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'Need' is a relative term. If you ask me what I need, I'll say I need a house to live in, air to breathe, water to drink and food to eat. If you ask Mark Zucker

'Need' is a relative term. If you ask me what I need, I'll say I need a house to live in, air to breathe, water to drink and food to eat. If you ask Mark Zuckerberg what he needs, he'll say "All that can be counted". Mark Zuckerberg has much more money than you or me. So when it comes to valuing things on the open market, his opinion of what 'Need' means matters a lot more.

acdha 8y ago
That doesn't really relate to anything I wrote. My question was that if Bitcoin collapsed tomorrow, who'd notice other than the get-rich-quick crowd? Statistically nobody uses it for daily transactions and almost everyone has other options which are some combination of cheaper, faster, safer, and easier to use. There just isn't a long-term anchor pushing people to use that particular system, certainly not at the level needed to sustain the high infrastructure costs.
- jondubois 8y ago
  A lot of rich people use Bitcoin for self-realisation (e.g. to get that special "I own a lot of Bitcoin" feeling). As an average person, you might think it's a ridiculous use case but it's actually very important to them, therefore it's very important full stop. It's the same reason why fine Art is expensive. People want to experience a very specific "I own a Picasso" feeling. Normal people don't understand this, but what normal people think doesn't matter in the current economy.
  - acdha 8y ago
    Okay, so in addition to that claim being unsupported and rather unlikely you have a major problem with this theory: art only requires one person to like it but a currency requires an active network and someone who just likes to look at SHA hashes isn't going to generate much transaction volume.
    - jondubois 8y ago
      Well there are a lot of technology-oriented rich people who want to be able to say to themselves and others that x% of their wealth is in Bitcoin (even if it's just a hedge bet) and this shared desire to own Bitcoin is reliable enough that it can be quantified; and that shared desire determines the market cap of Bitcoin. It's not different from any other currency. The main difference is that a government cannot use the tax system to force people to use Bitcoin - But then again, the government cannot force rich people to pay tax at all.

acdha 8y ago

That doesn't really relate to anything I wrote. My question was that if Bitcoin collapsed tomorrow, who'd notice other than the get-rich-quick crowd? Statistically nobody uses it for daily transactions and almost everyone has other options which are some combination of cheaper, faster, safer, and easier to use. There just isn't a long-term anchor pushing people to use that particular system, certainly not at the level needed to sustain the high infrastructure costs.

jondubois 8y ago
A lot of rich people use Bitcoin for self-realisation (e.g. to get that special "I own a lot of Bitcoin" feeling). As an average person, you might think it's a ridiculous use case but it's actually very important to them, therefore it's very important full stop. It's the same reason why fine Art is expensive. People want to experience a very specific "I own a Picasso" feeling. Normal people don't understand this, but what normal people think doesn't matter in the current economy.
- acdha 8y ago
  Okay, so in addition to that claim being unsupported and rather unlikely you have a major problem with this theory: art only requires one person to like it but a currency requires an active network and someone who just likes to look at SHA hashes isn't going to generate much transaction volume.
  - jondubois 8y ago
    Well there are a lot of technology-oriented rich people who want to be able to say to themselves and others that x% of their wealth is in Bitcoin (even if it's just a hedge bet) and this shared desire to own Bitcoin is reliable enough that it can be quantified; and that shared desire determines the market cap of Bitcoin. It's not different from any other currency. The main difference is that a government cannot use the tax system to force people to use Bitcoin - But then again, the government cannot force rich people to pay tax at all.