A family I know had a daughter who was perfectly normal and healthy and fine become kind of totally mentally disabled within weeks after a vaccine. She now requires 100% constant supervision, and likely will for the rest of her life. I know that doesn't prove anything. But if you were those parents, your perspective would be different. Thanks for your thoughtful post on the matter. Not sure if you were trying to make a joke when you said "one out of ten... is in the bottom 10%." LOL. Even more shocking, only 1 out of 100 is in the top 1%!
The reactions to this news piece, and to some extent even the way it is written perfectly demonstrate the dysfunctional dynamic gripping America right now. Everything is an OUTRAGE, and the solution that is immediately proposed is a PUNISHMENT. It is an OUTRAGE that these parents should not want to vaccinate their children. The parents should be PUNISHED by being exiled to a desert island or by having their children removed by CPS.
I would like to challenge you all to find some empathy in your heart and focus on ways to improve voluntary compliance with all the wonderful things you think everyone else should do. I mean, I am sure you are right, because you are smart and you have all the answers. But please focus on gently and kindly educating others instead of sending police of some sort around to force them to do whatever you think is in their best interest.
So the OP was saying that bitcoin only is viable because the work is useless? And that any effort to harness the computing power for useful work instead will necessarily introduce a method of cheating? I don't think that is what they meant. But I could be wrong.
I agree that bitcoin transfer method will not replace visa mastercard etc. If bitcoin ever replaces the dollar as the world reserve currency, people will still use visa (only they will be transacting in bitcoin). Buyer and seller will both trust visa, and visa will settle accounts from time to time on the bitcoin network as they see fit. However, except for the height of the mania, bitcoin transfer fees have not been anywhere near 40 dollars.Currently it is something like US$ 0.09 per transaction (which is much less than visa charges, but still, who wants to wait 10 minutes).
It is unclear whether bitcoin will fail or continue to exist. But if an oil-producing nation unfriendly to the US decided to sell oil for bitcoin, that might be all it would need to be taken seriously as something with consistent purchasing power. Iran could achieve this single-handedly by promising to sell oil for bitcoin at price X for at least 3 months. That would peg bitcoin to the cost of crude. I think there is at least a 10% chance that bitcoin will replace the dollar as the world reserve currency some time in the next 10 years. If that happens, the value of each coin will be approximately ALL_THE_MONEY_IN_THE_WORLD / 20,000,000.
"A cryptocurrency powered by useful work won't actually work due to game theory; someone *will* find a way to cheat."
My interpretation of this is that the OP thinks people will find a way to trick the system into awarding coin without doing the work required by the bitcoin system. That has never happened. Exchanges have defrauded customers. And in some cases, coins have been transferred because private keys were exposed somehow. People have run miners using power paid for by someone else. If that stuff is what the OP was talking about then, I guess the point stands. People will find a way to steal anything of value. But that is not a very insightful point to make.
But nobody has figured out how to mine coins without computing the hashes required. Not a single transfer has been made (nor could it be made without destroying the system) that is not properly signed by someone in possession of the appropriate private key. The entire blockchain is public. Anyone can verify these facts for themself.
From the perspective of the system, mining isn't cheating (the only person who loses is the one paying for the resources). But if that was what the OP meant, then I concede the point. From a practical perspective, there is not much point in using PC's to do bitcoin mining at this stage. Without highly optimized hardware, you just don't get anywhere. You have to use dedicated miners.
From my reading of the original poster, I though they meant something different than that. As far as I know, not one coin has ever been created except by mining it, and not one transfer has occurred except by signing the transaction with a private key. There is no way to cheat those mechanisms.
The mining cost is a function of the difficulty, which automatically adjusts itself to maintain the long term mining rate at one block per 10 minutes. As unprofitable miners drop out, the difficulty will decrease, and thus the cost of mining. Right now, you get 12.5 coins per block mined (plus all transaction fees on the transactions contained in that block). Eventually that 12.5 will be cut in half, and longer term, it will be zero. But by that time, so the thinking goes, bitcoin value will be stable enough to insure that miners continue to operate the network for the sake of collecting transaction fees.
