocurrency then you could be out alot of money so it simply doesn't make sense to use it as a means to keep your money value. 

Yes, that's completely my point. If you want stable, slow consistent long term growth then by all means go for stocks. If you are willing to take the risk of large(r) losses to realise large(r) gains, go for crypto. That's not a reason to say it's bad. If such a big risk is not for you then simply don't invest in such a highly speculative asset. Even in the crypto sphere you see advice pop up every now and then to be conservative with what you allocate to crypto and to put most of it in more stable assets. I invest in both, I also accept  my losses should they happen.

27 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

People who try to time the market almost always have weaker returns than someone who just buys a diversified portfolio and holds long term.

Time in the market beats timing the market pretty much always.

27 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Crypto is fine if you want to put "money I can lose" into it. You can even work a small percentage of it into your otherwise well diversified portfolio. But people who think it's the be-all-end-all of money and investing are either trying to get you to buy in so their prices go up, or they're just part of the cult.

This is basically what it comes down to. You just have to try and be smart with your investments. Nothing is the ultimate investment, because gains and stability must by definition be mutually exclusive. The only difference is that people don't complain when something is unstable upwards, but don't like it if it's unstable downwards

 

Stock markets took a big hit this week as well: https://finviz.com/map.ashx?t=sec_all&st=w1 so yeah, shit happens folks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Edit] to add to this, for me one attractive aspect of crypto is the ability to invest any amount. In my country there are no brokers that offer fractional shares for stocks. In that context it makes much more sense to commit a small $100 investment to BTC, than to immediately plonk down $3000 for one share of Amazon stock. Crypto, in my opinion, should also be a long term play. Not an "I need money now, let me withdraw some" one. Neither should stocks, because if you need to withdraw relatively small amounts from your investments I think you are in too deep and should reconsider.

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, tikker said:

Yes, that's completely my point. If you want stable, slow consistent long term growth then by all means go for stocks. If you are willing to take the risk of large(r) losses to realise large(r) gains, go for crypto. That's not a reason to say it's bad. If such a big risk is not for you then simply don't invest in such a highly speculative asset. Even in the crypto sphere you see advice pop up every now and then to be conservative with what you allocate to crypto and to put most of it in more stable assets. I invest in both, I also accept  my losses should they happen.

Time in the market beats timing the market pretty much always.

This is basically what it comes down to. You just have to try and be smart with your investments. Nothing is the ultimate investment, because gains and stability must by definition be mutually exclusive. The only difference is that people don't complain when something is unstable upwards, but don't like it if it's unstable downwards

 

Stock markets took a big hit this week as well: https://finviz.com/map.ashx?t=sec_all&st=w1 so yeah, shit happens folks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Depends.  Crypto has more risk.  There are other investments that are higher risk than stock as well.  There are also things that are lower risk than stock.  Bonds are the classic, but there are others.  The standard methodology is risk/return. If crypto has a higher risk it would also need a higher return to even Match stocks.  I don’t know what that ratio number is.  I suspect it has been calculated though.

Edited May 14, 2021 by Bombastinator
Ihateautocorrect

[BuckGup]

2 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Cryptocurrency does have a problem with electricity though - especially since many cryptocurrencies have built-in difficulty mechanisms that literally make it need more electricity to "mine" new coins simply because more people try to mine them (it's a forever circular problem as people chase the profits, but the profits are finite).

That's not really true since ASIC performance has scaled to match the difficult while using the same if not less power. A 1600W ASIC in 2019 could make 14TH and now a 1600W ASIC pushes over 100TH.

Also the gold rush happened decades ago yet many people still mine for gold.

[Nowak]

2 hours ago, decolon said:

Musk is a genius visionary who doesn't know how to be a proper CEO of a publicly traded company. He honestly needs to become chief visionary officer or something and get an actual CEO lol

He's just a guy who was born to a family that got rich through apartheid-era emerald mines in South Africa. The only way how he's a "genius" is by figuring out how to exploit and manipulate others, since that's all he's ever known.

