5 ms·

Yes, but how many of those numbers can you sell at cost? (There is crypto scarcity, who values the random newcoin at the same as some "established coin" Bitcoin

by yebyen 8y ago

Yes, but how many of those numbers can you sell at cost? (There is crypto scarcity, who values the random newcoin at the same as some "established coin" Bitcoin or close, older friend coin? I can see that BCH, LTC, BAB, BSV, etc have all not come close to the price of the original BTC. So, "store of value" is obviously wrong, but...)

bb88 8y ago
That's a marketing problem. :) "Each one will be a unique and priceless number using the largest of prime numbers. Each number comes with a genuine certificate of authenticity hand signed with the author's private key..."
- yebyen 8y ago
  Only the best numbers... I hear you, one must back their best issued numbers with actual software to ensure their value ;) BSV has handcash, honestly that seemed like a great wallet until I realized it wasn't supported by any of my held coins!
  - bb88 8y ago
    My point is that one way to look at bitcoin is that it's nothing more than a marketing scheme. And the "scarcity" in bitcoin is just artificial at best. Yes BTC has scarcity, but cryptocurrency itself has no scarcity, proven by the fact that there are over 1,000 alt coins. And all of those coins are just number generators. Here's another way to illustrate the issue: I have two numbers. 1. The first takes your user id "yebyen" and appends a number to it so that the SHA-256 hash is exactly 0x0. It will take 20 years of processing power on the NSA computers, so it should be worth something to you. 2. The second number is an encrypted location somewhere in the US where I've buried $1000. It will cost you $1010 to acquire it from me. I'll decrypt it for free but it will be worth exactly $0 afterwards. But until then it's worth $1000 and you can give the number to whoever you want to. Which number has a bigger intrinsic value?
    - yebyen 8y ago
      Ok, now do traditional fiat money... This is a good metaphor, but it's not perfect. You haven't explained how or why you'll be burying $1000 exactly 21 million times, every 10 minutes until 2140. Or why it becomes worthless immediately upon decryption... nobody can unbury the cash value of an individual Bitcoin, rendering it worthless, but they can be transferred instantly from party to party, which partially funds the ongoing operations of the network. Even Satoshi himself cannot end Bitcoin at this point. Even if he still lives, and has the keys to the large stash of Bitcoin he mined in the beginning, it could be a major market-altering event if he dumped them all at once, but it would likely not be the end of Bitcoin. Sure, it's great marketing, with an extremely long con...
      - bb88 8y ago
        > This is a good metaphor, but it's not perfect. You haven't explained how or why you'll be burying $1000 exactly 21 million times, every 10 minutes until 2140. That's an engineering problem. ;) And it's also beside the point. One has intrinsic value, one doesn't. > Or why it becomes worthless immediately upon decryption... The reason the number is worth something is because there's real money tied to it. Once the guarantee of value disappears, the value of the number also does.
        yebyen 8y ago
        > The reason the number is worth something is because there's real money tied to it. That's the reason why Tether and stablecoins like it ostensibly have value. Bitcoin and friends have value because they are fungible and because people assign a value to it. (Much like fiat money.) There was never any guaranteed value, but many people saw Bitcoin transacting at $0.05 and put it through the paces, understood what they were observing, and saw that it was massively undervalued as a new technology. Since then it's been proven to work on a repeatable basis, with some caveats like the issues that come with increasing popularity scaling up the volume and value per coin, like $50 transaction fees, but that's another engineering problem. If you told me for some reason that you thought Bitcoin and every cryptocurrency will simultaneously become worth less than that $0.05, overnight, I would assume that you are either a kook, or again, perhaps, that you've discovered another engineering problem... demands further explanation. We're not talking about Tether though, we're talking about fungible instruments. You wouldn't say that a stock is valueless because its value fluctuates.

by yebyen 8y ago

bb88 8y ago

That's a marketing problem. :) "Each one will be a unique and priceless number using the largest of prime numbers. Each number comes with a genuine certificate of authenticity hand signed with the author's private key..."

yebyen 8y ago
Only the best numbers... I hear you, one must back their best issued numbers with actual software to ensure their value ;) BSV has handcash, honestly that seemed like a great wallet until I realized it wasn't supported by any of my held coins!
- bb88 8y ago
  My point is that one way to look at bitcoin is that it's nothing more than a marketing scheme. And the "scarcity" in bitcoin is just artificial at best. Yes BTC has scarcity, but cryptocurrency itself has no scarcity, proven by the fact that there are over 1,000 alt coins. And all of those coins are just number generators. Here's another way to illustrate the issue: I have two numbers. 1. The first takes your user id "yebyen" and appends a number to it so that the SHA-256 hash is exactly 0x0. It will take 20 years of processing power on the NSA computers, so it should be worth something to you. 2. The second number is an encrypted location somewhere in the US where I've buried $1000. It will cost you $1010 to acquire it from me. I'll decrypt it for free but it will be worth exactly $0 afterwards. But until then it's worth $1000 and you can give the number to whoever you want to. Which number has a bigger intrinsic value?
  - yebyen 8y ago
    Ok, now do traditional fiat money... This is a good metaphor, but it's not perfect. You haven't explained how or why you'll be burying $1000 exactly 21 million times, every 10 minutes until 2140. Or why it becomes worthless immediately upon decryption... nobody can unbury the cash value of an individual Bitcoin, rendering it worthless, but they can be transferred instantly from party to party, which partially funds the ongoing operations of the network. Even Satoshi himself cannot end Bitcoin at this point. Even if he still lives, and has the keys to the large stash of Bitcoin he mined in the beginning, it could be a major market-altering event if he dumped them all at once, but it would likely not be the end of Bitcoin. Sure, it's great marketing, with an extremely long con...
    - bb88 8y ago
      > This is a good metaphor, but it's not perfect. You haven't explained how or why you'll be burying $1000 exactly 21 million times, every 10 minutes until 2140. That's an engineering problem. ;) And it's also beside the point. One has intrinsic value, one doesn't. > Or why it becomes worthless immediately upon decryption... The reason the number is worth something is because there's real money tied to it. Once the guarantee of value disappears, the value of the number also does.
      - yebyen 8y ago
        > The reason the number is worth something is because there's real money tied to it. That's the reason why Tether and stablecoins like it ostensibly have value. Bitcoin and friends have value because they are fungible and because people assign a value to it. (Much like fiat money.) There was never any guaranteed value, but many people saw Bitcoin transacting at $0.05 and put it through the paces, understood what they were observing, and saw that it was massively undervalued as a new technology. Since then it's been proven to work on a repeatable basis, with some caveats like the issues that come with increasing popularity scaling up the volume and value per coin, like $50 transaction fees, but that's another engineering problem. If you told me for some reason that you thought Bitcoin and every cryptocurrency will simultaneously become worth less than that $0.05, overnight, I would assume that you are either a kook, or again, perhaps, that you've discovered another engineering problem... demands further explanation. We're not talking about Tether though, we're talking about fungible instruments. You wouldn't say that a stock is valueless because its value fluctuates.