The system is designed in such a way that the mining rate of one block every 10 minutes will be maintained (over the long term average) regardless of how many miners are in operation or what their hashing capability is (over a very wide range). This has worked so far. As miners drop out, the difficulty will likely reduce, meaning that the probability of any one miner getting a reward increases. It doesn't really work the way you think it does.
It is not "progressively harder with time." The hardness is adjusted to maintain a constant mining rate which is independent of hashing power on the network.
It might be a good idea to read the whitepaper which is only 9 pages long.
Perhaps. But if almost US$20k per coin was not enough incentive, then I am not sure how much incentive would be required. The system is actually not all that complicated. I certainly don't see how anyone can cheat other than be obtaining (by brute force) majority control of the mining operations.
Not exactly. The feedback operates to adjust the difficulty of mining. The way it works is that if blocks are mined faster than once every 10 minutes (on average), the difficulty is increased slightly. If it takes longer than 10 minutes, the difficulty is reduced slightly. As machines go offline due to poor profitability, the difficulty will likely have to decrease to keep the mining rate constant. This has pretty much worked as designed over the inception of bitcoin. Despite all the hash power people have thrown at bitcoin, the rate of new block creation has stayed consistent on average. The difficulty is not updated super often. Here is a chart of difficulty vs time.
How much bitcoin you get for mining a block (the reward) is pre-determined by the implementation. It goes down by half every so often. Currently, the reward is 12.5 bitcoin. The "reward" represents the creation of new bitcoin. Once all bitcoins are mined, the reward will be zero. In addition to the reward, miners also collect fees from all the transactions contained in the mined block. Eventually, the only incentive to mine bitcoin will be to collect the transaction fees.
If you haven't already read the whitepaper, I recommend it. It is not that long, and not that difficult to understand for people familiar with hashes and cryptography and whatnot. It is 9 pages.
In my opinion, most coverage of bitcoin, even in the technical press, is woefully uninformed. The ONLY reason bitcoin takes so much energy to maintain is because the price rose so high, and the difficulty therefore increased. Now, as some of the mania is dying off, things should be a lot more sane, and non-profitable miners will bow out.
It is now official. Wallstreet has confirmed: *BTC is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BTC community when Walstreet confirmed that *BTC market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BTC has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BTC is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test...
So does he think that the substantial portion of GDP that was used to send him around the moon was a good idea, but spending a substantial portion of GDP to send someone to Mars is now a bad idea? Who the fuck does he think he is, anyway? If the people (who are paying) want it, there will for sure be no shortage of volunteers to go, no matter the dangers. So we will just let the taxpayers decide. Maybe he just fails to appreciate the many purposes of manned space programs...
Bitcoin is a hedge, not an investment. It is a hedge against the total collapse of the US dollar. The only thing necessary for bitcoin to be well accepted is for someone to commit to pricing a good or service of value in bitcoin for a sustained period. Example: Venezuela could sell oil at fixed price in bitcoin. Iran could do the same. Both countries have strong incentives to do this (if they were not blind to the reasons why). This could stabilize the price against oil, which might be enough to get more people to sell stuff priced in bitcoin. Once things are priced in bitcoin, it can very easily take off. What does it mean for something to be priced in bitcoin? It means that the price-tag says BTC, and the dollar cost would be calculated based on the exchange rate at time of purchase. NOT the other way around (as is presently the case).
No country is in a position to offer high interest rates (they are too indebted) so they would be unable to stop flight into bitcoin by raising interest rates. It is almost like the financial situation of the world right now is a perfect storm for bitcoin adoption.
If this happens, it is possible that all dollar denominated investments could become nearly worthless. It may seem far-fetched, but things like this have happened before and they can happen again. I would not care to set the probability of it happening in the next 10 years, but it is not zero. And in this case, it is not really very important whether you got in at $10/btc or $1000/btc or $20,000/btc. The important thing is that you converted some fraction of your USD into BTC before the worst happens.
