6 ms·

It's funny, many years ago when Bitcoin was relatively new I and a number of others pointed out that there is no particular reason why it should have any value,

It's funny, many years ago when Bitcoin was relatively new I and a number of others pointed out that there is no particular reason why it should have any value, since there is zero barrier to creating your own cryptocurrency and therefore supply was effectively unlimited (and thus prices should decline long-term). Various unsatisfactory answers were given at the time, and since then the USD price of Bitcoin actually increased very significantly. Yet every time I see something like this, I immediately think back to that argument -- these alternative "tokens" or "coins" or whatever people call them are simple to create and seem to require minimal promotion to start attracting buyers. I wonder if we will eventually see this space become so crowded that those early objections wind up playing out...

brightball 5y ago
Agree completely. Bitcoin has the brand, Ethereum has the community to make it the real long term solution. Everything else is noise IMO.
- austhrow743 5y ago
  This seems more like a disagree completely.
  - brightball 5y ago
    I agree completely with the "coin a day will remove the scarcity that creates value in cryptocurrency" but as the OP says, Bitcoin has gone up despite that. It's only because Bitcoin has the brand. There could be 1,000 competitors but the money will go where the brand name is because that's where everybody else is putting their money. The only coin with any chance of unseating Bitcoin is Ethereum once the Eth2 conversion is done (increasing the speed and reducing the cost) simply because there's been so much community buy in and ecosystem around it that it will become the defacto network for everything.
- rfd4sgmk8u 5y ago
  It is all human psychology plays, even Bitcoin, but where Bitcoin is different, and the answer the the parents question is: Yes, there is zero barrier to creating a new cryptocurrency. Thus, we must look at the effort, or energy that is going into a /cryptoasset/ to determine its subjective value. This token was created in a smart contract and will live forever in the Nodes run by a large cryptocurrency exchange. It cost $16.77 in BNB at the date it was published, now $10.74. Bitcoin will continue to spend what is now Billions of dollars on energy to secure the blockchain for /at least/ the next 100 years. The only thing securing this token is the goodwill of the nodes that run BSC and the RPC operators that interact with the wallets. Ethereum is expensive and you shouldn't use it, but that aside, looks like mining the blocks is going down an insane path, with multiple AV vendors shipping ethereum miners in their clients. What a strange time. I do however like the idea of 100s of millions of home PCs mining and distributing the mining revenue, rather than consolidation in large corporate mining operations. Concentration of specialist miners would however be more efficient. Other EVM chains, all Proof of Stake, with various levels of security exist. The tokens that live on these are just as much at risk of the same kinds of things that could impact BSC.
  - legutierr 5y ago
    > Bitcoin will continue to spend what is now Billions of dollars on energy to secure the blockchain for /at least/ the next 100 years. Do you really believe that this will still be the case after the pain and suffering caused by climate change becomes too ever-present to ignore, and global sentiment turns against fossil fuels? There will come a point in the future when there is energy abundance under a zero-carbon regime, but that probably won’t happen before global polities begin to demand that fossil fuels be banned—which bans may very well be enforced though dramatic means. Can Bitcoin survive in an environment in which fossil fuels are banned, and in which people also demand that energy remain affordable to them, even in that context? In an environment where governments must subsidize energy in order to meet both of these objectives, will they be willing to tolerate—and can they even afford—the continued operation of Bitcoin mining within their territories?
    - rfd4sgmk8u 5y ago
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Monero has the privacy.
madacol 5y ago
Then why other currencies don't dilute the US dollar? Or monopoly's (the game) money?, or just paper, or shells, or grains of sand?
- lettergram 5y ago
  Same reason Bitcoin isn’t a threat to the US government. You can’t store shells in a bank, you can’t pay your taxes in sand, etc. I do think in our lifetimes we will see the US dollar cease or transform (such as the transition from gold backed to nothing backed). Maybe it’ll be Bitcoin backed hahaha
  - 0x0nyandesu 5y ago
    Shells do have actual value. In Hawaii all the good ones have been taken from near the shore by now. It's typical to find some pristine ones only a few inches in diameter being sold for thousands. Anything can have value.
- anders_p 5y ago
  The value of a currency comes from it being backed by a government, and that government accepting taxes in that currency. This puts a hard limit on the number of currencies, and how much they'll dillute the dollar (or any other country's currency). Since you'll normally only see a single currency per government. Cryptocurrencies on the other hand, aren't tied to any country. There's no hard limit on the amount of them. So every time a new one shows up, they'll they'll take a piece of the cake from the already existing ones, since the space is limited by the number of people willing to invest in them and how much these people have to invest.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    USD is backed by nothing. Nothing. https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages/legal-tender.aspx https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages... > Federal Reserve notes are not redeemable in gold, silver or any other commodity, and receive no backing by anything There are no limits to currencies. No limits to how much money governments will print. No limits to how much the banks will inflate the money supply through loans.
latenightcoding 5y ago
A lot of your questions would be answered by reading about proof of work, the bootstrapping problem and economy in general. There are a lot of shitcoins that are worthless because not enough people agreed they are valuable. Do dollar bills have any intrinsic value ?
- anders_p 5y ago
  I don't think you understood the questions. "Proof of work" answers none of them. New cryptocurrencies appear all the time. This dillutes the cryptocurrency space. There's only so much capital to invest in any of them. And the dollar has value, because they're backed up by a government. Not because the bills themselves have an intrinsic value.
  - latenightcoding 5y ago
    > New cryptocurrencies appear all the time. This dillutes the cryptocurrency space. There's only so much capital to invest in any of them. And that's exactly why a lot of these new cryptocurrencies are worthless. The space is saturated and a lot of these new coins don't offer anything new. People don't agree on its value. I mentioned this. > And the dollar has value, because they're backed up by a government. Not because the bills themselves have an intrinsic value. Well crypto is backed by a huge network of miners, hence I mentioned proof of work.
- timlardner 5y ago
  Yes, USD is the only accepted way of paying taxes in the USA. If you wanna live and consume in the USA, you need to pay tax. If you need to pay tax you need dollars. This is generally how a country ensures demand for their currency.
  - latenightcoding 5y ago
    That's not intrinsic value

