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If you find it a good store of value for yourself that is fine, but you need to understand that value is defined by social norms not by technical features. Pica

If you find it a good store of value for yourself that is fine, but you need to understand that value is defined by social norms not by technical features. Picasso paintings are currently a very good store of value. Gold has been a decent store of value for thousands of years. People bought beanie babies in 1998 because they thought the price would go up and stay up for a long time. Obviously they were wrong, but the same thing could happen to GOLD, BTC, or even Picasso paintings. It totally depends on what society values in the future.

nadam 5y ago
I understand this. While you are right, there are some properties of these assets that can help us predict what could become a store of value: is it durable? is it easy to transfer? is it easy to censor? is it inflationary? also you can examine the network effect related to the asset. By developing new technical features, you can increase the chance of an asset to become a store of value. That's why researching proof-of-stake algorithms is meaningful. Not as important as to find cure for cancer? Maybe. But still meaningful. Lots of people on HN claim that it is totally bullshit, which is a strong opinion imho...
- bob33212 5y ago
  Do you mean proof of stake? If so, yes there is potential for new technologies to come out which could cause crypto to have more real world use cases and then cause the value of crypto to society to be higher. But we have been hearing about how crypto is "the future" for 10+ years. At what point is this future actually going to exist?
rsynnott 5y ago
> but the same thing could happen to GOLD, BTC, or even Picasso paintings In fact, it has happened to the first two, at least temporarily. Someone who bought gold in 1980, say, is probably not particularly happy with it as a store of value today (adjusted for inflation, they _may_ just about be breaking even now assuming that they paid no transactional or storage fees); the same goes for someone who bought bitcoin in May. Or, er, an hour ago. Picasso's time will presumably come, too.

nadam 5y ago

I understand this. While you are right, there are some properties of these assets that can help us predict what could become a store of value: is it durable? is it easy to transfer? is it easy to censor? is it inflationary? also you can examine the network effect related to the asset. By developing new technical features, you can increase the chance of an asset to become a store of value. That's why researching proof-of-stake algorithms is meaningful. Not as important as to find cure for cancer? Maybe. But still meaningful. Lots of people on HN claim that it is totally bullshit, which is a strong opinion imho...

bob33212 5y ago
Do you mean proof of stake? If so, yes there is potential for new technologies to come out which could cause crypto to have more real world use cases and then cause the value of crypto to society to be higher. But we have been hearing about how crypto is "the future" for 10+ years. At what point is this future actually going to exist?

rsynnott 5y ago

> but the same thing could happen to GOLD, BTC, or even Picasso paintings In fact, it has happened to the first two, at least temporarily. Someone who bought gold in 1980, say, is probably not particularly happy with it as a store of value today (adjusted for inflation, they _may_ just about be breaking even now assuming that they paid no transactional or storage fees); the same goes for someone who bought bitcoin in May. Or, er, an hour ago. Picasso's time will presumably come, too.