4 ms·

Thank god. This will make sure no one has access to Bitcoin, just like when we outlawed heroin and cocaine.

enoughalready 6y ago
The same can be said of rape and murder.
rspeele 6y ago
For the record, I doubt the US will ban bitcoin. But let's imagine what would happen if it did. It wouldn't eliminate access to bitcoin but it would hurt its value quite badly. The demand for heroin and cocaine is driven by intrinsic value: it gets you high. You can restrict supply but you can't stop people from wanting to get high. The demand will be there no matter what. The utility of the product is unchanged by laws or public perception. Bitcoin doesn't have intrinsic value. It has value because people will buy it from you. I think BTC is a crappy technology, but I'm not ashamed to admit I'd buy one at $50,000/ea this instant, only because I know I can turn around and resell it for $57,000/ea. The only reason I want 1 BTC is that I know enough other people want 1 BTC badly enough, that I can sell it to them at a good price. If exchanging my Bitcoin back into fiat or directly for goods becomes illegal, now I've got difficulty and risk involved in using it. I won't want Bitcoins as much. Its utility -- being useful for exchange -- can be directly impacted by the law. A lot of the people who want to buy bitcoin today would not buy it if it were illegal to do so. I'm talking about casual retail speculators, Tesla, Microstrategy... all of your basic white collar investors who are looking to make a buck but don't want to get in trouble for it. If you delete all those people from the buying side of the order books, and put those who have already bought and want to get out on the selling side, what happens to the price?
- jsutton 6y ago
  I'm tired of this flippant statement that many crypto-detractors take as fact, that there's no intrinsic value in Bitcoin. When you create a product or service that other people want to use and pay you for, is there no intrinsic value there?
  - rspeele 6y ago
    I don't know how else to say it. To me it is almost a tautology. In fact I would not even want a currency to have intrinsic value. I want my money to have value, but not intrinsic value. Maybe we have a mixup of definitions. Let me see if I can explain my definition of intrinsic value. Suppose a genie appeared before me and presented a gift to me, with one condition (enforced by genie magic): I can never sell this gift. The gift is a gorgeous, hand-engraved Krieghoff shotgun stocked in highly figured walnut. Now, this is a coveted object and one that would fetch a high price, if I were able to resell it. It's unfortunate that I can't! But I would still be thrilled to receive this gift. It's a very fine piece of craftsmanship and one that I can both appreciate for its beauty, and enjoy using on the skeet field. I want it just to have it and use it, not to sell it or put a number on it in measuring my assets. You can imagine the same arrangement for many other things: a fancy car, a house, a stunning artwork, a barrel of booze, or even a pile of heroin and cocaine, if that's your preferred vice. Even with the stipulation that you absolutely cannot sell the item, you still want it. Now, if the genie gave you a gift of Bitcoin, with this same magic arrangement that prevents you from selling it to somebody else (including trading it for anything), how excited would you be?
    - randomhodler84 6y ago
      Very excited! because by definition, it wouldn’t be bitcoin if it couldn’t be transferred. A genie cannot give you a bitcoin that cannot be transferred; as a bitcoin is only the ability to transfer. This censorship resistant value transfer channel has an intrinsic value — let’s say the genie anti-selling analogy applied to fiat gateways; no problem, I’ll swap my BTC for Starbucks gift cards and spend it all on the coffee that I am supposed to not be able to buy. Replace gift card with anything else you might want.
      - rspeele 6y ago
        You know, if you want to just ignore the premise, you could also point out that genies aren't real, magic doesn't work, and heck, even for the physical objects there's no way I could be prevented from reselling my brand new shotgun or car or pile of drugs! But in doing so, you might miss the point of a thought experiment like this. There is a difference between things that are desirable in and of themselves, and things that are desirable because of their trade value. The term "intrinsic value" is used to make that distinction. It doesn't mean things without intrinsic value are bad, or broken, or doomed to fail. It's not a strictly negative or positive distinction. But it is a useful distinction to be able to make. If you redefine "intrinsic value" to include "trade value", you have just made the word "intrinsic" meaningless. Is there any type of asset that does not have intrinsic value, using this new definition? Now, getting out of the realm of hypothetical genies and magic, you can make an argument that government regulation cannot realistically prevent trade in Bitcoin, so that trade value will be maintained. No intrinsic value is required. I'm not so sure that the trade value would hold up without the buying pressure from retail investors and businesses wishing to comply with US law, but reasonable people can disagree.