[tikker]

12 minutes ago, BuckGup said:

That's not really true since ASIC performance has scaled to match the difficult while using the same if not less power. A 1600W ASIC in 2019 could make 14TH and now a 1600W ASIC pushes over 100TH.

Also the gold rush happened decades ago yet many people still mine for gold.

While that is true, the global hashrate has also grown. It almost tripled for BTC alone over the last two years. This leads to another cycle where a machine becomes, say, 5x more efficient, which is then used as an excuse to mine at least 5x (and likely >5x because hey it's efficient) more, still leading to a net increase in power consumption.

 

25 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Depends.  Crypto has more r risk.  There are other investments that are higher risk than stock as well.  There are also things that are lower risk than stock.  Bonds are the classic, but there are others.  The standard me todo logo is risk/ return. If crypto has a higher risk it would also need a higher return to even March stocks.  I don’t know what that ratio number is.  I suspect it has been calculated though.

Would be intersting to see such a number. Shitcoins and projects that just don't take off probably have risk > reward. For the rest I'd guess risk ~ reward as for most things there are multiple projects out there trying to solve the same problem. It's just betting on horses at that point.

[Jet_ski]

21 hours ago, Heliian said:

He's just pumping and dumping for his own benefit at this point.  It's becoming a farce.  

He’s not sold the Bitcoin that Tesla owns. It’s not pump and dump if you don’t actually dump. People are allowed to change their minds. If he had sent these tweets AFTER selling then that would deserve a backlash.

 

Also here’s an article that Musk tweeted after the initial tweet:

 

Private-equity firm revives zombie fossil-fuel power plant to mine bitcoin

Power plant was left for dead until the cryptocurrency boom came along

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-firm-revives-zombie-fossil-fuel-power-plant-to-mine-bitcoin/

[Heliian]

1 hour ago, Jet_ski said:

He’s not sold the Bitcoin that Tesla owns. It’s not pump and dump if you don’t actually dump. People are allowed to change their minds. If he had sent these tweets AFTER selling then that would deserve a backlash.

 

Also here’s an article that Musk tweeted after the initial tweet:

 

Private-equity firm revives zombie fossil-fuel power plant to mine bitcoin

Power plant was left for dead until the cryptocurrency boom came along

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-firm-revives-zombie-fossil-fuel-power-plant-to-mine-bitcoin/

He sold some and now he's deflating it so he can then reinflate it and start selling his coins off and make some of his 1.5 billion back and get out on top. 

 

Crazy is his shtick and maybe he has completely lost the plot now but is he trying to tank himself?  

 

Is he just doing this to leverage some kind of other "more efficient" coin where he's going to make even bigger/riskier trades?

 

Either way, his farts are causing price swings in bitcoin and if he times those farts correctly he'll make even more money from it.

 

[mon1ka]

23 hours ago, Heliian said:

He's just pumping and dumping for his own benefit at this point.  It's becoming a farce.  

he tried it with doge coin. nearly jumped on myself but im glad i didn't: the crash was insane.

[Bombastinator]

17 minutes ago, James Evens said:

How often do companies have to play the environmentally friendly card before people will laugh at them?

 

Tesla is probably the most aggressive car manufacturer working against reparability. TL;DR Just another business decision just like Apple figured out they can make more money by removing the charger.

 they all hate it though and have for many years.  Several moves were made to keep independent repair shops from existing at all. To this day lawsuits have to be regularly run to allow repair documentation to even be published.  Volkswagen had a clever one post 2000.  They refused to sell some parts to anyone but the dealer and made vehicles unusually difficult to repair.  Wound up hurting them long term of course.  had to replace a headlight bulb and the dealer wanted $1000 to do it.  I got it done for $150 at an independent repair shop.  Tesla is merely a newer company that never had to deal with the lawsuits.

