8 ms·

> ignoring that the ability to independently verify the money supply and being able to transfer money across political boundaries without censorship is probably

> ignoring that the ability to independently verify the money supply and being able to transfer money across political boundaries without censorship is probably the most important intrinsic value one could hope for in a MoE/SoV. That BTC is not (yet?) money should again be non-controversial, since the vast majority of economic agents anywhere won't accept it directly (so you need to exchange BTC for cash first). It does have a decent claim at "store of value". But, where is the "intrinsic value"? You claim two of them: 1. ability to independently verify the money supply 2. being able to transfer money across political boundaries without censorship I don't understand either, to be honest: 1. You can verify the supply of other things (e.g. company shares) at an independent body. I'm pretty sure that's true for "money in circulation", too. Ok, the verification is not distributed, but is that distribution so valuable? Or do you actually mean "The supply is naturally-limited and nobody can easily produce tons of BTC out of thin air"? Then, yes, BTC has that property... but, tons of other things do! E.g. why not invest in amber, it's probably one of the rarest things in the universe. 2. Transfer across political boundaries: is there ANY inherent guarantee? Say US decides tomorrow that trading BTC is illegal, how would BTC protect you from that? Using existing anti-money-laundering laws & global institutions, you'd be effectively banned from getting back any value from your BTCs (or, doing so would expose you to all the associated risks).