The same can be said of rape and murder.

For the record, I doubt the US will ban bitcoin. But let's imagine what would happen if it did. It wouldn't eliminate access to bitcoin but it would hurt its value quite badly. The demand for heroin and cocaine is driven by intrinsic value: it gets you high. You can restrict supply but you can't stop people from wanting to get high. The demand will be there no matter what. The utility of the product is unchanged by laws or public perception. Bitcoin doesn't have intrinsic value. It has value because people will buy it from you. I think BTC is a crappy technology, but I'm not ashamed to admit I'd buy one at $50,000/ea this instant, only because I know I can turn around and resell it for $57,000/ea. The only reason I want 1 BTC is that I know enough other people want 1 BTC badly enough, that I can sell it to them at a good price. If exchanging my Bitcoin back into fiat or directly for goods becomes illegal, now I've got difficulty and risk involved in using it. I won't want Bitcoins as much. Its utility -- being useful for exchange -- can be directly impacted by the law. A lot of the people who want to buy bitcoin today would not buy it if it were illegal to do so. I'm talking about casual retail speculators, Tesla, Microstrategy... all of your basic white collar investors who are looking to make a buck but don't want to get in trouble for it. If you delete all those people from the buying side of the order books, and put those who have already bought and want to get out on the selling side, what happens to the price?

jsutton 6y ago
I'm tired of this flippant statement that many crypto-detractors take as fact, that there's no intrinsic value in Bitcoin. When you create a product or service that other people want to use and pay you for, is there no intrinsic value there?
- rspeele 6y ago
  I don't know how else to say it. To me it is almost a tautology. In fact I would not even want a currency to have intrinsic value. I want my money to have value, but not intrinsic value. Maybe we have a mixup of definitions. Let me see if I can explain my definition of intrinsic value. Suppose a genie appeared before me and presented a gift to me, with one condition (enforced by genie magic): I can never sell this gift. The gift is a gorgeous, hand-engraved Krieghoff shotgun stocked in highly figured walnut. Now, this is a coveted object and one that would fetch a high price, if I were able to resell it. It's unfortunate that I can't! But I would still be thrilled to receive this gift. It's a very fine piece of craftsmanship and one that I can both appreciate for its beauty, and enjoy using on the skeet field. I want it just to have it and use it, not to sell it or put a number on it in measuring my assets. You can imagine the same arrangement for many other things: a fancy car, a house, a stunning artwork, a barrel of booze, or even a pile of heroin and cocaine, if that's your preferred vice. Even with the stipulation that you absolutely cannot sell the item, you still want it. Now, if the genie gave you a gift of Bitcoin, with this same magic arrangement that prevents you from selling it to somebody else (including trading it for anything), how excited would you be?
  - randomhodler84 6y ago
    Very excited! because by definition, it wouldn’t be bitcoin if it couldn’t be transferred. A genie cannot give you a bitcoin that cannot be transferred; as a bitcoin is only the ability to transfer. This censorship resistant value transfer channel has an intrinsic value — let’s say the genie anti-selling analogy applied to fiat gateways; no problem, I’ll swap my BTC for Starbucks gift cards and spend it all on the coffee that I am supposed to not be able to buy. Replace gift card with anything else you might want.
    - rspeele 6y ago
      You know, if you want to just ignore the premise, you could also point out that genies aren't real, magic doesn't work, and heck, even for the physical objects there's no way I could be prevented from reselling my brand new shotgun or car or pile of drugs! But in doing so, you might miss the point of a thought experiment like this. There is a difference between things that are desirable in and of themselves, and things that are desirable because of their trade value. The term "intrinsic value" is used to make that distinction. It doesn't mean things without intrinsic value are bad, or broken, or doomed to fail. It's not a strictly negative or positive distinction. But it is a useful distinction to be able to make. If you redefine "intrinsic value" to include "trade value", you have just made the word "intrinsic" meaningless. Is there any type of asset that does not have intrinsic value, using this new definition? Now, getting out of the realm of hypothetical genies and magic, you can make an argument that government regulation cannot realistically prevent trade in Bitcoin, so that trade value will be maintained. No intrinsic value is required. I'm not so sure that the trade value would hold up without the buying pressure from retail investors and businesses wishing to comply with US law, but reasonable people can disagree.