brightball 5y ago

Agree completely. Bitcoin has the brand, Ethereum has the community to make it the real long term solution. Everything else is noise IMO.

austhrow743 5y ago
This seems more like a disagree completely.
- brightball 5y ago
  I agree completely with the "coin a day will remove the scarcity that creates value in cryptocurrency" but as the OP says, Bitcoin has gone up despite that. It's only because Bitcoin has the brand. There could be 1,000 competitors but the money will go where the brand name is because that's where everybody else is putting their money. The only coin with any chance of unseating Bitcoin is Ethereum once the Eth2 conversion is done (increasing the speed and reducing the cost) simply because there's been so much community buy in and ecosystem around it that it will become the defacto network for everything.
rfd4sgmk8u 5y ago
It is all human psychology plays, even Bitcoin, but where Bitcoin is different, and the answer the the parents question is: Yes, there is zero barrier to creating a new cryptocurrency. Thus, we must look at the effort, or energy that is going into a /cryptoasset/ to determine its subjective value. This token was created in a smart contract and will live forever in the Nodes run by a large cryptocurrency exchange. It cost $16.77 in BNB at the date it was published, now $10.74. Bitcoin will continue to spend what is now Billions of dollars on energy to secure the blockchain for /at least/ the next 100 years. The only thing securing this token is the goodwill of the nodes that run BSC and the RPC operators that interact with the wallets. Ethereum is expensive and you shouldn't use it, but that aside, looks like mining the blocks is going down an insane path, with multiple AV vendors shipping ethereum miners in their clients. What a strange time. I do however like the idea of 100s of millions of home PCs mining and distributing the mining revenue, rather than consolidation in large corporate mining operations. Concentration of specialist miners would however be more efficient. Other EVM chains, all Proof of Stake, with various levels of security exist. The tokens that live on these are just as much at risk of the same kinds of things that could impact BSC.
- legutierr 5y ago
  > Bitcoin will continue to spend what is now Billions of dollars on energy to secure the blockchain for /at least/ the next 100 years. Do you really believe that this will still be the case after the pain and suffering caused by climate change becomes too ever-present to ignore, and global sentiment turns against fossil fuels? There will come a point in the future when there is energy abundance under a zero-carbon regime, but that probably won’t happen before global polities begin to demand that fossil fuels be banned—which bans may very well be enforced though dramatic means. Can Bitcoin survive in an environment in which fossil fuels are banned, and in which people also demand that energy remain affordable to them, even in that context? In an environment where governments must subsidize energy in order to meet both of these objectives, will they be willing to tolerate—and can they even afford—the continued operation of Bitcoin mining within their territories?
  - rfd4sgmk8u 5y ago
matheusmoreira 5y ago
Monero has the privacy.