The other thing that could happen is bitcoin could experience a blip upwards when some other weaker currency collapses as people fight to get out (and to evade capital controls). That is more of a speculative and short term type of "investment."
Unscrupulous VPN providers can steal your identity, peek in on your data, inject their own ads on non-secure pages, or analyze your browsing habits and sell that information to advertisers...
Yeah. One computer could run blockchain by itself if the difficulty was set to the least difficult setting. And once all the coins are mined, only transaction fees will incentivize "mining" (which won't really be mining at that point).
This study does not prove what it purports to prove. Namely, that people who are currently sedentary will live longer and be healthier if they change their habits to get more exercise.
In order to show that, you would need to recruit sedentary people, then create an experimental group and a control group, and randomly assign participants to one group or the other. The control group would simply be monitored. The experimental group would receive an intervention that (ideally) caused them to exercise more. All participants would be tracked until death and then you could see whether the intervention was successful.
The flaw in the current study is the assumption that sedentary habits are the CAUSE of high mortality. But it may simply be that some underlying trait (such as diet or a metabolic disorder) is responsible for both the sedentary habit AND the higher mortality. In other words, maybe healthy people are more likely to go exercise in the first place, because they have more energy and feel good.
It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BTC is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BTC community when IDC confirmed that *BTC market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming close on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BTC has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BTC is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BTC's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BTC faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BTC because *BTC is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BTC. As many of us are already aware, *BTC continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood...
The problem is that Tesla is going to need to raise several billion dollars in 2018 or early 2019. If it is unable to do that, it will have to find ways to cut expenditures dramatically (mass layoffs, spinoff any division that is profitable, if there even is one, sell assets). Who is going to give Tesla billions of dollars? Institutional investors. Who cares what analysts think? Institutional investors. Profitable companies can adopt the "fuck you" attitude you are describing. But unprofitable companies can't afford to do that.
The dreams of visionaries become reality not only because of passion, but also because people with money are willing to spend it going after the dream. Tesla's dream is too big and too expensive to be achieved on enthusiasm alone. So Musk needs to court people who are able to transfer large sums of money.
I will try to explain this in simple, non emotional terms. Tesla is not profitable. This means that they spend more money than they take in. This means that in order to continue operating, they need to get more money. The typical two ways companies raise money are to issue new stock (which will dilute the value of existing stock, similar to inflation from money printing) , or issue bonds. They could also sell assets, if they have some that someone is willing to buy.
What will happen if they don't get more money? They will run out of money and be unable to pay employee salaries. Also, suppliers will get wind of it and demand payment upfront. Based on present cash reserves and the rate at which the are being depleted, Tesla is likely to require a cash infusion of billions of dollars in 2018. That is how serious it is. Once you stop paying suppliers and salaries, it will probably become necessary to declare bankruptcy to avoid chaos. Companies can survive bankruptcy and emerge and continue to operate, but I think it is fair to say that the company will never be the same afterwards.
In order to issue new stock or sell new bonds, realistically, Tesla will be forced to deal with Wall Street, and to maintain a positive image for those who may be interested in making the investment. So, even though you may remain bullish on TSLA, it is the job of the CEO to make sure that Wall Street analysts also remain bullish. Sniping or blowing off the questions of analysts during an earnings call is not a way to inspire confidence. What it shows is an inability to deal with unpleasant realities.
The constant turnover in high-level positions is also something that detracts from confidence in the company. In short, Tesla has problems, and the actions of the CEO on this earnings call made the problems worse.
The existence of the database is a danger to everyone in America. Despite what this report says, it is obvious that the Utah Data Center is actually recording essentially all internet traffic, including tweets, comments, slashdot posts, full voice recordings of all calls placed by all people, call metadata, emails, etc. When they say that data was "collected" what they mean is that they got a warrant and then accessed the data. But the data is already sitting there in Utah.
