> Bitcoin and friends have value because they are fungible and because people assign a value to it. (Much like fiat money.) The dollar is the official currenc

> Bitcoin and friends have value because they are fungible and because people assign a value to it. (Much like fiat money.) The dollar is the official currency of the US, and all transactions the government makes is required to be in the US dollar. Bitcoin is an optional currency, made fashionable by the likes of Aston Kutchner, and appears to be more akin to a polyester leisure suit of the 1970's than the US Dollar. Both Bitcoin and a polyester leisure suit at one point had value, and they both got their value based upon fashion and celebrity. > We're not talking about Tether though, we're talking about fungible instruments. I can make 1 fashionable number worth $1M. Or, I can also make 1 million fashionable numbers worth $1 each. It doesn't matter that the price is fixed, if I have infinite supply. From wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tether_(cryptocurrency) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tether_(cryptocurrency) Tether claims that it intends to hold all United States dollars in reserve so that it can meet customer withdrawals upon demand, though it was unable to meet all withdrawal requests in 2017.[33] Tether purports to make reserve account holdings transparent via external audit; however, no such audits exist.[8] In January 2018 Tether announced that they no longer had a relationship with their auditor.[34]