Edited May 14, 2021 by Bombastinator

[Blademaster91]

11 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

 they all hate it though and have for many years.  Several moves were made to keep independent repair shops from existing at all. To this day lawsuits have to be regularly run to allow repair documentation to even be published.  Volkswagen had a clever one post 2000.  They refused to sell some parts to anyone but the dealer and made vehicles unusually difficult to repair.  Wound up hurting them long term of course.  had to replace a headlight bulb and the dealer wanted $1000 to do it.  I got it done for $150 at an independent repair shop.  Tesla is merely a newer company that never had to deal with the lawsuits.

If they hate then it baffles me why companies spend so much on the "we care about the environment look how green we are" marketing. I think at least some people can see through the nonsense enough that right to repair is finally getting attention.

And new cars with LED headlights and taillights aren't any better, they do burn out and it usually involves replacing the whole headlight or taillight assembly.

[Bombastinator]

20 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

If they hate then it baffles me why companies spend so much on the "we care about the environment look how green we are" marketing. I think at least some people can see through the nonsense enough that right to repair is finally getting attention.

And new cars with LED headlights and taillights aren't any better, they do burn out and it usually involves replacing the whole headlight or taillight assembly.

It’s happened before though. Long ago.  Independent auto mechanics only exist at all because corporate America has lost this battle once before.  I’m remembering an adage that was at least once attributed to Abraham Lincoln though it’s probably older: “you can fool all of the people some of the time or some of the people all of the time but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Damn asshole lost me 10$

[Jet_ski]

10 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

There seems to be a theme of ignoring time in this.  Tesla stopped making batteries with cobalt even though they worked better because of the problems you described.  Past tense. As for the renewable energy thing, Yeah ignoring it is probably best since it isn’t true.  Might be int the future, but not yet.  Got to look at where a lot of Bitcoin mining is done, namely Mongolia.  One of the coal lands.  There are places on earth where renewables are majority sources.  That’s not where most mining is done though.  World wide I remember seeing 15% which was up quite a lot from 5%.  In the future? Maybe.  Right now? No.

It’s bright as daylight, anyone who says anything remotely negative about cryptos gets baselessly attacked by everyone who owns cryptos; especially the crypto-promoters.

[Bombastinator]

22 minutes ago, Jet_ski said:

It’s bright as daylight, anyone who says anything remotely negative about cryptos gets baselessly attacked by everyone who owns cryptos; especially the crypto-promoters.

Might not always have no base.  Dirty laundry is owned by everyone.  The reason they get attacked and that laundry aired  though seems more reasonable.

[Brooksie359]

6 hours ago, tikker said:

Yes, that's completely my point. If you want stable, slow consistent long term growth then by all means go for stocks. If you are willing to take the risk of large(r) losses to realise large(r) gains, go for crypto. That's not a reason to say it's bad. If such a big risk is not for you then simply don't invest in such a highly speculative asset. Even in the crypto sphere you see advice pop up every now and then to be conservative with what you allocate to crypto and to put most of it in more stable assets. I invest in both, I also accept  my losses should they happen.

Time in the market beats timing the market pretty much always.

This is basically what it comes down to. You just have to try and be smart with your investments. Nothing is the ultimate investment, because gains and stability must by definition be mutually exclusive. The only difference is that people don't complain when something is unstable upwards, but don't like it if it's unstable downwards

 

Stock markets took a big hit this week as well: https://finviz.com/map.ashx?t=sec_all&st=w1 so yeah, shit happens folks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Edit] to add to this, for me one attractive aspect of crypto is the ability to invest any amount. In my country there are no brokers that offer fractional shares for stocks. In that context it makes much more sense to commit a small $100 investment to BTC, than to immediately plonk down $3000 for one share of Amazon stock. Crypto, in my opinion, should also be a long term play. Not an "I need money now, let me withdraw some" one. Neither should stocks, because if you need to withdraw relatively small amounts from your investments I think you are in too deep and should reconsider.

