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To become a Unit of Account, you generally need to become a Means of Payment. To become a Means of Payment, you need to be a store of value. Why would you pric
by once_inc 4y ago
To become a Unit of Account, you generally need to become a Means of Payment. To become a Means of Payment, you need to be a store of value.
Why would you price a product or service in something without value?
Why would you denote all prices in something that nobody is pricing in?
Your blanket argument that all successful currencies have been backed by a state is obviously wrong. Gold, Salt, Rai stones, sea shells all had value and were used as currency without governments taxing in them. Rai stones especially are a very interesting use case of money.
- okintheory 4y agoWriting 'state' is arguably inaccurate if you read it as 'nation state', but taxation in gold by city states goes way back to early city states and more generally gold has a very long history of being accepted as payment by governments. I'm not sure about salt. I'm not convinced Rai stones are a meaningful counterpoint -- reading about them they only appear to act as money in a fairly weak and impractical sense. Secondly, I did not say that Bitcoin has to be money to be valuable. Rather that Bitcoin is not likely to be 'money' in any serious way, and this makes the 'store of value' proposition precarious. But I don't think it's inconceivable that bitcoin might still be worth a lot 100 years from now.