> It seems to me that it is difficult to measure the productivity of a decentralized asset like BTC. It’s actually really easy, because the answer is just 0. B

> It seems to me that it is difficult to measure the productivity of a decentralized asset like BTC. It’s actually really easy, because the answer is just 0. Bitcoin is not productive capital in exactly the same way that the USD is not productive capital. “Investing” in Bitcoin is not like investing in an enterprise, it’s financial speculation. This is perfectly demonstrated by the “1 BTC = 1 BTC” meme, at the end of some period of hodling nothing has been produced, no matter how long you hodl for. Now, there are some second-order benefits to financial speculation, it can drive price discovery and provides the liquidity to make markets efficient, but financial speculation on Bitcoin doesn’t have these second-order effects because those second-order effects are only relevant when some amount of non-speculation demand exists for the speculation target. There are other cryptocurrencies that can be used for more than just financial speculation, i.e. that actually have productive uses, and some people are working on finding ways to staple productive use cases to the Bitcoin blockchain, but a Bitcoin is still not productive capital. It’s not good for the economy if too much financial activity gets sucked into financial speculation, since we need financial resources to actually be invested or the economy grinds to a halt. Now, none of these are issues for a currency. Of course a currency isn’t productive capital, it’s a medium of exchange. But currencies are most useful when they are stable, and Bitcoin is a resounding failure as a currency.