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At some point, bitcoin is going to have to be worth more than just n USD... right? Other than buying in and cashing out, what is bitcoin useful for right now? W

by hbosch 9y ago

At some point, bitcoin is going to have to be worth more than just n USD... right? Other than buying in and cashing out, what is bitcoin useful for right now? What makes BTC today better than my cash? I am aware of the potential for cryptocurrency and I am aware of it's increasing value. But if all my money is tomorrow BTC instead of USD, for instance, how will I survive without converting it back into USD every time I needed to use it? Not trying to be facetious, just curious as to what the bitcoin crowd is using BTC for. If not to pay for goods and services, then isn't it a misnomer at this point to keep calling it a currency?

abritinthebay 9y ago
If it’s to survive long term yes. It does have to be valued as for than an investment vehicle. But it isn’t, and while it does get used to buy things it’s hardly the most common use. Which is why most critics liken it to investments, and why it’s a problem.
- dnautics 9y ago
  > If it’s to survive long term yes. It does have to be valued as for than an investment vehicle. Question: On what principles do you base this assertion?
  - free_everybody 9y ago
    Probably the intuition that a pyramid model investment can't continue indefinitely without some sort of inherent value of the trinket being sold? Then again, maybe that doesn't even matter.
    - dnautics 9y ago
      1) Inherent value is a fiction. There is no such thing as value without intervening human judgement. Besides which by any sane and consistent definition cryptocurrencies have inherent value (decentralized trust mechanism... Not gonna judge whether or not it's worth the current valuations of cryptos... It's just nonzero) 2) We're living in strange times.
      - free_everybody 9y ago
        Is there much decentralized trust in bitcoin? If you're using it like money, you still have to trust someone will give you goods and that your wallet software isn't going to steal your information. We really are living in strange times. I can't tell if it's a brave new world or a hype train headed off a cliff.
    - jrs235 9y ago
      Sounds oddly similar to Tulip Mania! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
  - learc83 9y ago
    Because once the price stops rapidly going up, if there is no other reason to hold on to it, people will sell. If it's no longer working as an investment, and it's only value is as an investment, what other reason would people have to hold it? Unless you think the value can keep increasing forever. If that's the case, can you name one example of something with no value whatsoever, other than that it's value was known to be increasing over a certain period of time, that continued increasing long term?
    - dnautics 9y ago
      Define "no value"
      - learc83 9y ago
        A good that has no use to any person other than the hope that another person may buy it from them later for a price higher than what the original person paid for it.
        dnautics 9y ago
        There's pretty much nothing that fits this bill. Can you give an example of such a good? "any" is a pretty strong qualifier. Cryptocurrencies are certainly useful to some people - whether or not it justifies current valuation is subject to debate of course, but you have defined yourself out of a category.
        learc83 9y ago
        >There's pretty much nothing that fits this bill. The OP's assertion was that bitcoin must have some use other than as an investment vehicle if it is to survive long term. You asked the OP "On what principles do you base this assertion?". If you arguing that bit coin is useful outside its use as an investment vehicle, and must be so to survive long term, you are agreeing with the OP. If you arguing that bit coin is useful outside its use as an investment vehicle, but it doesn't have to be to survive long term, you need to provide an example of something that is not useful outside it's value as an investment vehicle that has survived long term.
deadmetheny 9y ago
>what is bitcoin useful for right now Drugs, ransomware, and maybe web hosting or a remote shell. >if all my money is tomorrow BTC instead of USD, for instance, how will I survive without converting it back into USD every time I needed to use it? You won't. Crypto-libertarian dweebs are convinced that someday somebody will accept their Dunning-Krugerrands in exchange for goods and services, but right now the price is so volatile that everyone who owns them won't spend them to pay for milk and bread if it's likely they will be worth twice as much next week as they were this week, and nobody selling real world necessities gives enough of a shit to go out of their way to accept them.
- TheCoelacanth 9y ago
  > someday somebody will accept their Dunning-Krugerrands in exchange for goods and services Someone already will, most notably for illegal goods and services.
free_everybody 9y ago
- Buying illegal drugs. - Transferring "value" to another person without oversight. That's pretty much it. And the latter wouldn't exist if you couldn't do the former.
- cjbenedikt 9y ago
  you can do both with cash
  - matwood 9y ago
    Except with cash I have to physically interact with the person. With BTC I can operate 'as cash' with anyone who has internet access.
  - free_everybody 9y ago