The very existence of that database is a crime and an affront and an obvious violation of the 4th amendment.
This is pretty misleading. It relies on a perverse meaning of the word "collect." Anyone reading Slashdot should probably be aware that the NSA stores virtually all calls, both metadata and content (and lots of web traffic, too) in the giant Utah data center. Their definition of "collect" is more like "access." If the information is not accessed by a query, in the parlance of the NSA, it has not been collected. The rationale is that actually accessing the data requires a court authorization of some sort (in theory, anyway). But the act of storing the data is, itself, is not a 4th amendment violation. Obviously this rationale is bullshit, but that is the operative thinking.
How much does it cost? Because lots of things are stronger than concrete. Steel, for example is like 20 times stronger than concrete in compression and basically infinitely stronger in tension.
Basically there are two ways for a public company to raise money. They can sell bonds, or they can issue new stock. Tesla's bonds are rated below investment grade by industry rating agencies. Big Tesla shareholders will not allow Tesla to issue new stock, because it will dilute their percent ownership. When existing shares of stock change hands, the company doesn't get any of that money. You may already know this, but from your comments it sounds like you don't realize that. It sounds like you think that somehow, when the stock price goes up, the company somehow receives money. But that is not the case.
Tesla has accomplished many amazing things and advanced the state of the art. They have proved that there is a market for electric vehicles. But they have not yet proved that a company can turn a profit selling electric cars. (Tesla has not yet achieved profitability.) And the last time they had to raise cash (August 2017), they did so by selling 1.8 billion in junk bonds at 5.3% yield. That is one reason why they have so much cash on hand. Because they just sold 1.8 billion in junk bonds.
Now everything hinges on the model 3. If they cannot get it on track, they are going to be in financial trouble. If they try to sell more bonds, the market will not react well. It will reek of desperation. Based on anecdotal stories from the inside, things are not going well. I am not a Tesla hater. I just think the stock is over-valued.
Slashdot Mirror
A family I know had a daughter who was perfectly normal and healthy and fine become kind of totally mentally disabled within weeks after a vaccine. She now requires 100% constant supervision, and likely will for the rest of her life. I know that doesn't prove anything. But if you were those parents, your perspective would be different. Thanks for your thoughtful post on the matter. Not sure if you were trying to make a joke when you said "one out of ten... is in the bottom 10%." LOL. Even more shocking, only 1 out of 100 is in the top 1%!
The reactions to this news piece, and to some extent even the way it is written perfectly demonstrate the dysfunctional dynamic gripping America right now. Everything is an OUTRAGE, and the solution that is immediately proposed is a PUNISHMENT. It is an OUTRAGE that these parents should not want to vaccinate their children. The parents should be PUNISHED by being exiled to a desert island or by having their children removed by CPS.
I would like to challenge you all to find some empathy in your heart and focus on ways to improve voluntary compliance with all the wonderful things you think everyone else should do. I mean, I am sure you are right, because you are smart and you have all the answers. But please focus on gently and kindly educating others instead of sending police of some sort around to force them to do whatever you think is in their best interest.
So the OP was saying that bitcoin only is viable because the work is useless? And that any effort to harness the computing power for useful work instead will necessarily introduce a method of cheating? I don't think that is what they meant. But I could be wrong.
I agree that bitcoin transfer method will not replace visa mastercard etc. If bitcoin ever replaces the dollar as the world reserve currency, people will still use visa (only they will be transacting in bitcoin). Buyer and seller will both trust visa, and visa will settle accounts from time to time on the bitcoin network as they see fit. However, except for the height of the mania, bitcoin transfer fees have not been anywhere near 40 dollars.Currently it is something like US$ 0.09 per transaction (which is much less than visa charges, but still, who wants to wait 10 minutes).
https://bitcoinfees.info/
It is unclear whether bitcoin will fail or continue to exist. But if an oil-producing nation unfriendly to the US decided to sell oil for bitcoin, that might be all it would need to be taken seriously as something with consistent purchasing power. Iran could achieve this single-handedly by promising to sell oil for bitcoin at price X for at least 3 months. That would peg bitcoin to the cost of crude. I think there is at least a 10% chance that bitcoin will replace the dollar as the world reserve currency some time in the next 10 years. If that happens, the value of each coin will be approximately ALL_THE_MONEY_IN_THE_WORLD / 20,000,000.
