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When bitcoin first came onto the scene I personally knew a guy who was running a website to act as an exchange. It was small because bitcoin itself at that tim

When bitcoin first came onto the scene I personally knew a guy who was running a website to act as an exchange. It was small because bitcoin itself at that time was very small. Then bitcoin had its very first dip and it became unprofitable to mine bitcoins. When that happened he shuttered the website and kept everyone's bitcoins. I knew of bitcoin early on due to this guy, but even then I had no interest and considered it bullshit. Then when I saw what this guy did it just solidified my opinion that it can't be trusted. That's not to say that in theory there aren't uses for it, but it's 100% speculative and nothing else. People try to compare it to things like gold for protecting your money from inflation, but that's completely nonsensical. If the value of gold crashes it still has an inherent value because it's a useful physical good (looking pretty is not the only application of gold). a bitcoin has ZERO inherent value. It's not possible for the value of gold to go to zero, but it's absolutely possible for the value of a bitcoin to go to zero. crypto will never go away, but it absolutely should.

cft 4y ago
Get ready for CBDC, surveillance of every transaction and economic unpersoning then.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  The government doesn't need a cryptocoin to monitor transactions, or to make using paper currency illegal. It can already do what you think it needs a cryptocoin to do, and it doesn't do it because it supports wealthy people being able to launder money and avoid taxes. US politics runs entirely on laundered money and misdirected/avoided taxes. You're lobbying for the swamp.
  - yonaguska 4y ago
    I anticipate CBDC being something for the peons to use, not the elite. Yes, the government can monitor transactions, but it currently has to jump through a lot more loopholes to do so. I understand and agree with your sentiment, with the additional point that smaller banks are also going to be made obsolete if a CBDC is rolled out. But the wealthy and connected will most certainly have their own way of getting around the system. Whether that means moving their money into physical assets, or onto the market, I don't know. I don't think cash is going to go away, but I do see the government incentivizing regular people to solely use CBDC, and once you're on that system, you are a serf.
    - codehalo 4y ago
      At this point, if HN is any indication, they deserve it.
      - cft 4y ago
        I migrated to https://stacker.news https://stacker.news ; anxiously waiting for them to open other subs
- imtringued 4y ago
  I have seen a lot of resistance against GNU Taler so I think if any country adopts a CDBC it will be fully surveiled with no privacy for customers. After all that is what people want. They don't want privacy in their CDBCs. Well, if that happens I hope they implement negative interest rates on them because that would end the need for surveillance and political corruption within a decade.
_fat_santa 4y ago
Broadscale, crypto seems to have had an "Eternal September" moment and I think that's where the problems really began. Back in the early days before crypto entered the mainstream, it was pretty much like any other internet project. It was cool to be able to buy a pizza with internet funny money but by then it was still pretty small and everyone knew the inherent risks. Then came the "Eternal September" where cryto went mainstream and many people started pitching this formerly niche project as a real investment vehicle. And people bought in thinking it was like any other investment. IMHO cyrpto itself isn't bad, it's all the people that pitched it like an old school investment vehicle.
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  I remember getting into Bitcoin in early 2010 when the pizza thing happened. Even back then it was hyped to me as an investment and an alternative to the corrupt financial system. There's always been an undercurrent of this stuff. The eternal September came years later, after big scams like Mt Gox had already long imploded.
  - origin_path 4y ago
    Mt Gox wasn't a scam, just very poorly run.
    - AlotOfReading 4y ago
      I guess you could argue that it wasn't a scam because it wasn't the leadership doing the theft, but it's a bit of a meaningless distinction in the end. Lots of bitcoins were stolen, withdrawals were halted, and customers lost their money regardless.
- Justsignedup 4y ago
  I honestly can't think of any positive thing about crypto. It solves nothing, it only acts as a pyramid scheme from day 1.
azangru 4y ago
> When that happened he shuttered the website and kept everyone's bitcoins. > I knew of bitcoin early on due to this guy, but even then I had no interest and considered it bullshit. Then when I saw what this guy did it just solidified my opinion that it can't be trusted. But isn't it instead an early lesson in "not your keys not your coin" maxim that Bitcoin advocates preach? > If the value of gold crashes it still has an inherent value because it's a useful physical good (looking pretty is not the only application of gold). a bitcoin has ZERO inherent value. Yes, but: 1) it's very difficult to self-custody gold (it's bulky, needs a safe place for storage — and if you put it in a bank, you need to be able to trust that you can get it out again); 2) it's very difficult to transfer, especially cross borders, especially in large amounts; 3) it's very difficult to use as an actual money, whereas bitcoin could conceivably be used as such (especially with Lightning).
- runarberg 4y ago
  Your parent was talking about gold in the niche case of protecting from inflation, and passed no judgement over the merit of doing so, only that it was better then cryptocurrency in that particular niche. If you want to purchase gold to protect your money from inflation (which you probably shouldn’t) then you probably buy it through some insured exchange—maybe even through your bank—that will keep it for you, if you don’t trust any exchange, that is your problem. If you need to transfer your money, or use it, then you’re not protecting it against inflation anymore are you? So you will just use regular money for that. Anyway, you shouldn’t buy gold to protect your money from inflation. Instead you probably should just risk an inflation and keep your money in a savings account, or buy secure government bonds for it, or something.
- danaris 4y ago