    True. There are many more limitations with cash. The most important example might be illegal drug quality. With cash, you can give a friend of a friend some money for drugs. Who the hell knows where they got it from. With crypto, you can buy from an online marketplace complete with thousands of reviews and quite possibly much safer drugs than what you may find in your local community.
Klathmon 9y ago
The major benefits (at least to me) are: 1. As a buyer, sending money via Bitcoin means whoever I'm buying goods/services from won't be able to bill me monthly, they won't be able to lose my credit card info, and they can't overcharge me. 2. Also as a buyer, there are also no "restrictions" on who I can send money to, and how much. Nobody can close my account because they don't approve of what I bought, or can restrict where i'm able to send money to (ignoring custodial wallets, which can do all of those things to some extent). 3. As a "merchant", receiving payment in Bitcoin means that I don't need to worry about "chargebacks", "reversals" or any other way that the money could be taken back after it's been sent. 4. As a developer, Bitcoin is a fantastic way to receive tips and donations. I don't need to maintain an account with some service that might go under or get hacked. I can create an address for donations securely once, and can put it everywhere knowing that it will work indefinitely. Yeah, I agree that at this point people trying to live on Bitcoin are a little crazy, but if more and more places start accepting it it's a fantastic way to buy and sell things that is a lot more "safe" feeling for all involved.
- matwood 9y ago
  > 3. As a "merchant", receiving payment in Bitcoin means that I don't need to worry about "chargebacks", "reversals" or any other way that the money could be taken back after it's been sent. This is why I wouldn't use BTC to buy anything. Banking and consumer protection regulations did not just come out of thin air. They came out pain that occurred at some point. BTC will never replace the bulk of traditional transactions until remediation can happen.
  - Klathmon 9y ago
    Just because it's in bitcoin doesn't mean that consumer protection doesn't apply. It just means that the process to get your money back isn't "call my bank and tell them to take it back". The pain that they mostly solve for people (at least from what i've seen) is due to the fact that most payment systems work on a "pull" method. You give your information to the merchant, and the merchant tells your bank to give them $X. With that kind of setup, it's obvious that things like "chargebacks" and friends are absolutely necessary. But since bitcoin is "push based", the only person that can send money is you. So generally the only time you would need to "charge back" is due to fraud. And escrow services can add that "protection" back into the mix if it's needed or wanted by the people transacting. And the legal system can take care of larger or systematic abusers. Escrow services can give you the exact same protection you are looking for, but with the difference that it's opt in, and you can freely choose your escrow service independently of where you keep your money.
sergiotapia 9y ago
For one thing, people can't just print more bitcoin and devalue your bitcoin.
andrewla 9y ago
I'll start by echoing another comment below -- Bitcoin is immune to direct central bank intervention. > ... what is bitcoin useful for right now? ... all my money is tomorrow BTC ... what the bitcoin crowd _is_ using ... I would contend that this isn't the right question -- value right now is not based on utility right now; it's based on an estimate of discounted future utility. Unfortunately, that future utility includes a component of "price momentum", which may or may not actually exist, or may just be in part a self-fulfilling limited-timeframe prophecy (or a bubble, as some call it). There's even, in some quarters, worries that onroads to cryptocurrencies may become more difficult in the future as AML laws start to focus on it, so better to have some on hand so that when the "one true cryptocurrency" emerges, you'll be able to get in on it despite your government's reluctance to allow it. > What makes BTC today better than my cash? Today, I would say the immunity to politically-directed manipulation of value. As compared to "cash" as in folding paper money that you hold on your person, I would say it gains the advantage of being electronically transferable, and arguably, easier to secure. As compared to "cash" as in money on deposit in a demand deposit account, it offers the liquidity of cash (no bank to tell you "you can't take out that much right now), and immunity from other failures: bank runs do happen (rarely), banks do fail (less rarely), "identities" are stolen (not rarely at all), and accounts are closed because of violations of terms of service or because of suspicious activity (which may just involve transactions over a certain dollar amount). If you're sufficiently paranoid, concerns about a cause you support being labelled as "terrorist" and having money laundering protections slapped on it, or a country that you have relatives in being labelled a "rogue state", or even (true story!) a neighboring country being artificially branded a terrorist state to blackmail them into building a wall. > isn't it a misnomer at this point to keep calling it a currency? Maybe. But if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck... I mean, this ends up just being a semantic game where we're fighting over the definition of the word "currency". If it makes you feel better, call it a crypt o'currency, which is its own thing distinct from currency; it just shares some attributes of currencies.

