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What value does Bitcoin add to society? IF you don't add value, what's the point of having you around? Bitcoin could absolutely go to zero. I say this as a hold

What value does Bitcoin add to society? IF you don't add value, what's the point of having you around? Bitcoin could absolutely go to zero. I say this as a holder of some.

chrisco255 9y ago
It's a 9 year old immutable public ledger that has yet to be hacked.
logicallee 9y ago
>What value does Bitcoin add to society? the value is that you can have anyone in the world murdered without it ever conceivably getting back to you.[1] (that value is obviously negative.) Therefore the appropriate value of bitcoin is $0 because literally all of society is set up for the exact and sole purpose of ensuring that the availability of bitcoin is $0. This is literally the only purpose for which the past 100,000 years of society have been set up. That's it. 1) technology. 2) rule of law. briefly 1 has surpassed 2 but not for long. social progress is worth way more than technological progress. My price target for bitcoin is $0. That said, an appropriate target is trillions in market cap and it is likely to get to that price. ---- [1] While producing greenhouse gasses robbing our children and their children of the sole habitable habitat in the universe - but that is not enough to make it illegal.
- stale2002 9y ago
  What about the value of fighting financial censorship? There are lots of governments and people that attempted to censor perfectly moral and reasonable transactions. Just because it is "the law" doesn't make it right. Do you also dislike Tor because it allows political dissenters to hide from the government?
  - roma1n 9y ago
    "censor" is a loaded term. Why not "forbid"? Also, what if the solution to an abusive government is not a technological tool but a plurality of governments, many of which promote (some vision of) human rights? Central power, authority is not inherently evil.
    - stale2002 9y ago
      Yes, there are different governments, some of which are good, and some of which are bad. Which is exactly why tools for fighting censorship are important. To fight the bad governments. "just make the government better" isn't a solution. People have been trying to make terrible, abusive governments better for thousands of years. But until the problem of bad governments is solved, tools to fight those governments are important. Just like tools that allow people to engage in anonymous and protected speech and political disagreement are important. And right now there are a lot of really freaking terrible governments. I'd argue that around ~20 percent of people in the world right now live under a government that I'd describe as "Nazi level bad". (ex, much of the middle east has laws that literally give the death penalty for being gay. That's Nazi level bad... ). When you have this many people living under terrible governments, tools for these people are extremely important.
stale2002 9y ago
The value of Bitcoin is to provide people with the ability to send quick transactions across the world that are difficult to censor. What other ways do people have of sending censorship resistant transactions?

What value does Bitcoin add to society? IF you don't add value, what's the point of having you around? Bitcoin could absolutely go to zero. I say this as a holder of some.

chrisco255 9y ago

It's a 9 year old immutable public ledger that has yet to be hacked.

logicallee 9y ago

>What value does Bitcoin add to society? the value is that you can have anyone in the world murdered without it ever conceivably getting back to you.[1] (that value is obviously negative.) Therefore the appropriate value of bitcoin is $0 because literally all of society is set up for the exact and sole purpose of ensuring that the availability of bitcoin is $0. This is literally the only purpose for which the past 100,000 years of society have been set up. That's it. 1) technology. 2) rule of law. briefly 1 has surpassed 2 but not for long. social progress is worth way more than technological progress. My price target for bitcoin is $0. That said, an appropriate target is trillions in market cap and it is likely to get to that price. ---- [1] While producing greenhouse gasses robbing our children and their children of the sole habitable habitat in the universe - but that is not enough to make it illegal.

stale2002 9y ago
What about the value of fighting financial censorship? There are lots of governments and people that attempted to censor perfectly moral and reasonable transactions. Just because it is "the law" doesn't make it right. Do you also dislike Tor because it allows political dissenters to hide from the government?
- roma1n 9y ago
  "censor" is a loaded term. Why not "forbid"? Also, what if the solution to an abusive government is not a technological tool but a plurality of governments, many of which promote (some vision of) human rights? Central power, authority is not inherently evil.
  - stale2002 9y ago
    Yes, there are different governments, some of which are good, and some of which are bad. Which is exactly why tools for fighting censorship are important. To fight the bad governments. "just make the government better" isn't a solution. People have been trying to make terrible, abusive governments better for thousands of years. But until the problem of bad governments is solved, tools to fight those governments are important. Just like tools that allow people to engage in anonymous and protected speech and political disagreement are important. And right now there are a lot of really freaking terrible governments. I'd argue that around ~20 percent of people in the world right now live under a government that I'd describe as "Nazi level bad". (ex, much of the middle east has laws that literally give the death penalty for being gay. That's Nazi level bad... ). When you have this many people living under terrible governments, tools for these people are extremely important.

stale2002 9y ago

The value of Bitcoin is to provide people with the ability to send quick transactions across the world that are difficult to censor. What other ways do people have of sending censorship resistant transactions?