  > "not your keys not your coin" maxim that Bitcoin advocates preach? I keep seeing this phrase crop up throughout the past several days of cryptocurrency news, and something always rubbed me the wrong way about it, but I couldn't put my finger on it until today. It's demanding a change in human nature to accommodate the system, rather than changing the system to accommodate human nature. It's really not that different than the people who, 15 years ago, were saying, "Well, of course your accounts got hacked, because you didn't create a separate 27-character totally random password for every single account you need, like I do, and never store those passwords anywhere except your head!" People don't want to deal with a hardware token every single time they want to do anything with their money...and the only reason they have to, with cryptocurrency, is because its proponents think an unregulated "decentralized" financial system where the only law is code is a good idea. (Of course, it was never going to stay unregulated forever. None of the aspects of cryptocurrency that rely on the government not paying attention can last more than another few years.)
bnralt 4y ago
> If the value of gold crashes it still has an inherent value because it's a useful physical good (looking pretty is not the only application of gold). The value of gold is protected by the fact that the majority of it's holdings (at least, according to this[1]) aren't used for speculation. Still, a good chunk of them are, which means there can be pretty huge swings and it's considered a poor investment. Have tried to say the inherent value of a dollar is because it's backed by the U.S. military, but fundamentally, it's the same reason. Dollars aren't held as speculative assets. The poor returns from the dollar are one of the reasons why people push other investments. If currency does enter into speculative territory, bad things can (and do) happen. See Hot Money[2]. Anything, even if it has inherent value, can be extremely dangerous when there's a large number of speculators. Because no matter the value, speculation can drive the price much, much higher. And it's a snowballing effect - the more an asset rises, the more people want to buy it for speculative reasons, and the more people buy it the more it rises. And then any inherent value (if it even exists) looses significance - you're in a game of chicken with the other investors, trying to both hold on as long as you can and get out before everyone else does. The winner gets the fortune, the loser is left holding the bag. The thing is, almost everyone in the crypto space seems interested in speculation. It might be speculation + decentralized voting rights or speculation + digital ownership, but speculation is always at the heart of it. The idea that if you get in early you'll be able to cash out for a big profit. Of course a space almost entirely driven by speculation is going to be inherently dangerous and unstable, and the "opportunities" are the same type as those of a casino. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_holdings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_holdings [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_money
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  - dang 4y ago
    Please don't post HN threads flameward. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
abudabi123 4y ago
I suspected early period Bitcoin gained enormous deposits from corrupt "Tiger" traitors (or defectors) in the Communist Party. They exited China's smog for Canada, for example.
compsciphd 4y ago
I'd go a step further with the comparison to gold. If everyone would stop mining gold today, gold would retain value (or perhaps even go up in value). On the flipside, if we turned off all bitcoin miners today, bitcoin would go to zero instantly (as its worthless without continuous resources being pumped into it). This is why I'm sympathetic to those who say its ponzi scheme, it only has value because of new resources continuing to be poured into it.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  ^ that was exactly my point and why I asked the other poster if they actually understood the point. but I'm in the middle of getting warned and moderated by dang for daring to ask such a question!
- tim333 4y ago
  Nitpicking but >if we turned off all bitcoin miners today, bitcoin would go to zero instantly isn't true. You couldn't trade them normally with the miners off but you could start mining up the day after - it only takes a couple of computers really.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - feet 4y ago
    Turning mining back on is entirely changing the parent's statement. "Well yea you could do that change to tank the value, but imagine if you just undid it huh???" The point was without mining entirely, there is no value
    - Taniwha 4y ago
      But there's only ever going to be a fixed number of bitcoin - does it all just stop working when it's all mined out?
      - 4y ago
randomdata 4y ago
> It's not possible for the value of gold to go to zero The price might go to zero, though. The price of oil, which is arguably more useful than gold, went negative a couple of years back. Having intrinsic value doesn't necessarily mean it is exchangeable, especially if it needs to be exchanged at a given moment in time.
- gizajob 4y ago
  The exchange value might fluctuate but the use value remains, in the case of oil and gold. Bitcoin has no use value. Could say that about other financial instruments and derivatives, but they serve a purpose to those who use them. There's a big difference to exchange value and use value though, Marx made a career out of defining it.
  - randomdata 4y ago
    Its value is all well and good if you personally have a use for it, but if you are merely stockpiling it in hopes of selling it later then that doesn't help much if the price has fallen to zero. You might be left with something pretty to look at and little more as you hold out for a recovery, if you don't take the bath and end up with nothing. Which could also be said about Bitcoin. I'm sure someone out there would find some kind of academic interest in looking at Bitcoins or enjoy collecting them. There might be almost no value in Bitcoin, but it would probably never erode completely.
    - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