by hbosch 9y ago

abritinthebay 9y ago

If it’s to survive long term yes. It does have to be valued as for than an investment vehicle. But it isn’t, and while it does get used to buy things it’s hardly the most common use. Which is why most critics liken it to investments, and why it’s a problem.

dnautics 9y ago
> If it’s to survive long term yes. It does have to be valued as for than an investment vehicle. Question: On what principles do you base this assertion?
- free_everybody 9y ago
  Probably the intuition that a pyramid model investment can't continue indefinitely without some sort of inherent value of the trinket being sold? Then again, maybe that doesn't even matter.
  - dnautics 9y ago
    1) Inherent value is a fiction. There is no such thing as value without intervening human judgement. Besides which by any sane and consistent definition cryptocurrencies have inherent value (decentralized trust mechanism... Not gonna judge whether or not it's worth the current valuations of cryptos... It's just nonzero) 2) We're living in strange times.
    - free_everybody 9y ago
      Is there much decentralized trust in bitcoin? If you're using it like money, you still have to trust someone will give you goods and that your wallet software isn't going to steal your information. We really are living in strange times. I can't tell if it's a brave new world or a hype train headed off a cliff.
  - jrs235 9y ago
    Sounds oddly similar to Tulip Mania! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
- learc83 9y ago
  Because once the price stops rapidly going up, if there is no other reason to hold on to it, people will sell. If it's no longer working as an investment, and it's only value is as an investment, what other reason would people have to hold it? Unless you think the value can keep increasing forever. If that's the case, can you name one example of something with no value whatsoever, other than that it's value was known to be increasing over a certain period of time, that continued increasing long term?
  - dnautics 9y ago
    Define "no value"
    - learc83 9y ago
      A good that has no use to any person other than the hope that another person may buy it from them later for a price higher than what the original person paid for it.
      - dnautics 9y ago
        There's pretty much nothing that fits this bill. Can you give an example of such a good? "any" is a pretty strong qualifier. Cryptocurrencies are certainly useful to some people - whether or not it justifies current valuation is subject to debate of course, but you have defined yourself out of a category.
        learc83 9y ago
        >There's pretty much nothing that fits this bill. The OP's assertion was that bitcoin must have some use other than as an investment vehicle if it is to survive long term. You asked the OP "On what principles do you base this assertion?". If you arguing that bit coin is useful outside its use as an investment vehicle, and must be so to survive long term, you are agreeing with the OP. If you arguing that bit coin is useful outside its use as an investment vehicle, but it doesn't have to be to survive long term, you need to provide an example of something that is not useful outside it's value as an investment vehicle that has survived long term.

deadmetheny 9y ago

>what is bitcoin useful for right now Drugs, ransomware, and maybe web hosting or a remote shell. >if all my money is tomorrow BTC instead of USD, for instance, how will I survive without converting it back into USD every time I needed to use it? You won't. Crypto-libertarian dweebs are convinced that someday somebody will accept their Dunning-Krugerrands in exchange for goods and services, but right now the price is so volatile that everyone who owns them won't spend them to pay for milk and bread if it's likely they will be worth twice as much next week as they were this week, and nobody selling real world necessities gives enough of a shit to go out of their way to accept them.

TheCoelacanth 9y ago
> someday somebody will accept their Dunning-Krugerrands in exchange for goods and services Someone already will, most notably for illegal goods and services.

free_everybody 9y ago

- Buying illegal drugs. - Transferring "value" to another person without oversight. That's pretty much it. And the latter wouldn't exist if you couldn't do the former.

cjbenedikt 9y ago
you can do both with cash
- matwood 9y ago
  Except with cash I have to physically interact with the person. With BTC I can operate 'as cash' with anyone who has internet access.
- free_everybody 9y ago
  True. There are many more limitations with cash. The most important example might be illegal drug quality. With cash, you can give a friend of a friend some money for drugs. Who the hell knows where they got it from. With crypto, you can buy from an online marketplace complete with thousands of reviews and quite possibly much safer drugs than what you may find in your local community.

