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Bitcoin is something that was created out of thin air. There’s nothing backing it except what people believe it’s worth. There’s no inherent value. Even baseba

Bitcoin is something that was created out of thin air. There’s nothing backing it except what people believe it’s worth. There’s no inherent value. Even baseball cards have an inherent value, ie, the cost of the paper that the card was created from. You can eat the card or you can burn it as tinder in the worst case. With a tulip bulb at least you can grow them and look at them You can also eat tulip bulbs. With Bitcoin you literally have nothing because it’s completely virtual. So people are speculating over the value of something that is just a mathematical calculation. Anything like that can change in a heartbeat. People can collectively decide that it has no worth and then you’re stuck with nothing. That’s what happened with tulip bulbs overnight. One week, people were buying houses with tulip bulbs and the next week they were worthless. And yes, I know the argument behind USD and it being a fiat currency. But I don’t subscribe to it because it has critical mass. We have seen the same thing over and over again in history with stuff like Bitcoin. Dotcom bust, housing bust, etc. I don’t believe Bitcoin will be anything different. When Bitcoin is actively being used as a currency and not speculation then that’s when I will change my mind. Until then it’s a fad that will eventually go to zero. I believe the US government and other governments around the world will ban its use and use terrorism and money laundering as the key reason. It will go to zero soon afterwards in my opinion.

logicalmonster 5y ago
> There’s no inherent value. I don't see this as a good argument because all value is subjective. Value is not a property of nature that can be measured by an objective measure: it's a subjective assessment. There's no inherent value to anything, whether fiat, crypto, or even precious metals: it's all subjective. If you're defining inherent value as functionality, crypto has significant utility through its mostly unique attributes, such as being permissionless, trustless, and borderless, among others. Without anybody's permission, I can send crypto anywhere in minutes (or even seconds, depending on the tech chosen). As useful as fiat and gold can be, try doing that with anything other than crypto. > People can collectively decide that it has no worth and then you’re stuck with nothing. Of course nobody knows the future and literally anything can happen. Who would have thought that in CURRENT_YEAR there'd be a series of events taking place that would make you a criminal to enter a bank WITHOUT wearing a mask. Maybe Elon Musk can figure out how to mine asteroids and gold/silver might drop in value to near zero. Or maybe the dollar might inflate its way to oblivion (IMO heading that way) like many fiat currencies have done before. Of course, crypto might significantly drop in popularity too...who knows....but I think there's enough people out there that want a medium of exchange that cannot be inflated. If you're not yet angry about your savings being reduced to print ~infinite money, you will be soon. Bitcoin, as one example, is an asset that cannot be inflated: until the end of time, there can only ever be 21 million of them. > We have seen the same thing over and over again in history with stuff like Bitcoin. Dotcom bust, housing bust, etc. I don’t believe Bitcoin will be anything different. You can believe this, but IMO this is a bad argument and a fundamental misunderstanding of what the business cycle is caused by...this is a property of fiat, not crypto. When the government's national bank inflates the money supply by increasing the supply of currency, it reduces the rate of interest and can increase the price of some assets. This malinvestment is the boom and bust cycle we've seen in many other assets. Unless you're talking about some specific crypto that doesn't have a maximum number of units of account, this is impossible through crypto. > When Bitcoin is actively being used as a currency and not speculation then that’s when I will change my mind. I'm literally scratching my head because Bitcoin has been used to exchange goods and services for years now. > It will go to zero soon afterwards in my opinion. Cool beans. This is not financial advice, but if you want to make money on your hypothesis, you can short Bitcoin and make an absolute killing if you really believe that.
rawtxapp 5y ago
To be used as a currency for the virtual borderless world, it needs to be worth at least a few trillion dollars, anything less than that would be too small to power any sizeable economy (especially one that's borderless and worldwide). Do you expect it to be worth that much on day 1? No! It will grow to that level. And what happens between the 0$ value and trillions? It acts as a store of value with a great upside. Once it gets closer to it's real value, it starts to act as a means of exchange and currency. Just because something is virtual doesn't mean it doesn't have any value. There's lots of virtual things that people value highly. They can ban it all they want, they can't stop it, that's the whole point of the exercise.

logicalmonster 5y ago

> There’s no inherent value. I don't see this as a good argument because all value is subjective. Value is not a property of nature that can be measured by an objective measure: it's a subjective assessment. There's no inherent value to anything, whether fiat, crypto, or even precious metals: it's all subjective. If you're defining inherent value as functionality, crypto has significant utility through its mostly unique attributes, such as being permissionless, trustless, and borderless, among others. Without anybody's permission, I can send crypto anywhere in minutes (or even seconds, depending on the tech chosen). As useful as fiat and gold can be, try doing that with anything other than crypto. > People can collectively decide that it has no worth and then you’re stuck with nothing. Of course nobody knows the future and literally anything can happen. Who would have thought that in CURRENT_YEAR there'd be a series of events taking place that would make you a criminal to enter a bank WITHOUT wearing a mask. Maybe Elon Musk can figure out how to mine asteroids and gold/silver might drop in value to near zero. Or maybe the dollar might inflate its way to oblivion (IMO heading that way) like many fiat currencies have done before. Of course, crypto might significantly drop in popularity too...who knows....but I think there's enough people out there that want a medium of exchange that cannot be inflated. If you're not yet angry about your savings being reduced to print ~infinite money, you will be soon. Bitcoin, as one example, is an asset that cannot be inflated: until the end of time, there can only ever be 21 million of them. > We have seen the same thing over and over again in history with stuff like Bitcoin. Dotcom bust, housing bust, etc. I don’t believe Bitcoin will be anything different. You can believe this, but IMO this is a bad argument and a fundamental misunderstanding of what the business cycle is caused by...this is a property of fiat, not crypto. When the government's national bank inflates the money supply by increasing the supply of currency, it reduces the rate of interest and can increase the price of some assets. This malinvestment is the boom and bust cycle we've seen in many other assets. Unless you're talking about some specific crypto that doesn't have a maximum number of units of account, this is impossible through crypto. > When Bitcoin is actively being used as a currency and not speculation then that’s when I will change my mind. I'm literally scratching my head because Bitcoin has been used to exchange goods and services for years now. > It will go to zero soon afterwards in my opinion. Cool beans. This is not financial advice, but if you want to make money on your hypothesis, you can short Bitcoin and make an absolute killing if you really believe that.

rawtxapp 5y ago

To be used as a currency for the virtual borderless world, it needs to be worth at least a few trillion dollars, anything less than that would be too small to power any sizeable economy (especially one that's borderless and worldwide). Do you expect it to be worth that much on day 1? No! It will grow to that level. And what happens between the 0$ value and trillions? It acts as a store of value with a great upside. Once it gets closer to it's real value, it starts to act as a means of exchange and currency. Just because something is virtual doesn't mean it doesn't have any value. There's lots of virtual things that people value highly. They can ban it all they want, they can't stop it, that's the whole point of the exercise.