4 ms·

That seems to privilege dollars as more "real" than crypto in some way. Or is the point that between quotes in an illiquid market, everything is worthless?

• user-the-name 5y ago
  Both of these are true, but not necessary for the argument. "One bitcoin in the world traded once" is an extreme edge case where the normally negligible factors dominate the calculation. Consider instead that there is one bitcoin, that one hundred people sell to each other in a long chain, for varying prices, playing a small fee each time. If you add up the cash inflow and outflows, you will get a net negative per person equal to the average fee paid.
  • perl4ever 5y ago
    >If you add up the cash inflow and outflows, you will get a net negative per person equal to the average fee paid If no theft was involved, then you can't have a net negative number for total cash flows, can you? The fees went somewhere.
    • user-the-name 5y ago
      There are two things that exist outside the regular trading: First, exchanges skim a fee off the top of every transaction. That removes some money from the analysis, causing a negative sum. Second, miners are a special case: They do not deposit any money, they only withdraw it using freshly minted coins. Thus they too skim off some of the value in the market, and also cause the sum of the regular trades to be negative.