      In fiction there's an idea known as 'plot armor'. In essence, it's the idea that causality and realism are suspended for some reasons related to the plot. Your scenario here is plot armor. Sure, if we pretend that gold stops having ANY use outside of being pretty, then when it stops being considered pretty it's value will go to 0. But the fact is, gold has a myriad of uses besides being pretty and those uses give it an inherent value. And when you go to sell it, others' use of it is what sets the sell value, not your personal use of it. It doesn't matter that I'm not personally using it for conductivity if the person I'm selling it to is (or someone downstream of them is). IOW, stop posting fiction.
anonymousiam 4y ago
Although I agree with almost everything you said, under certain conditions it would be possible for certain prices of gold to go to zero, or even negative. See: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/oil-prices-went-negative-a-year-ago-heres-what-traders-have-learned-since-11618863839 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/oil-prices-went-negative-a...
paiute 4y ago
it honestly sounds a lot like banking. We just have some rules now to prevent this sort of thing. It's not bitcoin that's the problem... It's the money changers.
- Loughla 4y ago
  If an item only works well in theory, then the item itself is the problem. A firearm is absolutely, 100% safe as long as no one ever interacts with it. Because we are humans, in a society, and everything we do relies on human interactions, if Bitcoin (and crypto in general) cannot operate positively and effectively, except in theory, then it is the problem, regardless of the underlying reason.
  - paiute 4y ago
    the history of money seems to be lost on you. It literally went through the same sorts of things. Fiat works because we learned. My Good that gun comparison was dumb.
ManuelKiessling 4y ago
Just for the record (and not as a defense of crypto): using gold for protecting your money from inflation is completely nonsensical, too.
- georgeecollins 4y ago
  Can you teach me about this, like with a link or something? I have known wealthy people who for generations kept a portfolio like 60% equities, 35% cash and very liquid things like bonds, ~3-5% gold, usually in the form of equities that track gold. I am not saying that is good.. I don't know. Tell me why it is bad. Thank you.
  - ManuelKiessling 4y ago
    Well, for one, I might be wrong: https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/empeco/v60y2021i3d10.1007_s00181-019-01807-0.html https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/empeco/v60y2021i3d10.1007_s001... However, I don’t get how holding gold – which doesn’t generate dividends and therefore cannot benefit from compound interest – could be a good long term invest, compared to, say, an accumulating ETF. No financial advice.
BLKNSLVR 4y ago
That's not a Bitcoin problem, but a human problem, and one that exists in any realm where value is held by a third party. It's like saying that sausages are bad, and should go away from existence, because the dog ate them off the kitchen counter.
wizofaus 4y ago
I don't think I've ever seen a convincing argument that the physical "usefulness" of gold is a significant factor behind its market value. The closest is the argument that it's useful as marker for indicating wealth/status/privilege, because of its rarity (and obviously the skill involved in crafting it into various ornaments/utensils etc.). But yes, arguably more useful than cryptocurrency (where there's value in the concept of a distributed cryptographically-backed ledger, and the software that exists to support it, but not really in any individual unit of a cryptographic currency). Then again, there's really no absolute utility in units of fiat-issued currency either - it just happens to be the only sort of currency that governments accept for paying taxes (therefore necessary for keeping yourself out of jail).
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  The point is that gold is useful, crypto-coins are not.
  - hnarayanan 4y ago
    Another point is that the perceived value of gold has never been tied to its supposed usefulness.
    - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
      It's never been tied solely to it's usefulness. The real point is that if the value that isn't tied to its usefulness ever goes away, it still has value. bitcoins do not.
majikandy 4y ago
If the value dropped to Zero, I’d “buy” them all and then run my own miner to confirm the transaction and sail off into the virtual sunset with my story about how I bought all the bitcoin in the world. I’d keep running the miner and publishing my chain. But then someone would come along with more hashpower than me and rewrite all my transactions with their longer chain and my sunset would turn to darkness, and I’d be poor again… but ironically they’d probably not be worth zero anymore. Then people would rewrite that chain with more hashpower… And so on, until greed secures the transactions again and restores value. At which point I’d turn my miner off and wind the chain back to when I was rich on my private virtual island for one and live happily ever after.
LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
> People try to compare it to things like gold for protecting your money from inflation, but that's completely nonsensical. It's just like gold. You give me your gold and I'll take it all right now, saving you from losing it incrementally or at a later date. Not your vault, not your bars. Theft-as-a-Service. /s Gold has a special status because of how long we've mythologized it, but generally you'd be encouraged to invest/buy futures in things that impact your life and income directly. Your inputs and outputs. If you produce food from fertilizer and power then those are your three important commodities. Gold isn't a great fit because you can't eat it, fertilize with it, or run a tractor on it. You have to do a gold-to-dollars transaction first which can waste a fair bit of the value. If you forward packets and consume electricity to do so then holding gold also isn't economically relevant, but by trading proofs of work which were generated by burning electricity you track the value of your commodities and do so natively. If we used HashCash (or similar) to solve the initial-contact problem then we'd be creating a secondary market in the proofs and they could be used as currency by a related ecosystem like hosting providers with little friction or risk. Tulips didn't cause the problem, speculators (and scammers) did.
andirk 4y ago
A lot of things have no value to most people. Go to an antique show or an art auction and you yourself may see boring drawings and literal garbage, but many others pay handsomely for it! BTC has no visual or any sensory representation so it's not apples-to-apples but it's a collector's item at the very least.