as300 6y ago
> Then, yes, BTC has that property... but, tons of other things do! E.g. why not invest in amber, it's probably one of the rarest things in the universe. Yes but the amount of amber, gold, silver, etc. on Earth is a known unknown. There are presumably deposits of gold that we don't yet know about. The amount of BTC is known. You seem to be conflating rarity with fixed scarcity. > Using existing anti-money-laundering laws & global institutions, you'd be effectively banned from getting back any value from your BTCs (or, doing so would expose you to all the associated risks). While this is true, this is sort of the whole point of bitcoin. Like, it's a currency that is independent of any nation-state and acts as a sort of systemic-hedge against governmental incompetence/malfeasance. So the fact that it could even be banned by any particular country is kind of part of its value proposition. And, similar to VPN's, just because an IP-based technology is banned doesn't mean that it'd become impossible to use.
- wsc981 6y ago
  I would add that it’s also extremely unlikely that all countries in the world would ban bitcoin. For example I read somewhere that Iran is using Bitcoin to avoid some of the sanctions the US out on Iran. Vice also wrote an article on this: https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjppx3/iran-bitcoin-us-sanctions https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjppx3/iran-bitcoin-us-sanct...
- Retric 6y ago
  The total amount of Bitcoin in circulation is an unknown as lost wallets are a huge thing. At most you can say Bitcoin is less than X, but that’s true of many many other man made things. Aka any movement of Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoins would have a huge impact on the number of Bitcoins estimated to be in circulation.
- virgilp 6y ago
  Like Retric says below, it's easy to put an upper bound to all of the other commodities on earth (and especially so to amber, since no amount of asteroid mining is going to increase that). I think the appeal of BTC is that it's a commodity [+] that's easily transferable across large distances & incurs very low storage costs. I get that. However, that alone does not necessarily make it a good store of value in my eyes; for that to be true, there'd have to be an extremely low risk of the value suddenly degrading to less than 1% essentially overnight(e.g. in less than a week). I guess here is where I disagree with lots of BTC proponents - I don't see it as "independent" of anything, certainly not of big nation-states. I don't see what would persuade people to continue to assign value to BTC in the face of events like those presented in the article. [+] Do note that I do not accept it is "currency" - because it has low acceptability, by design.
- xapata 6y ago
  > Yes but the amount of amber, gold, silver, etc. on Earth is a known unknown. There are presumably deposits of gold that we don't yet know about. There's a difference between known unknown with high variance and known unknown with low variance. As I understand it, astrophysicists have a non-controversial model for how much gold is present on earth. Geologists probably have a reasonable model for how much gold is easily accessible.
keymone 6y ago
> where is the "intrinsic value"? there is no such thing. not in bitcoin, not in usd, not in gold. all value is extrinsic and assigned by market. > tons of other things do! E.g. why not invest in amber, it's probably one of the rarest things in the universe and tons of other things are invested into: precious metals, commodities, etc. bitcoin is the first digital commodity, which can't be inlated by some centralized authority. > is there ANY inherent guarantee yes, bitcoin transaction is finite and irreversible as soon as signature is published via any possible information channel and sufficient number of blocks are found on top of the one that includes the transaction. you can morse-code it into ionosphere to be picked up by the receiver or you can flashlight it across north korean border, no internet required. US regulation may prevent you from interacting within US jurisdiction, but that's a different issue and precludes bitcoin being money about as much as US ban of certain drugs precludes them from getting people high.
- virgilp 6y ago
  To clarify my position: I 100% agree that bitcoin is the first digital commodity. I disagree that it's appropriate to call it "money" (based on the fact that, by design, it has low acceptability - if enough people would use it for their daily transactions, the entire network would break down). I'm also really uncertain that it's an appropriate store of value, and lean on the side of "it's not". WRT guarantee... yes, let's say I accept that you can send BTC to somebody regardless what laws the US passes. The question is, can you receive something in exchange? Because if you can't then it means that the technology is not offering you any guarantee. So that guarantee can't be the "intrinsic value". (you don't claim that it is - you just claim intrinsic value does not exist, which is a completely new discussion that I don't want to get into right now)
  - keymone 6y ago
    > can you receive something in exchange? that is quite the goalpost shift. bitcoin allows you to send and receive bitcoin securely and without asking permission. it is not bitcoin's purpose to ensure whatever the contract you're trying to realize entails. there are escrow services and what not for that. the guarantee bitcoin gives you is that once transaction was finalized: - you are the sole owner of assigned bitcoin - only you can change that record in the ledger - nobody can stop you from doing that - nobody can dilute your share of the asset beyond the normal issuance schedule
stale2002 6y ago
> Transfer across political boundaries: is there ANY inherent guarantee? Yes, there is some guarantee. The guarantee is that government already have had numerous motivations to ban bitcoin already, and yet most governments have not seriously attempted to do so, likely due to the very significant efforts that would be required to do that. I have been hearing "The government is going to ban bitcoin!!!" For 10 years now. And for 10 years, no government has been successful, and most countries simply been dismotivated from doing so.
- virgilp 6y ago
  Do note that I don't claim (or think) that it's very likely for this to happen. But the comment I replied to made a strong claim: that (technologically?) BTC offers this ability. This is not just some nice property that it currently has, it's part of the "intrinsic value" of BTC. This to me sounded like a claim of "guarantee", not just a claim that "nobody banned it yet, and maybe they won't ban it in the future, either".
- cft 6y ago
  BTC now is only 0.6T. When it approaches M3 money supply, expect an attempted government action. Whether it's successful or not, is a separate question: it would have to be coordinated across G20 to be "successful".
erosenbe0 6y ago
If you are living in the US or EU then being able to hide assets and transfer without censorship is mostly a bug, not a feature. And eventually the governments will have to do something about it in order to preserve the rule of law. What happens if you are disabled in a horrible negligent accident or defrauded in some conventional transaction and defendant hides all assets and transactions in BTC? I can't imagine a long term equilibrium where [Americans, at least] store trillions and trillions of dollars in BTC without substantial additional regulation. Edit: for those in relatively more corrupt, tenuous circumstances then BTC is a net positive, of course.
- vbezhenar 6y ago
  I don't see anything particularly hard about regulating bitcoins. You're registering your wallets with your government and that's about it. Bitcoin is fully transparent, so government can track every transaction and if you're doing transaction to some non-verified wallet, you have to explain it to your government. I would argue that bitcoins are even easier to track than bank accounts. What government can't do is to steal your money or block your access to your money.
  - free_rms 6y ago
    > What government can't do is to steal your money or block your access to your money. https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    > What government can't do is to steal your money or block your access to your money. Gov: “Here is our wallet blacklist feed. If you transact with these wallets, you go to jail.” On the plus side, FinCEN can automate currency transaction report generation and monitoring on a public distributed ledger.
    - vbezhenar 6y ago
      > Gov: “Here is our wallet blacklist feed. If you transact with these wallets, you go to jail.” Me: "I'm already in Africa, find me, losers"
DickingAround 6y ago
First, it does seem like it's a form of money. You can trade it for all sorts of things. Some of them directly. Some you make a trade. But it's super liquid; accepted more widely than a lot of country-specific currencies (e.g. I could pay my friends in BTC because they can use BTC, but they're not going to take rubles). To your questions: 1. You can't know how many shares there are going to be for companies. Even if you choose to use some company's stock as a long term store of value, that company will eventually fail at making profit and will issue new shares. 2. If the US banned BTC, it's easy to move overseas with it; memorize the key (not easy, but possible) and just spend the money when you get overseas. Or if you're going to stay in the US, you could just use it the way the dark web already does (not totally clear on how all that works, but clearly it does).

