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> What future does an asset have if people don't actually buy stuff with it? The same as gold does?
by viach 9y ago
> What future does an asset have if people don't actually buy stuff with it?
The same as gold does?
- opportune 9y agoOr lead
- viach 9y agoGold is rare, lead isn't
- bradleyjg 9y agoLead is useful. Even gold is somewhat useful. Bitcoin is an asset that’s neither productive (stocks, bonds, land) nor useful (oil, wheat, lead). That’s quite unusual.
- sowbug 9y agoIts utility is as a medium of exchange whose transactions are faster and cheaper than any other scarce asset.* *Rewrite in past tense or read circa 2015.
- viach 9y agoYou can buy Bitcoin worth 50k USD in one country, cross the border and sell it in another, with no documents required . This is useful for a subset of people .
- bradleyjg 9y agoNot sure exactly what you mean by no documents required. You need to find some way to get money to the seller when you are in country A and the buyer needs to the same for you in country B. There is no reason that same pair of transactions could not have occurred with British bonds.
- viach 9y agoI mean one of the main cryptocurrencies attraction points - it's unregulated and you can move money cross borders freely. And guys from localbitcoin don't ask many questions. There are other ways also, I suspect.
- bradleyjg 9y agoThey aren't unregulated. All the laws apply to them. They just are new enough so that governments haven't gotten up to speed in enforcing the laws with respect to them yet. But there's no reason whatsoever to believe that they won't eventually come up to speed or that somehow their nature will render those enforcement efforts impossible.