But yeah. All good points that you are making.
Let's not forget the original post.
"A cryptocurrency powered by useful work won't actually work due to game theory; someone *will* find a way to cheat."
My interpretation of this is that the OP thinks people will find a way to trick the system into awarding coin without doing the work required by the bitcoin system. That has never happened. Exchanges have defrauded customers. And in some cases, coins have been transferred because private keys were exposed somehow. People have run miners using power paid for by someone else. If that stuff is what the OP was talking about then, I guess the point stands. People will find a way to steal anything of value. But that is not a very insightful point to make.
But nobody has figured out how to mine coins without computing the hashes required. Not a single transfer has been made (nor could it be made without destroying the system) that is not properly signed by someone in possession of the appropriate private key. The entire blockchain is public. Anyone can verify these facts for themself.
From the perspective of the system, mining isn't cheating (the only person who loses is the one paying for the resources). But if that was what the OP meant, then I concede the point. From a practical perspective, there is not much point in using PC's to do bitcoin mining at this stage. Without highly optimized hardware, you just don't get anywhere. You have to use dedicated miners.
From my reading of the original poster, I though they meant something different than that. As far as I know, not one coin has ever been created except by mining it, and not one transfer has occurred except by signing the transaction with a private key. There is no way to cheat those mechanisms.
How much coin did they steal?
The mining cost is a function of the difficulty, which automatically adjusts itself to maintain the long term mining rate at one block per 10 minutes. As unprofitable miners drop out, the difficulty will decrease, and thus the cost of mining. Right now, you get 12.5 coins per block mined (plus all transaction fees on the transactions contained in that block). Eventually that 12.5 will be cut in half, and longer term, it will be zero. But by that time, so the thinking goes, bitcoin value will be stable enough to insure that miners continue to operate the network for the sake of collecting transaction fees.
The system is designed in such a way that the mining rate of one block every 10 minutes will be maintained (over the long term average) regardless of how many miners are in operation or what their hashing capability is (over a very wide range). This has worked so far. As miners drop out, the difficulty will likely reduce, meaning that the probability of any one miner getting a reward increases. It doesn't really work the way you think it does.
It is not "progressively harder with time." The hardness is adjusted to maintain a constant mining rate which is independent of hashing power on the network.
It might be a good idea to read the whitepaper which is only 9 pages long.
https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pd...
Perhaps. But if almost US$20k per coin was not enough incentive, then I am not sure how much incentive would be required. The system is actually not all that complicated. I certainly don't see how anyone can cheat other than be obtaining (by brute force) majority control of the mining operations.
Not exactly. The feedback operates to adjust the difficulty of mining. The way it works is that if blocks are mined faster than once every 10 minutes (on average), the difficulty is increased slightly. If it takes longer than 10 minutes, the difficulty is reduced slightly. As machines go offline due to poor profitability, the difficulty will likely have to decrease to keep the mining rate constant. This has pretty much worked as designed over the inception of bitcoin. Despite all the hash power people have thrown at bitcoin, the rate of new block creation has stayed consistent on average. The difficulty is not updated super often. Here is a chart of difficulty vs time.
https://bitinfocharts.com/comp...
How much bitcoin you get for mining a block (the reward) is pre-determined by the implementation. It goes down by half every so often. Currently, the reward is 12.5 bitcoin. The "reward" represents the creation of new bitcoin. Once all bitcoins are mined, the reward will be zero. In addition to the reward, miners also collect fees from all the transactions contained in the mined block. Eventually, the only incentive to mine bitcoin will be to collect the transaction fees.
