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> 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 ot

> 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
  - virgilp 6y ago
    Again, the claim I objected to is "transfer money[+] across political boundaries without censorship". That's what I'm objecting to. Yes - you can make a transfer of bitcoin/ it's very hard for the state to stop or reverse that transfer. But is that what we mean when we say "without censorship", really? We're getting into the joke territory here, this sounds very much like "USSR had freedom of speech, what it didn't have was freedom after speech". [+] BTC is not money, but I'm going to let that slide for this part of the argument.
    - keymone 6y ago
      > But is that what we mean when we say "without censorship", really? yes it is. no technology will suddenly make censorhip go away. but technology can allow one to circumvent censorship. bitcoin doesn't solve censorship, corruption, fascism, genocide and whatever else you may want to throw in to justify your skepticism, but it doesn't have to. it solves a very specific problem: non-debaseable digital money and permission-less transacting of it. that comes with a set of compromises and great deal of responsibility for your actions, but it's a useful and valuable tool, first of it's kind and certainly the biggest revolution in finance since gold standard.
- NoOneNew 6y ago
  I know where you're getting at, but I think investment vehicle is a better term than commodity. Bitcoin is traded around as bitcoin to speculate that it'll have future value upon a traded upon nationalized currency. Commodities, while do get traded, are eventually consumed outside the investment market. You might trade and hold corn on the market, its end goal is to end up (consumed) as doritos or cornbread. Or iron gets consumed as steel for a car. The end goal of trading bitcoin ends up to be continously traded for a direct return on investment in the future. This is partially the issue with the housing crisis. Houses were constantly market traded without being consumed. Both in home investment speculators, folks that just bought the house to flip it the next week without ever living in it (a paper in florida at the time did an article showing a lot of homes in neighborhoods would go through about 6 owners in 2 or 3 years before someone lived in it right before the bubble burst) then there was the investment vehicle constant trading of the mortgages themselves. That was a twofer of shit hitting the fan. Anyways yea, not harping on you too much for semantics but the rabid crypto fanboys(not calling you one) really fuck up their terminology and understanding of basic economics. Hey, wait a second, isnt McAfee supposed to eat his dick since bitcoin didnt hit the million mark?
amscanne 6y ago
> there is no such thing. not in bitcoin, not in usd, not in gold. all value is extrinsic and assigned by market. Just as a nit, there absolutely is. Food provides value in that you can eat it to survive. Housing provides value in that it provides shelter from the elements. A goat provides milk and you can eat it. Barter systems typically involve the trade of two such goods. The problem is that such goods typically spoil with time, which is a primary advantage of fiat currency -- it is not subject to physical constraints. Historically, people also used things like salt, which had intrinsic value (for preserving and flavoring food) but didn't spoil. But the use becomes so abstract that its pointless to haul salt around. Eventually you transition to precious metals, which also have some intrinsic value (for engineering various goods) but much less concrete. Then you transition to effective "gold IOUs" (gold-backend currency). The idea of having a currency completed untethered to anything of value is relatively new. One of the most interesting aspects of bitcoin is proponents fervently advocate for one element of the gold standard (a fixed supply), but not the other (something physical of utility).
- keymone 6y ago
  i didn't express myself correctly. the use-value exists, definitely, but it's effect on exchange-value of the commodity is diminished as that commodity becomes widely used medium of exchange/store of value. gold's use-value in tech and jewelery is a small fraction of gold's exchange-value. > One of the most interesting aspects of bitcoin is proponents fervently advocate for one element of the gold standard (a fixed supply), but not the other (something physical of utility). if gold became useless for exchange purpose and only it's use-value was relevant, market price would go down to pretty much nothing, the scammiest cryptocurrency exit-scams would be brought to shame by that drop. so physical utility of gold has absolutely no relevance to gold-standard. even jewelery use-value was mostly driven by exchange-value, so that would become irrelevant as well and the market would be flooded by worthless golden trinkets and rings.
  - throwaway-8c93 6y ago
    > gold's use-value in tech and jewelery is a small fraction of gold's exchange-value According to Wikipedia: "The world consumption of new gold produced is about 50% in jewelry, 40% in investments, and 10% in industry.". Now, there are ETFs, futures, options, etc, that inflate the speculative portion, but the valuation due to physical properties is still likely within an order of magnitude of its total market value.
toiletfuneral 6y ago
I really do hate to be that guy but gold has intrinsic value in plenty of actual meaningful tools & products (electronics, aerospace etc), but I think your point still mostly stands
dheera 6y ago
> there is no such thing. not in bitcoin, not in usd, not in gold. all value is extrinsic and assigned by market. Exactly! It also is interesting how people were berating USDT for not having their coins backed in USD. Does it matter? As long as people are amicably agreeing to trade it at 1 USD, it's working as designed.