as300 6y ago

> Then, yes, BTC has that property... but, tons of other things do! E.g. why not invest in amber, it's probably one of the rarest things in the universe. Yes but the amount of amber, gold, silver, etc. on Earth is a known unknown. There are presumably deposits of gold that we don't yet know about. The amount of BTC is known. You seem to be conflating rarity with fixed scarcity. > Using existing anti-money-laundering laws & global institutions, you'd be effectively banned from getting back any value from your BTCs (or, doing so would expose you to all the associated risks). While this is true, this is sort of the whole point of bitcoin. Like, it's a currency that is independent of any nation-state and acts as a sort of systemic-hedge against governmental incompetence/malfeasance. So the fact that it could even be banned by any particular country is kind of part of its value proposition. And, similar to VPN's, just because an IP-based technology is banned doesn't mean that it'd become impossible to use.

wsc981 6y ago
I would add that it’s also extremely unlikely that all countries in the world would ban bitcoin. For example I read somewhere that Iran is using Bitcoin to avoid some of the sanctions the US out on Iran. Vice also wrote an article on this: https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjppx3/iran-bitcoin-us-sanctions https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjppx3/iran-bitcoin-us-sanct...
Retric 6y ago
The total amount of Bitcoin in circulation is an unknown as lost wallets are a huge thing. At most you can say Bitcoin is less than X, but that’s true of many many other man made things. Aka any movement of Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoins would have a huge impact on the number of Bitcoins estimated to be in circulation.
virgilp 6y ago
Like Retric says below, it's easy to put an upper bound to all of the other commodities on earth (and especially so to amber, since no amount of asteroid mining is going to increase that). I think the appeal of BTC is that it's a commodity [+] that's easily transferable across large distances & incurs very low storage costs. I get that. However, that alone does not necessarily make it a good store of value in my eyes; for that to be true, there'd have to be an extremely low risk of the value suddenly degrading to less than 1% essentially overnight(e.g. in less than a week). I guess here is where I disagree with lots of BTC proponents - I don't see it as "independent" of anything, certainly not of big nation-states. I don't see what would persuade people to continue to assign value to BTC in the face of events like those presented in the article. [+] Do note that I do not accept it is "currency" - because it has low acceptability, by design.
xapata 6y ago
> Yes but the amount of amber, gold, silver, etc. on Earth is a known unknown. There are presumably deposits of gold that we don't yet know about. There's a difference between known unknown with high variance and known unknown with low variance. As I understand it, astrophysicists have a non-controversial model for how much gold is present on earth. Geologists probably have a reasonable model for how much gold is easily accessible.

keymone 6y ago

> where is the "intrinsic value"? there is no such thing. not in bitcoin, not in usd, not in gold. all value is extrinsic and assigned by market. > tons of other things do! E.g. why not invest in amber, it's probably one of the rarest things in the universe and tons of other things are invested into: precious metals, commodities, etc. bitcoin is the first digital commodity, which can't be inlated by some centralized authority. > is there ANY inherent guarantee yes, bitcoin transaction is finite and irreversible as soon as signature is published via any possible information channel and sufficient number of blocks are found on top of the one that includes the transaction. you can morse-code it into ionosphere to be picked up by the receiver or you can flashlight it across north korean border, no internet required. US regulation may prevent you from interacting within US jurisdiction, but that's a different issue and precludes bitcoin being money about as much as US ban of certain drugs precludes them from getting people high.