If you haven't already read the whitepaper, I recommend it. It is not that long, and not that difficult to understand for people familiar with hashes and cryptography and whatnot. It is 9 pages.
In my opinion, most coverage of bitcoin, even in the technical press, is woefully uninformed. The ONLY reason bitcoin takes so much energy to maintain is because the price rose so high, and the difficulty therefore increased. Now, as some of the mania is dying off, things should be a lot more sane, and non-profitable miners will bow out.
https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pd...
It is now official. Wallstreet has confirmed: *BTC is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BTC community when Walstreet confirmed that *BTC market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BTC has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BTC is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test...
So does he think that the substantial portion of GDP that was used to send him around the moon was a good idea, but spending a substantial portion of GDP to send someone to Mars is now a bad idea? Who the fuck does he think he is, anyway? If the people (who are paying) want it, there will for sure be no shortage of volunteers to go, no matter the dangers. So we will just let the taxpayers decide. Maybe he just fails to appreciate the many purposes of manned space programs...
Normally I am paranoid about privacy, but this seems like a good thing. Why wouldn't you want them to respond faster?
Bitcoin is a hedge, not an investment. It is a hedge against the total collapse of the US dollar. The only thing necessary for bitcoin to be well accepted is for someone to commit to pricing a good or service of value in bitcoin for a sustained period. Example: Venezuela could sell oil at fixed price in bitcoin. Iran could do the same. Both countries have strong incentives to do this (if they were not blind to the reasons why). This could stabilize the price against oil, which might be enough to get more people to sell stuff priced in bitcoin. Once things are priced in bitcoin, it can very easily take off. What does it mean for something to be priced in bitcoin? It means that the price-tag says BTC, and the dollar cost would be calculated based on the exchange rate at time of purchase. NOT the other way around (as is presently the case).
No country is in a position to offer high interest rates (they are too indebted) so they would be unable to stop flight into bitcoin by raising interest rates. It is almost like the financial situation of the world right now is a perfect storm for bitcoin adoption.
If this happens, it is possible that all dollar denominated investments could become nearly worthless. It may seem far-fetched, but things like this have happened before and they can happen again. I would not care to set the probability of it happening in the next 10 years, but it is not zero. And in this case, it is not really very important whether you got in at $10/btc or $1000/btc or $20,000/btc. The important thing is that you converted some fraction of your USD into BTC before the worst happens.
The other thing that could happen is bitcoin could experience a blip upwards when some other weaker currency collapses as people fight to get out (and to evade capital controls). That is more of a speculative and short term type of "investment."
You mean, like Google?
Yeah. One computer could run blockchain by itself if the difficulty was set to the least difficult setting. And once all the coins are mined, only transaction fees will incentivize "mining" (which won't really be mining at that point).
This study does not prove what it purports to prove. Namely, that people who are currently sedentary will live longer and be healthier if they change their habits to get more exercise.
In order to show that, you would need to recruit sedentary people, then create an experimental group and a control group, and randomly assign participants to one group or the other. The control group would simply be monitored. The experimental group would receive an intervention that (ideally) caused them to exercise more. All participants would be tracked until death and then you could see whether the intervention was successful.
The flaw in the current study is the assumption that sedentary habits are the CAUSE of high mortality. But it may simply be that some underlying trait (such as diet or a metabolic disorder) is responsible for both the sedentary habit AND the higher mortality. In other words, maybe healthy people are more likely to go exercise in the first place, because they have more energy and feel good.
It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BTC is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BTC community when IDC confirmed that *BTC market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming close on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BTC has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BTC is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BTC's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BTC faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BTC because *BTC is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BTC. As many of us are already aware, *BTC continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood...
The problem is that Tesla is going to need to raise several billion dollars in 2018 or early 2019. If it is unable to do that, it will have to find ways to cut expenditures dramatically (mass layoffs, spinoff any division that is profitable, if there even is one, sell assets). Who is going to give Tesla billions of dollars? Institutional investors. Who cares what analysts think? Institutional investors. Profitable companies can adopt the "fuck you" attitude you are describing. But unprofitable companies can't afford to do that.
