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Pretty sure the parent was being sarcastic (and provocative). In real terms it’s worth whatever the next buyer is willing to pay. It annoys me that people cite
by headmelted 5y ago
Pretty sure the parent was being sarcastic (and provocative).
In real terms it’s worth whatever the next buyer is willing to pay. It annoys me that people cite the run-up over the last decade as evidence of it’s brilliance when it’s nothing of the sort, but I’d just sound like a loon screaming into the wind.
Personally I think it’s worthless. Honestly I suspect Satoshi Nakamoto (if they’re still alive) probably thinks the same; One of the later posts Satoshi made before disappearing was making the point that if it accrued any value at all then it would be useable to transact and therefore viable.
The problem is that if that’s true of Bitcoin, it’s also true of all tokens, meaning the scarcity argument is entirely imaginary - if one token is perceived as too expensive then the perception of value will shift to another that’s viewed as ”cheaper” (and thus more likely to “mooon!”), meaning the supply of tokens taken as a whole is actually infinite and arbitrary, rather than scarce, and the value of the cryptocurrency market as a whole is therefore infinitely and arbitrarily small per unit (i.e. worthless).
But what do I know? I’m just some loon screaming into the wind.
- bb88 5y ago> In real terms it’s worth whatever the next buyer is willing to pay. Yes, that's how scams and con games are played too. I personally can't tell the difference between a cryptocurrency and the classic gold brick scam.
- roenxi 5y agoAlthough I agree with your view there is one aspect you aren't considering - Bitcoin is currently backed by a mining network that is managing to achieve around 200 Exahashes/second or however they measure it. A big number. While at a theoretical level different crypto tokens are the same that will not be how the market plays out. That sort of computing power isn't easily replaced and while it exists Bitcoin is unique. So it does have value at the moment, but the value is not inherent in the protocol.
- headmelted 5y agoWouldn’t smaller tokens need comparatively lower resources though?
- roenxi 5y ago'Need' doesn't really come in to it, Bitcoin doesn't need that much power. But from a raw value perspective, Bitcoin has something that the other cryptos do not have - a massive network of computing power. That means bitcoins and other crypto currencies can't be simply swapped for each other. Bitcoin is different, for now.
- headmelted 5y agoI've heard this argument, but there's no utility value whatsoever to that power, or the energy consumed to run the hashes (in that the energy and hashing power is spent on the mining task and therefore unavailable for other uses). The argument is essentially that the computing and hashing power has intrinsic value for other use cases it could be reapplied to if not doing this. It could, but that value would accrue to the person selling the energy and/or the hardware, not whoever held the token at that time.
- roenxi 5y ago> but there's no utility value whatsoever to that power If you think about it, what you actually mean is that you don't recognise the utility, not that there isn't utility there. If we do a classic comparison with gold, pretty much nobody gets any utility out of the gold, and yet a tonne of gold still has very high intrinsic value because it has just enough utility to some rare people. > It could, but that value would accrue to the person selling the energy and/or the hardware, not whoever held the token at that time. That isn't how anything else works. Little of the value of the economy accrues to the people who mine coal or oil, but they provide most of the raw grunt to make all of everything work. The economy doesn't have to directly link creation of value to who gets rewarded.
- headmelted 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]