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why should anyone pay more than 50-100 bucks for a shiny metal that carries no value beyond the fact that it's shiny and maybe is used in some industries? why

why should anyone pay more than 50-100 bucks for a shiny metal that carries no value beyond the fact that it's shiny and maybe is used in some industries? why should that metal cost 1000 plus dollars an ounce?

lukasb 9y ago
you need it to pay taxes.
- stale2002 9y ago
  No, you don't need yellow pieces of rock to pay your taxes. Gold is quite a good comparison to bitcoin. Gold has very little "intrinsic" value and isn't backed up by the government.
will_brown 9y ago
For starters the shiny metal does, as you acknowledge, have industrial application. Moreover, you wouldn’t be able to post that comment nor would I be posting this comment without that shiny metal in our respective devices. Additionally the shiny metal is limited in supply, that is there is a finite amount and you nor I are going to make anymore of it. As OP suggested bitcoin is manmade, it may be artificially limited (21M coins) but anyone can just create a new blockchain and/or cryptocoin for next to nothing. I myself learned how to create smart contracts and deploy them on the Ethereum blockchain and I have created YC Coin; Reddit Coin; Facebook Coin and Instagram Coin. For just a few fractions of an Ethereum Coin I have decentralized karma and likes across networks with billions of users combined. Separately, I have created tokens backed by real life assets allowing users to buy/sell/trade interest in actual assets on exchanges. I’ve even begun offering coin/token creation as a service so anyone or any business who wants it’s own community cryptocoin can have one. Now I don’t question why my coins/tokens are worth less than bitcoin, but at the end of the day “why is bitcoin worth more than other coins when they are both artificially finite stores of value functioning on immutable blockchain technologies, providing the same functions” is a fair question. Once precious metals can be reproduced for next to nothing, like blockchains and cryptocoins, then it’s fair to challenge their worth until then I think it’s easy to argue their worth as a store of value.
- colordrops 9y ago
  The price of the shiny metal does not match the industrial usage of it though. Why isn't a store of value considered useful in itself? Don't we gain something by moving away from trading with wampum and sheep?
  - joosters 9y ago
    Price can be based both on utility and speculation, so shiny metals may have higher prices than their industrial usage would imply. It doesn’t have to be just one or the other. A store of value is, of course, useful, but that doesn’t mean that it should gain a high price. Is there a shortage of value storage, or are there already plenty of ways to store value?
    - colordrops 9y ago
      Doesn't bitcoin match that definition? It is not only a store of value but also provides forms of utility that wasn't there before distributed consensus was solved.
      - nosuchthing 9y ago
        It doesn't store value, it's a network protocol and a database. It's not rare, and the supply was minted for substantially minimal energy/capital input. Satoshi designed an economic model for Bitcoin to reward himself and the small pool of users who ran the software. Anyone buying a Bitcoin for more than it cost to produce it in 2009-2014 is hoping they'll find a greater fool to sell their coin to. Is litecoin a store of value? Monero a store of value too? Maybe 42 coin is more valuable because there's only 42 instead of "21 million"... oops the network forked and now there's twice... wait four times... wait the network forked again... oh dear.
        colordrops 9y ago
        > It doesn't store value, it's a network protocol and a database. It's not rare, and the supply was minted for substantially minimal energy/capital input. I don't agree with any of that. I suppose the internet is really just a bunch of 1s and 0s and not of any value either using that reasoning.
coupdetaco 9y ago
Because the government buys stuff with them and you can pay your taxes with them.

lukasb 9y ago

you need it to pay taxes.

stale2002 9y ago
No, you don't need yellow pieces of rock to pay your taxes. Gold is quite a good comparison to bitcoin. Gold has very little "intrinsic" value and isn't backed up by the government.

will_brown 9y ago

For starters the shiny metal does, as you acknowledge, have industrial application. Moreover, you wouldn’t be able to post that comment nor would I be posting this comment without that shiny metal in our respective devices. Additionally the shiny metal is limited in supply, that is there is a finite amount and you nor I are going to make anymore of it. As OP suggested bitcoin is manmade, it may be artificially limited (21M coins) but anyone can just create a new blockchain and/or cryptocoin for next to nothing. I myself learned how to create smart contracts and deploy them on the Ethereum blockchain and I have created YC Coin; Reddit Coin; Facebook Coin and Instagram Coin. For just a few fractions of an Ethereum Coin I have decentralized karma and likes across networks with billions of users combined. Separately, I have created tokens backed by real life assets allowing users to buy/sell/trade interest in actual assets on exchanges. I’ve even begun offering coin/token creation as a service so anyone or any business who wants it’s own community cryptocoin can have one. Now I don’t question why my coins/tokens are worth less than bitcoin, but at the end of the day “why is bitcoin worth more than other coins when they are both artificially finite stores of value functioning on immutable blockchain technologies, providing the same functions” is a fair question. Once precious metals can be reproduced for next to nothing, like blockchains and cryptocoins, then it’s fair to challenge their worth until then I think it’s easy to argue their worth as a store of value.

colordrops 9y ago
The price of the shiny metal does not match the industrial usage of it though. Why isn't a store of value considered useful in itself? Don't we gain something by moving away from trading with wampum and sheep?
- joosters 9y ago
  Price can be based both on utility and speculation, so shiny metals may have higher prices than their industrial usage would imply. It doesn’t have to be just one or the other. A store of value is, of course, useful, but that doesn’t mean that it should gain a high price. Is there a shortage of value storage, or are there already plenty of ways to store value?
  - colordrops 9y ago
    Doesn't bitcoin match that definition? It is not only a store of value but also provides forms of utility that wasn't there before distributed consensus was solved.
    - nosuchthing 9y ago
      It doesn't store value, it's a network protocol and a database. It's not rare, and the supply was minted for substantially minimal energy/capital input. Satoshi designed an economic model for Bitcoin to reward himself and the small pool of users who ran the software. Anyone buying a Bitcoin for more than it cost to produce it in 2009-2014 is hoping they'll find a greater fool to sell their coin to. Is litecoin a store of value? Monero a store of value too? Maybe 42 coin is more valuable because there's only 42 instead of "21 million"... oops the network forked and now there's twice... wait four times... wait the network forked again... oh dear.
      - colordrops 9y ago
        > It doesn't store value, it's a network protocol and a database. It's not rare, and the supply was minted for substantially minimal energy/capital input. I don't agree with any of that. I suppose the internet is really just a bunch of 1s and 0s and not of any value either using that reasoning.

coupdetaco 9y ago

Because the government buys stuff with them and you can pay your taxes with them.