3 ms·

I'm sure you'll roll your eyes at this response, but a large chunk of economists don't believe there is value in anything. Your definition of "value" might mean

I'm sure you'll roll your eyes at this response, but a large chunk of economists don't believe there is value in anything. Your definition of "value" might mean "utility" or "what the US treasury says this is worth", or something else entirely. Starting a discussion with "well, it doesn't have any value" is more or less meaningless, and borders on economically illiterate, excuse the harshness. My stuffed animal from when I was a baby has no "value", but I find it quite valuable. This isn't pendantics either - it determines more or less your entire economic perspective. If you believe in a utility or labor theory of value, of course crypto is a scam. A subjective theory? Not so much. If someone trades an ETH for a Dollar, has value been changed? Moved around? Created? Has someone been scammed? Has wealth been created? Has net happiness been increased? Value is an extremely non-trivial thing and will lead you to love or hate the exact same situation depending on your chosen definition. At any rate, I agree, crypto contains no value intrinsically. That said, I'm buying at the current price! Those crypto-fans who are saying "ah well the -network- has intrinsic value" are missing the point. Value does not exist in the world. Value is like beauty or color - it's a subjective experience. All statements in the form of "X has no value" must be concatenated with "to me". If anyone finds this incredibly interesting, and a fairly ignored part of epistemology, I strongly recommend reading Carl Menger's "The Origin of Money"

dontreact 5y ago
What's going to happen when people start trying to retire by selling crypto? Many people will be selling at the same time, and suddenly the subjective value for everyone will be lower because it will be easier and easier to buy it. My sense is that there is a cap on the demand for purchasing crypto, but the supply is very low because mining decreases over time, and generally people holding lots of crypto are younger and have no need to sell in order to pay for things, they can just pay with their fiat income. This equation will change drastically as people start to retire and need to sell lots of crypto in order to fund their lifestyle without working.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  The value of whatever coin you have may go down. Planning a retirement around a lottery ticket is fun but you still stuff your retirement fund. Bitcoin slows down ensuring it's value continues to increase with fewer buyers. Proper retirement planning means moving from 100% risky in your 20s to 50/50 in your 40s to 10/90 in your 60s.
  - dontreact 5y ago
    What happens when people start generally moving away from crypto towards less risky assets as they age? This hasn’t started yet but it will
ipaddr 5y ago
Move value to me to value to many within a society and everyone can be on the same page
lapinot 5y ago
> I'm sure you'll roll your eyes at this response, but a large chunk of economists don't believe there is value in anything. Food and shelter have value which is pretty near to objective. In fact it is routinely used to compare economic levels throughout history or societies. In fact it's quite useful to distinguish market price from usage (intrinsic) value. Usage value is variable from individual to individual, but there is a hierarchy of things we usually agree on, at the bottom being water, then food, then light, ... (biological stuff) then social interactions, intellectual stimulation, ... (more complex social stuff), then things like healthcare or gun access which will obviously depend on your political ethic (but which still are largely clustered, just not universal). So sure market price doesn't denote value, and intrinsic value is a fuzzy hierachy that is more and more precise given more and more assumptions on social norms, but the bottom of this hierachy is non-trivial (not everything at 0) and the top isn't that diverse. Marx & Engels had a (critical) theory of capitalistic value where value is actually pretty well defined, as the amount of human work which has gone into something. That may be seen as an extension of what i first said (the value of human time being at least cost of life for that time).
- erulabs 5y ago
  While pragmatically what you've said is entirely true - if we treat the subject with some rigor it's extremely easy to find examples of people who have valued food and shelter at zero. What of the self-immolating buddhist? They valued Tibet's freedom over their own life, and certainly over food and shelter. So sure, most reasonable people would agree on food and water - but that's introducing a very very powerful new actor - your ability to judge other peoples actions as reasonable or rational. If you reserve that right - then sure, let's call crypto irrational - let's stand on the sidelines and say "well I wouldn't do that!" - let's start building the hierarchy of "reasonable values". I'm only suggesting that our ability to call someone else's valuation irrational behavior is dubious at best and aggressively violent, the birth of social engineering, the sourge of humanity, at worst (hyperbole maybe, but maybe not). That impulse to guide "rationality" is exactly why we have modern monetary policy, and the only philosophical reason to like cryptocurrencies: a well designed, well distributed immutable ledger is more or less immune from such "guidance". Edit: Obviously, I disagree strongly with the labor theory of value. I don't have anything handy, but there is a lot written on this (and I think the labor theory of value is fairly well demolished!). Let me know and I'd be happy to send links!

