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> Bitcoin has no inherent value, it is a string of characters. So is any digital "good". If you value things that way, nothing on the computer is valuable. >

by intev 6y ago

> Bitcoin has no inherent value, it is a string of characters. So is any digital "good". If you value things that way, nothing on the computer is valuable. > At least with gold, you can hire artists to create amazing interior design works of art. Gold's primary value is from it's rarity. Very few cultures value gold for it's artistic attributes, India being the primary one. How often do you see someone wear gold jewelry in western countries? > BTC Will work as a store of value so long as there are a stream of other people who also believe it is a store of value. True for anything that is considered rare. The moment people deem it's not good enough or rare enough, it becomes useless. Paintings by famous artists are expensive purely because a certain group of people place high value on them. Otherwise it's just old paint on a canvas. > If everyone tries to exit on the same week or month the value goes to zero. If everyone goes to a bank at the same time and try to withdraw, there's no way any bank has the liquidity to be able to process this. Historically countries have placed withdrawal limits to curb this during mania. > Large banking institutes who purchased billions of dollars in bitcoin will be incentivized to simply hold, or else they would have to admit to their shareholders they paid billions of dollars for a string of characters. They are incentivized because the value keeps doing up due to it's fixed supply. If I gave you a rock, and I told you every year it's going to go up in value, wouldn't you be incentivized to hold it? > One event that would be a ‘black swan’ for bitcoin would be a North Korean hack on coinbase. If you disrupt trust in a mainstream bitcoin bank, people would flee. Yea, that would be disastrous. Unfortunately there's no way to recover stolen bitcoins, and due to it's inherently virtual nature, it makes it extremely susceptible to hacking. From everything you've mentioned this is the only real criticism, and I'm not sure we should let a fear of a black swan event drive us away from a potentially revolutionary financial system.

mttddd 6y ago
Gold is certainly more popular in India then the western world but most married people are walking around wearing a wedding ring and id guess the majority of those are gold? Gold also has very practical industrial applications which give it value, like you say most of the value boils down to scarcity but it is both desirable as a status symbol and for functional applications
defterGoose 6y ago
> Bitcoin has no inherent value, it is a string of characters. >So is any digital "good". If you value things that way, nothing on the computer is valuable. That's a bad analogy because other digital goods contain information that is useful in its own right, without any agreement on that usefulness being necessary. My music and pictures of my dog are useful to me in a way that transcends their usefulness to other people. To put it another way: people "love" their bitcoin like they "love" their health insurance: only because they are being held hostage by its value.
insert_coin 6y ago
> So is any digital "good". If you value things that way, nothing on the computer is valuable. Hence why they are not a store of "value". > Gold's primary value is from it's rarity. Very few cultures value gold for it's artistic attributes, India being the primary one. How often do you see someone wear gold jewelry in western countries? Gold primary value is that it is useful. Jewelry is very useful, but it is not is gold's only use.
imtringued 6y ago
>Gold's primary value is from it's rarity. Very few cultures value gold for it's artistic attributes, India being the primary one. How often do you see someone wear gold jewelry in western countries? Gold derives its status as the store of value element from it's physical properties. They are universal in the literal sense. If martians were real and there was gold on Mars martians would come to value gold for the exact same reasons we value gold. The exact value is still fictional but the point is that gold is a natural shelling point. The shelling point property will not disappear in the future. Bitcoin derives its shelling point property from being the first cryptocurrency with the largest mining network. There is a real risk that it will be replaced by something else.

by intev 6y ago

mttddd 6y ago

Gold is certainly more popular in India then the western world but most married people are walking around wearing a wedding ring and id guess the majority of those are gold? Gold also has very practical industrial applications which give it value, like you say most of the value boils down to scarcity but it is both desirable as a status symbol and for functional applications

defterGoose 6y ago

> Bitcoin has no inherent value, it is a string of characters. >So is any digital "good". If you value things that way, nothing on the computer is valuable. That's a bad analogy because other digital goods contain information that is useful in its own right, without any agreement on that usefulness being necessary. My music and pictures of my dog are useful to me in a way that transcends their usefulness to other people. To put it another way: people "love" their bitcoin like they "love" their health insurance: only because they are being held hostage by its value.

insert_coin 6y ago

> So is any digital "good". If you value things that way, nothing on the computer is valuable. Hence why they are not a store of "value". > Gold's primary value is from it's rarity. Very few cultures value gold for it's artistic attributes, India being the primary one. How often do you see someone wear gold jewelry in western countries? Gold primary value is that it is useful. Jewelry is very useful, but it is not is gold's only use.

imtringued 6y ago

>Gold's primary value is from it's rarity. Very few cultures value gold for it's artistic attributes, India being the primary one. How often do you see someone wear gold jewelry in western countries? Gold derives its status as the store of value element from it's physical properties. They are universal in the literal sense. If martians were real and there was gold on Mars martians would come to value gold for the exact same reasons we value gold. The exact value is still fictional but the point is that gold is a natural shelling point. The shelling point property will not disappear in the future. Bitcoin derives its shelling point property from being the first cryptocurrency with the largest mining network. There is a real risk that it will be replaced by something else.