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I would disagree with your analogy: you buy a stock because it gives you a claim to the profits of the underlying company. Even if it became impossible to find

I would disagree with your analogy: you buy a stock because it gives you a claim to the profits of the underlying company. Even if it became impossible to find a buyer for the stock you own, so long as they pay dividend, you still have something of value. And the company has tangible assets (factories, offices) and intangible (patents, the skills of its employees, brand) that allow it to produce things of general value. Same applies to houses (they provide shelter) or gold (industrial applications or jewelry). Speculative value is only one part of their value. Bitcoin by comparison has no value beyond speculative. You can't build anything with a Bitcoin, and it won't ever give you a revenue stream, or shelter, or make pretty jewelry. It's just a bunch of numbers recorded on some computers. If nobody think those numbers have values then they are as good as some old JPEG ad in your browser cache.

allendoerfer 5y ago
I want to clearify again: I am not into crypto currencies. > I would disagree with your analogy: you buy a stock because it gives you a claim to the profits of the underlying company. Even if it became impossible to find a buyer for the stock you own, so long as they pay dividend, you still have something of value. And the company has tangible assets (factories, offices) and intangible (patents, the skills of its employees, brand) that allow it to produce things of general value. What is general value? Those dividends are based on selling products and services. As I tried to explain: There are companies, which are about putting names on things. People seem to find value in that. With Bitcoin you are controlling part of a list. I do not think that is very valuable, but OPs arguments can be applied to everything. > Same applies to houses (they provide shelter) or gold (industrial applications or jewelry). Speculative value is only one part of their value. If gold was about the industrial applications, its price would be way lower. It is really mostly about people thinking it has value. And with houses: Yop, we generally think these have value. But a house in London has way more value than a house in Sibiria. Just as Bitcoin has way more value than if I would start my own distributed list and sell entries. > You can't build anything with a Bitcoin As I said, just an abstraction. If something is valuable, because you can build something valuable with it, you have to follow the path. You will end up at some human desire or just simple believe in value. I don't get many of those desires, so how do I know being part of a blockchain isn't also one of them? As I said, I doubt it. I am just making a technical argument, that the authors analogies can be applied to everything.

allendoerfer 5y ago

I want to clearify again: I am not into crypto currencies. > I would disagree with your analogy: you buy a stock because it gives you a claim to the profits of the underlying company. Even if it became impossible to find a buyer for the stock you own, so long as they pay dividend, you still have something of value. And the company has tangible assets (factories, offices) and intangible (patents, the skills of its employees, brand) that allow it to produce things of general value. What is general value? Those dividends are based on selling products and services. As I tried to explain: There are companies, which are about putting names on things. People seem to find value in that. With Bitcoin you are controlling part of a list. I do not think that is very valuable, but OPs arguments can be applied to everything. > Same applies to houses (they provide shelter) or gold (industrial applications or jewelry). Speculative value is only one part of their value. If gold was about the industrial applications, its price would be way lower. It is really mostly about people thinking it has value. And with houses: Yop, we generally think these have value. But a house in London has way more value than a house in Sibiria. Just as Bitcoin has way more value than if I would start my own distributed list and sell entries. > You can't build anything with a Bitcoin As I said, just an abstraction. If something is valuable, because you can build something valuable with it, you have to follow the path. You will end up at some human desire or just simple believe in value. I don't get many of those desires, so how do I know being part of a blockchain isn't also one of them? As I said, I doubt it. I am just making a technical argument, that the authors analogies can be applied to everything.