Klathmon 9y ago

The major benefits (at least to me) are: 1. As a buyer, sending money via Bitcoin means whoever I'm buying goods/services from won't be able to bill me monthly, they won't be able to lose my credit card info, and they can't overcharge me. 2. Also as a buyer, there are also no "restrictions" on who I can send money to, and how much. Nobody can close my account because they don't approve of what I bought, or can restrict where i'm able to send money to (ignoring custodial wallets, which can do all of those things to some extent). 3. As a "merchant", receiving payment in Bitcoin means that I don't need to worry about "chargebacks", "reversals" or any other way that the money could be taken back after it's been sent. 4. As a developer, Bitcoin is a fantastic way to receive tips and donations. I don't need to maintain an account with some service that might go under or get hacked. I can create an address for donations securely once, and can put it everywhere knowing that it will work indefinitely. Yeah, I agree that at this point people trying to live on Bitcoin are a little crazy, but if more and more places start accepting it it's a fantastic way to buy and sell things that is a lot more "safe" feeling for all involved.

matwood 9y ago
> 3. As a "merchant", receiving payment in Bitcoin means that I don't need to worry about "chargebacks", "reversals" or any other way that the money could be taken back after it's been sent. This is why I wouldn't use BTC to buy anything. Banking and consumer protection regulations did not just come out of thin air. They came out pain that occurred at some point. BTC will never replace the bulk of traditional transactions until remediation can happen.
- Klathmon 9y ago
  Just because it's in bitcoin doesn't mean that consumer protection doesn't apply. It just means that the process to get your money back isn't "call my bank and tell them to take it back". The pain that they mostly solve for people (at least from what i've seen) is due to the fact that most payment systems work on a "pull" method. You give your information to the merchant, and the merchant tells your bank to give them $X. With that kind of setup, it's obvious that things like "chargebacks" and friends are absolutely necessary. But since bitcoin is "push based", the only person that can send money is you. So generally the only time you would need to "charge back" is due to fraud. And escrow services can add that "protection" back into the mix if it's needed or wanted by the people transacting. And the legal system can take care of larger or systematic abusers. Escrow services can give you the exact same protection you are looking for, but with the difference that it's opt in, and you can freely choose your escrow service independently of where you keep your money.

sergiotapia 9y ago

For one thing, people can't just print more bitcoin and devalue your bitcoin.

andrewla 9y ago

I'll start by echoing another comment below -- Bitcoin is immune to direct central bank intervention. > ... what is bitcoin useful for right now? ... all my money is tomorrow BTC ... what the bitcoin crowd _is_ using ... I would contend that this isn't the right question -- value right now is not based on utility right now; it's based on an estimate of discounted future utility. Unfortunately, that future utility includes a component of "price momentum", which may or may not actually exist, or may just be in part a self-fulfilling limited-timeframe prophecy (or a bubble, as some call it). There's even, in some quarters, worries that onroads to cryptocurrencies may become more difficult in the future as AML laws start to focus on it, so better to have some on hand so that when the "one true cryptocurrency" emerges, you'll be able to get in on it despite your government's reluctance to allow it. > What makes BTC today better than my cash? Today, I would say the immunity to politically-directed manipulation of value. As compared to "cash" as in folding paper money that you hold on your person, I would say it gains the advantage of being electronically transferable, and arguably, easier to secure. As compared to "cash" as in money on deposit in a demand deposit account, it offers the liquidity of cash (no bank to tell you "you can't take out that much right now), and immunity from other failures: bank runs do happen (rarely), banks do fail (less rarely), "identities" are stolen (not rarely at all), and accounts are closed because of violations of terms of service or because of suspicious activity (which may just involve transactions over a certain dollar amount). If you're sufficiently paranoid, concerns about a cause you support being labelled as "terrorist" and having money laundering protections slapped on it, or a country that you have relatives in being labelled a "rogue state", or even (true story!) a neighboring country being artificially branded a terrorist state to blackmail them into building a wall. > isn't it a misnomer at this point to keep calling it a currency? Maybe. But if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck... I mean, this ends up just being a semantic game where we're fighting over the definition of the word "currency". If it makes you feel better, call it a crypt o'currency, which is its own thing distinct from currency; it just shares some attributes of currencies.