The dreams of visionaries become reality not only because of passion, but also because people with money are willing to spend it going after the dream. Tesla's dream is too big and too expensive to be achieved on enthusiasm alone. So Musk needs to court people who are able to transfer large sums of money.
I will try to explain this in simple, non emotional terms. Tesla is not profitable. This means that they spend more money than they take in. This means that in order to continue operating, they need to get more money. The typical two ways companies raise money are to issue new stock (which will dilute the value of existing stock, similar to inflation from money printing) , or issue bonds. They could also sell assets, if they have some that someone is willing to buy.
What will happen if they don't get more money? They will run out of money and be unable to pay employee salaries. Also, suppliers will get wind of it and demand payment upfront. Based on present cash reserves and the rate at which the are being depleted, Tesla is likely to require a cash infusion of billions of dollars in 2018. That is how serious it is. Once you stop paying suppliers and salaries, it will probably become necessary to declare bankruptcy to avoid chaos. Companies can survive bankruptcy and emerge and continue to operate, but I think it is fair to say that the company will never be the same afterwards.
In order to issue new stock or sell new bonds, realistically, Tesla will be forced to deal with Wall Street, and to maintain a positive image for those who may be interested in making the investment. So, even though you may remain bullish on TSLA, it is the job of the CEO to make sure that Wall Street analysts also remain bullish. Sniping or blowing off the questions of analysts during an earnings call is not a way to inspire confidence. What it shows is an inability to deal with unpleasant realities.
The constant turnover in high-level positions is also something that detracts from confidence in the company. In short, Tesla has problems, and the actions of the CEO on this earnings call made the problems worse.
The existence of the database is a danger to everyone in America. Despite what this report says, it is obvious that the Utah Data Center is actually recording essentially all internet traffic, including tweets, comments, slashdot posts, full voice recordings of all calls placed by all people, call metadata, emails, etc. When they say that data was "collected" what they mean is that they got a warrant and then accessed the data. But the data is already sitting there in Utah.
The very existence of that database is a crime and an affront and an obvious violation of the 4th amendment.
This is pretty misleading. It relies on a perverse meaning of the word "collect." Anyone reading Slashdot should probably be aware that the NSA stores virtually all calls, both metadata and content (and lots of web traffic, too) in the giant Utah data center. Their definition of "collect" is more like "access." If the information is not accessed by a query, in the parlance of the NSA, it has not been collected. The rationale is that actually accessing the data requires a court authorization of some sort (in theory, anyway). But the act of storing the data is, itself, is not a 4th amendment violation. Obviously this rationale is bullshit, but that is the operative thinking.
How much does it cost? Because lots of things are stronger than concrete. Steel, for example is like 20 times stronger than concrete in compression and basically infinitely stronger in tension.
Basically there are two ways for a public company to raise money. They can sell bonds, or they can issue new stock. Tesla's bonds are rated below investment grade by industry rating agencies. Big Tesla shareholders will not allow Tesla to issue new stock, because it will dilute their percent ownership. When existing shares of stock change hands, the company doesn't get any of that money. You may already know this, but from your comments it sounds like you don't realize that. It sounds like you think that somehow, when the stock price goes up, the company somehow receives money. But that is not the case.
Tesla has accomplished many amazing things and advanced the state of the art. They have proved that there is a market for electric vehicles. But they have not yet proved that a company can turn a profit selling electric cars. (Tesla has not yet achieved profitability.) And the last time they had to raise cash (August 2017), they did so by selling 1.8 billion in junk bonds at 5.3% yield. That is one reason why they have so much cash on hand. Because they just sold 1.8 billion in junk bonds.
Now everything hinges on the model 3. If they cannot get it on track, they are going to be in financial trouble. If they try to sell more bonds, the market will not react well. It will reek of desperation. Based on anecdotal stories from the inside, things are not going well. I am not a Tesla hater. I just think the stock is over-valued.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/1...