madacol 5y ago

Then why other currencies don't dilute the US dollar? Or monopoly's (the game) money?, or just paper, or shells, or grains of sand?

lettergram 5y ago
Same reason Bitcoin isn’t a threat to the US government. You can’t store shells in a bank, you can’t pay your taxes in sand, etc. I do think in our lifetimes we will see the US dollar cease or transform (such as the transition from gold backed to nothing backed). Maybe it’ll be Bitcoin backed hahaha
- 0x0nyandesu 5y ago
  Shells do have actual value. In Hawaii all the good ones have been taken from near the shore by now. It's typical to find some pristine ones only a few inches in diameter being sold for thousands. Anything can have value.
anders_p 5y ago
The value of a currency comes from it being backed by a government, and that government accepting taxes in that currency. This puts a hard limit on the number of currencies, and how much they'll dillute the dollar (or any other country's currency). Since you'll normally only see a single currency per government. Cryptocurrencies on the other hand, aren't tied to any country. There's no hard limit on the amount of them. So every time a new one shows up, they'll they'll take a piece of the cake from the already existing ones, since the space is limited by the number of people willing to invest in them and how much these people have to invest.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  USD is backed by nothing. Nothing. https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages/legal-tender.aspx https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages... > Federal Reserve notes are not redeemable in gold, silver or any other commodity, and receive no backing by anything There are no limits to currencies. No limits to how much money governments will print. No limits to how much the banks will inflate the money supply through loans.

latenightcoding 5y ago

A lot of your questions would be answered by reading about proof of work, the bootstrapping problem and economy in general. There are a lot of shitcoins that are worthless because not enough people agreed they are valuable. Do dollar bills have any intrinsic value ?

anders_p 5y ago
I don't think you understood the questions. "Proof of work" answers none of them. New cryptocurrencies appear all the time. This dillutes the cryptocurrency space. There's only so much capital to invest in any of them. And the dollar has value, because they're backed up by a government. Not because the bills themselves have an intrinsic value.
- latenightcoding 5y ago
  > New cryptocurrencies appear all the time. This dillutes the cryptocurrency space. There's only so much capital to invest in any of them. And that's exactly why a lot of these new cryptocurrencies are worthless. The space is saturated and a lot of these new coins don't offer anything new. People don't agree on its value. I mentioned this. > And the dollar has value, because they're backed up by a government. Not because the bills themselves have an intrinsic value. Well crypto is backed by a huge network of miners, hence I mentioned proof of work.
timlardner 5y ago
Yes, USD is the only accepted way of paying taxes in the USA. If you wanna live and consume in the USA, you need to pay tax. If you need to pay tax you need dollars. This is generally how a country ensures demand for their currency.
- latenightcoding 5y ago
  That's not intrinsic value