Yeah I was more saying that people saying that cryptocurrency is a good way for people to invest their money to avoid inflation. Sure if you want to gamble then that's fine but if you are actually afraid that your currency is rapidly inflating then you should do stocks as then you could trade when you need cash to buy things without actually having to worry about cryptocurrency dropping drastically. Granted you might want to buy stocks that are fairly consistent. 

[tikker]

11 hours ago, Jet_ski said:

It’s bright as daylight, anyone who says anything remotely negative about cryptos gets baselessly attacked by everyone who owns cryptos; especially the crypto-promoters.

To be fair this is also in part because crypto often gets baselessly attacked by "everyone" who doesn't own any. I own crypto, yet I also agree with the concerns that the proof of work scheme is problematic (especially for Bitcoin) from an energy consumption point of view, for example, and fully support going proof of stake.

[dalekphalm]

21 hours ago, Nowak said:

He's just a guy who was born to a family that got rich through apartheid-era emerald mines in South Africa. The only way how he's a "genius" is by figuring out how to exploit and manipulate others, since that's all he's ever known.

You're massively oversimplifying him as a person.

 

First off, the whole emerald mine thing is disputed at best, and Elon has claimed that he worked himself through college and ended up $100K in debt because of it.

 

When he worked at Zip2, he couldn't even afford a 2nd PC.

 

Are these claims true? Maybe. Maybe not. But his wealth right now is largely the result of his own hard work, ingenuity, and ability at seeing a good deal in terms of merging/selling/buying into good companies.

 

Lastly, whether you like him or not, he's 100% a very intelligent person - probably on the "genius" level of IQ. He does technical work at SpaceX - real actual rocket science. His role at Tesla is more arms reach though. You can tell in almost any interview where he talks about SpaceX or the Raptor Engine, etc, that he's very well versed in the technical and engineering details of the vehicles and technology they're working on at SpaceX.

 

Musk is a dick, and says a lot of stupid shit. No question there. But just because you don't like him doesn't mean he's just a rich idiot who got lucky.

21 hours ago, BuckGup said:

That's not really true since ASIC performance has scaled to match the difficult while using the same if not less power. A 1600W ASIC in 2019 could make 14TH and now a 1600W ASIC pushes over 100TH.

Also the gold rush happened decades ago yet many people still mine for gold.

That's not a fair comparison since difficulty has also massively increased. At best, maybe it's kept pace.

18 hours ago, Heliian said:

He sold some and now he's deflating it so he can then reinflate it and start selling his coins off and make some of his 1.5 billion back and get out on top. 

 

Crazy is his shtick and maybe he has completely lost the plot now but is he trying to tank himself?  

 

Is he just doing this to leverage some kind of other "more efficient" coin where he's going to make even bigger/riskier trades?

 

Either way, his farts are causing price swings in bitcoin and if he times those farts correctly he'll make even more money from it.

 

Is there an actual source that said he sold some before his tweet?

16 hours ago, Jet_ski said:

It’s bright as daylight, anyone who says anything remotely negative about cryptos gets baselessly attacked by everyone who owns cryptos; especially the crypto-promoters.

Hell, I own BTC and ETH and I still am critical of cryptocurrency.

[Heliian]

21 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Source

https://fortune.com/2021/04/27/elon-musk-tesla-bitcoin-sale-profit-liquidity-cash-alternative/

 

Not even a month ago.

 

He's playing a billionaire shell game. 

[dalekphalm]

13 minutes ago, Heliian said:

https://fortune.com/2021/04/27/elon-musk-tesla-bitcoin-sale-profit-liquidity-cash-alternative/

 

Not even a month ago.

 

He's playing a billionaire shell game. 

Thank you for the link.

 

I don't know about that - one can do what he did, while also recognizing the potential heavy impacts of energy consumption that the coins generate.

3 minutes ago, James Evens said:

Headlights need to replaced after a couple of years. Like once or twice over the entire lifetime so I don't see a problem if those LEDs hold as long as the plastic/headlight.

Highly depends on your car. My Jetta goes through headlights stupid fast. Usually one every year or so, sometimes sooner.