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
- virgilp 6y ago
  Again, the claim I objected to is "transfer money[+] across political boundaries without censorship". That's what I'm objecting to. Yes - you can make a transfer of bitcoin/ it's very hard for the state to stop or reverse that transfer. But is that what we mean when we say "without censorship", really? We're getting into the joke territory here, this sounds very much like "USSR had freedom of speech, what it didn't have was freedom after speech". [+] BTC is not money, but I'm going to let that slide for this part of the argument.
  - keymone 6y ago
    > But is that what we mean when we say "without censorship", really? yes it is. no technology will suddenly make censorhip go away. but technology can allow one to circumvent censorship. bitcoin doesn't solve censorship, corruption, fascism, genocide and whatever else you may want to throw in to justify your skepticism, but it doesn't have to. it solves a very specific problem: non-debaseable digital money and permission-less transacting of it. that comes with a set of compromises and great deal of responsibility for your actions, but it's a useful and valuable tool, first of it's kind and certainly the biggest revolution in finance since gold standard.
NoOneNew 6y ago
I know where you're getting at, but I think investment vehicle is a better term than commodity. Bitcoin is traded around as bitcoin to speculate that it'll have future value upon a traded upon nationalized currency. Commodities, while do get traded, are eventually consumed outside the investment market. You might trade and hold corn on the market, its end goal is to end up (consumed) as doritos or cornbread. Or iron gets consumed as steel for a car. The end goal of trading bitcoin ends up to be continously traded for a direct return on investment in the future. This is partially the issue with the housing crisis. Houses were constantly market traded without being consumed. Both in home investment speculators, folks that just bought the house to flip it the next week without ever living in it (a paper in florida at the time did an article showing a lot of homes in neighborhoods would go through about 6 owners in 2 or 3 years before someone lived in it right before the bubble burst) then there was the investment vehicle constant trading of the mortgages themselves. That was a twofer of shit hitting the fan. Anyways yea, not harping on you too much for semantics but the rabid crypto fanboys(not calling you one) really fuck up their terminology and understanding of basic economics. Hey, wait a second, isnt McAfee supposed to eat his dick since bitcoin didnt hit the million mark?

amscanne 6y ago

> there is no such thing. not in bitcoin, not in usd, not in gold. all value is extrinsic and assigned by market. Just as a nit, there absolutely is. Food provides value in that you can eat it to survive. Housing provides value in that it provides shelter from the elements. A goat provides milk and you can eat it. Barter systems typically involve the trade of two such goods. The problem is that such goods typically spoil with time, which is a primary advantage of fiat currency -- it is not subject to physical constraints. Historically, people also used things like salt, which had intrinsic value (for preserving and flavoring food) but didn't spoil. But the use becomes so abstract that its pointless to haul salt around. Eventually you transition to precious metals, which also have some intrinsic value (for engineering various goods) but much less concrete. Then you transition to effective "gold IOUs" (gold-backend currency). The idea of having a currency completed untethered to anything of value is relatively new. One of the most interesting aspects of bitcoin is proponents fervently advocate for one element of the gold standard (a fixed supply), but not the other (something physical of utility).

keymone 6y ago
i didn't express myself correctly. the use-value exists, definitely, but it's effect on exchange-value of the commodity is diminished as that commodity becomes widely used medium of exchange/store of value. gold's use-value in tech and jewelery is a small fraction of gold's exchange-value. > One of the most interesting aspects of bitcoin is proponents fervently advocate for one element of the gold standard (a fixed supply), but not the other (something physical of utility). if gold became useless for exchange purpose and only it's use-value was relevant, market price would go down to pretty much nothing, the scammiest cryptocurrency exit-scams would be brought to shame by that drop. so physical utility of gold has absolutely no relevance to gold-standard. even jewelery use-value was mostly driven by exchange-value, so that would become irrelevant as well and the market would be flooded by worthless golden trinkets and rings.
- throwaway-8c93 6y ago
  > gold's use-value in tech and jewelery is a small fraction of gold's exchange-value According to Wikipedia: "The world consumption of new gold produced is about 50% in jewelry, 40% in investments, and 10% in industry.". Now, there are ETFs, futures, options, etc, that inflate the speculative portion, but the valuation due to physical properties is still likely within an order of magnitude of its total market value.

toiletfuneral 6y ago

I really do hate to be that guy but gold has intrinsic value in plenty of actual meaningful tools & products (electronics, aerospace etc), but I think your point still mostly stands

dheera 6y ago

> there is no such thing. not in bitcoin, not in usd, not in gold. all value is extrinsic and assigned by market. Exactly! It also is interesting how people were berating USDT for not having their coins backed in USD. Does it matter? As long as people are amicably agreeing to trade it at 1 USD, it's working as designed.