<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>spookthesunset</author><text>Again.  Circular logic of crypto shysters at work.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; It&amp;#x27;s real, measurable economic activity on a massive scale.&lt;p&gt;What economic activity?  It is people speculating.  Nobody is using bitcoin for buying coffee or sending micropayments to websites.  Nobody is using it as a &amp;quot;store of value&amp;quot;, despite what the shysters say.  It is just people buying and selling a meaningless ticker symbol hoping to get rich and buy some island in the south pacific (using fiat, I might add).&lt;p&gt;With bitcoin, you might as well just throw away the technology behind it and just trade on the BTC ticker instead.  I mean, that is almost what is happening given all the trades on any given exchange are off-chain transactions happening in a centralized exchange-owned database.  There is no rumbling of miners recording every trade. The only people doing cross-trade are people trying to arbitrage away the price difference between exchanges.</text><parent_chain><item><author>Meekro</author><text>Every day, $33 billion dollars worth of &amp;quot;traditional&amp;quot; currencies are traded for $33 billion dollars worth of cryptocurrencies[1]. Coinbase, the top bitcoin exchange, is the 5th largest personal finance site in the US[2] -- the only bigger ones are chase.com, paypal.com, wellsfargo.com, and bankofamerica.com -- and Coinbase is rapidly closing the gap and is on track to overtake all of them within 6 months [3].&lt;p&gt;This is nothing like the &amp;quot;sand coin&amp;quot; from your example. It&amp;#x27;s real, measurable economic activity on a massive scale.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;coinmarketcap.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;coinmarketcap.com&lt;/a&gt; (cryptocurrency 24 hour volume)&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.alexa.com&amp;#x2F;topsites&amp;#x2F;countries;1&amp;#x2F;US&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.alexa.com&amp;#x2F;topsites&amp;#x2F;countries;1&amp;#x2F;US&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.alexa.com&amp;#x2F;siteinfo&amp;#x2F;coinbase.com#?sites=coinbase.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.alexa.com&amp;#x2F;siteinfo&amp;#x2F;coinbase.com#?sites=coinbase.c...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>spookthesunset</author><text>&amp;gt; However, given its tremendous market capitalization, it may yet turn out to be a viable way to store value.&lt;p&gt;The circular logic of bitcoin shysters never ceases to amaze.&lt;p&gt;I have created a new coin called &amp;quot;sand coin&amp;quot;.  Each coin is a grain of sand from my backyard  Yesterday my friend bought one grain of sand from me for $1.  Therefore, given the fact that there is billions of sand grains in my backyard, their market cap is &lt;i&gt;giant&lt;/i&gt;.  Given its tremendous market cap, Sandcoin is a great store of value.</text></item><item><author>ryandvm</author><text>I dunno, I suppose one wouldn&amp;#x27;t be surprised if a gold conference didn&amp;#x27;t accept gold payments.&lt;p&gt;That is, in its current form, Bitcoin is _terrible_ for general transactions. However, given its tremendous market capitalization, it may yet turn out to be a viable way to store value.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Bitcoin conf stopped taking Bitcoin payments because they don&apos;t work well enough</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/10/bitcoin-conference-stops-accepting-cryptocurrency-payments.html</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>throwaway5752</author><text>To bring it back around: a conference devoted to bitcoin stopped accepting payments in bitcoin. People are speculating on bitcoin, but some or most of the value is based on its future liquidity and value as a medium of commerce. That seems doubtful.&lt;p&gt;And are you basing the size of personal finance sites based on &lt;i&gt;Alexa&lt;/i&gt; data?</text><parent_chain><item><author>Meekro</author><text>Every day, $33 billion dollars worth of &amp;quot;traditional&amp;quot; currencies are traded for $33 billion dollars worth of cryptocurrencies[1]. Coinbase, the top bitcoin exchange, is the 5th largest personal finance site in the US[2] -- the only bigger ones are chase.com, paypal.com, wellsfargo.com, and bankofamerica.com -- and Coinbase is rapidly closing the gap and is on track to overtake all of them within 6 months [3].&lt;p&gt;This is nothing like the &amp;quot;sand coin&amp;quot; from your example. It&amp;#x27;s real, measurable economic activity on a massive scale.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;coinmarketcap.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;coinmarketcap.com&lt;/a&gt; (cryptocurrency 24 hour volume)&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.alexa.com&amp;#x2F;topsites&amp;#x2F;countries;1&amp;#x2F;US&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.alexa.com&amp;#x2F;topsites&amp;#x2F;countries;1&amp;#x2F;US&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.alexa.com&amp;#x2F;siteinfo&amp;#x2F;coinbase.com#?sites=coinbase.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.alexa.com&amp;#x2F;siteinfo&amp;#x2F;coinbase.com#?sites=coinbase.c...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>spookthesunset</author><text>&amp;gt; However, given its tremendous market capitalization, it may yet turn out to be a viable way to store value.&lt;p&gt;The circular logic of bitcoin shysters never ceases to amaze.&lt;p&gt;I have created a new coin called &amp;quot;sand coin&amp;quot;.  Each coin is a grain of sand from my backyard  Yesterday my friend bought one grain of sand from me for $1.  Therefore, given the fact that there is billions of sand grains in my backyard, their market cap is &lt;i&gt;giant&lt;/i&gt;.  Given its tremendous market cap, Sandcoin is a great store of value.</text></item><item><author>ryandvm</author><text>I dunno, I suppose one wouldn&amp;#x27;t be surprised if a gold conference didn&amp;#x27;t accept gold payments.&lt;p&gt;That is, in its current form, Bitcoin is _terrible_ for general transactions. However, given its tremendous market capitalization, it may yet turn out to be a viable way to store value.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Bitcoin conf stopped taking Bitcoin payments because they don&apos;t work well enough</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/10/bitcoin-conference-stops-accepting-cryptocurrency-payments.html</url></story>