dontreact 5y ago

What's going to happen when people start trying to retire by selling crypto? Many people will be selling at the same time, and suddenly the subjective value for everyone will be lower because it will be easier and easier to buy it. My sense is that there is a cap on the demand for purchasing crypto, but the supply is very low because mining decreases over time, and generally people holding lots of crypto are younger and have no need to sell in order to pay for things, they can just pay with their fiat income. This equation will change drastically as people start to retire and need to sell lots of crypto in order to fund their lifestyle without working.

ipaddr 5y ago
The value of whatever coin you have may go down. Planning a retirement around a lottery ticket is fun but you still stuff your retirement fund. Bitcoin slows down ensuring it's value continues to increase with fewer buyers. Proper retirement planning means moving from 100% risky in your 20s to 50/50 in your 40s to 10/90 in your 60s.
- dontreact 5y ago
  What happens when people start generally moving away from crypto towards less risky assets as they age? This hasn’t started yet but it will

ipaddr 5y ago

Move value to me to value to many within a society and everyone can be on the same page

lapinot 5y ago

> I'm sure you'll roll your eyes at this response, but a large chunk of economists don't believe there is value in anything. Food and shelter have value which is pretty near to objective. In fact it is routinely used to compare economic levels throughout history or societies. In fact it's quite useful to distinguish market price from usage (intrinsic) value. Usage value is variable from individual to individual, but there is a hierarchy of things we usually agree on, at the bottom being water, then food, then light, ... (biological stuff) then social interactions, intellectual stimulation, ... (more complex social stuff), then things like healthcare or gun access which will obviously depend on your political ethic (but which still are largely clustered, just not universal). So sure market price doesn't denote value, and intrinsic value is a fuzzy hierachy that is more and more precise given more and more assumptions on social norms, but the bottom of this hierachy is non-trivial (not everything at 0) and the top isn't that diverse. Marx & Engels had a (critical) theory of capitalistic value where value is actually pretty well defined, as the amount of human work which has gone into something. That may be seen as an extension of what i first said (the value of human time being at least cost of life for that time).

erulabs 5y ago
While pragmatically what you've said is entirely true - if we treat the subject with some rigor it's extremely easy to find examples of people who have valued food and shelter at zero. What of the self-immolating buddhist? They valued Tibet's freedom over their own life, and certainly over food and shelter. So sure, most reasonable people would agree on food and water - but that's introducing a very very powerful new actor - your ability to judge other peoples actions as reasonable or rational. If you reserve that right - then sure, let's call crypto irrational - let's stand on the sidelines and say "well I wouldn't do that!" - let's start building the hierarchy of "reasonable values". I'm only suggesting that our ability to call someone else's valuation irrational behavior is dubious at best and aggressively violent, the birth of social engineering, the sourge of humanity, at worst (hyperbole maybe, but maybe not). That impulse to guide "rationality" is exactly why we have modern monetary policy, and the only philosophical reason to like cryptocurrencies: a well designed, well distributed immutable ledger is more or less immune from such "guidance". Edit: Obviously, I disagree strongly with the labor theory of value. I don't have anything handy, but there is a lot written on this (and I think the labor theory of value is fairly well demolished!). Let me know and I'd be happy to send links!