virgilp 6y ago
To clarify my position: I 100% agree that bitcoin is the first digital commodity. I disagree that it's appropriate to call it "money" (based on the fact that, by design, it has low acceptability - if enough people would use it for their daily transactions, the entire network would break down). I'm also really uncertain that it's an appropriate store of value, and lean on the side of "it's not". WRT guarantee... yes, let's say I accept that you can send BTC to somebody regardless what laws the US passes. The question is, can you receive something in exchange? Because if you can't then it means that the technology is not offering you any guarantee. So that guarantee can't be the "intrinsic value". (you don't claim that it is - you just claim intrinsic value does not exist, which is a completely new discussion that I don't want to get into right now)
- keymone 6y ago
  > can you receive something in exchange? that is quite the goalpost shift. bitcoin allows you to send and receive bitcoin securely and without asking permission. it is not bitcoin's purpose to ensure whatever the contract you're trying to realize entails. there are escrow services and what not for that. the guarantee bitcoin gives you is that once transaction was finalized: - you are the sole owner of assigned bitcoin - only you can change that record in the ledger - nobody can stop you from doing that - nobody can dilute your share of the asset beyond the normal issuance schedule

stale2002 6y ago

> Transfer across political boundaries: is there ANY inherent guarantee? Yes, there is some guarantee. The guarantee is that government already have had numerous motivations to ban bitcoin already, and yet most governments have not seriously attempted to do so, likely due to the very significant efforts that would be required to do that. I have been hearing "The government is going to ban bitcoin!!!" For 10 years now. And for 10 years, no government has been successful, and most countries simply been dismotivated from doing so.

virgilp 6y ago
Do note that I don't claim (or think) that it's very likely for this to happen. But the comment I replied to made a strong claim: that (technologically?) BTC offers this ability. This is not just some nice property that it currently has, it's part of the "intrinsic value" of BTC. This to me sounded like a claim of "guarantee", not just a claim that "nobody banned it yet, and maybe they won't ban it in the future, either".
cft 6y ago
BTC now is only 0.6T. When it approaches M3 money supply, expect an attempted government action. Whether it's successful or not, is a separate question: it would have to be coordinated across G20 to be "successful".

erosenbe0 6y ago

If you are living in the US or EU then being able to hide assets and transfer without censorship is mostly a bug, not a feature. And eventually the governments will have to do something about it in order to preserve the rule of law. What happens if you are disabled in a horrible negligent accident or defrauded in some conventional transaction and defendant hides all assets and transactions in BTC? I can't imagine a long term equilibrium where [Americans, at least] store trillions and trillions of dollars in BTC without substantial additional regulation. Edit: for those in relatively more corrupt, tenuous circumstances then BTC is a net positive, of course.

vbezhenar 6y ago
I don't see anything particularly hard about regulating bitcoins. You're registering your wallets with your government and that's about it. Bitcoin is fully transparent, so government can track every transaction and if you're doing transaction to some non-verified wallet, you have to explain it to your government. I would argue that bitcoins are even easier to track than bank accounts. What government can't do is to steal your money or block your access to your money.
- free_rms 6y ago
  > What government can't do is to steal your money or block your access to your money. https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  > What government can't do is to steal your money or block your access to your money. Gov: “Here is our wallet blacklist feed. If you transact with these wallets, you go to jail.” On the plus side, FinCEN can automate currency transaction report generation and monitoring on a public distributed ledger.
  - vbezhenar 6y ago
    > Gov: “Here is our wallet blacklist feed. If you transact with these wallets, you go to jail.” Me: "I'm already in Africa, find me, losers"

DickingAround 6y ago

First, it does seem like it's a form of money. You can trade it for all sorts of things. Some of them directly. Some you make a trade. But it's super liquid; accepted more widely than a lot of country-specific currencies (e.g. I could pay my friends in BTC because they can use BTC, but they're not going to take rubles). To your questions: 1. You can't know how many shares there are going to be for companies. Even if you choose to use some company's stock as a long term store of value, that company will eventually fail at making profit and will issue new shares. 2. If the US banned BTC, it's easy to move overseas with it; memorize the key (not easy, but possible) and just spend the money when you get overseas. Or if you're going to stay in the US, you could just use it the way the dark web already does (not totally clear on how all that works, but clearly it does).