cft 4y ago

Get ready for CBDC, surveillance of every transaction and economic unpersoning then.

pessimizer 4y ago
The government doesn't need a cryptocoin to monitor transactions, or to make using paper currency illegal. It can already do what you think it needs a cryptocoin to do, and it doesn't do it because it supports wealthy people being able to launder money and avoid taxes. US politics runs entirely on laundered money and misdirected/avoided taxes. You're lobbying for the swamp.
- yonaguska 4y ago
  I anticipate CBDC being something for the peons to use, not the elite. Yes, the government can monitor transactions, but it currently has to jump through a lot more loopholes to do so. I understand and agree with your sentiment, with the additional point that smaller banks are also going to be made obsolete if a CBDC is rolled out. But the wealthy and connected will most certainly have their own way of getting around the system. Whether that means moving their money into physical assets, or onto the market, I don't know. I don't think cash is going to go away, but I do see the government incentivizing regular people to solely use CBDC, and once you're on that system, you are a serf.
  - codehalo 4y ago
    At this point, if HN is any indication, they deserve it.
    - cft 4y ago
      I migrated to https://stacker.news https://stacker.news ; anxiously waiting for them to open other subs
imtringued 4y ago
I have seen a lot of resistance against GNU Taler so I think if any country adopts a CDBC it will be fully surveiled with no privacy for customers. After all that is what people want. They don't want privacy in their CDBCs. Well, if that happens I hope they implement negative interest rates on them because that would end the need for surveillance and political corruption within a decade.

_fat_santa 4y ago

Broadscale, crypto seems to have had an "Eternal September" moment and I think that's where the problems really began. Back in the early days before crypto entered the mainstream, it was pretty much like any other internet project. It was cool to be able to buy a pizza with internet funny money but by then it was still pretty small and everyone knew the inherent risks. Then came the "Eternal September" where cryto went mainstream and many people started pitching this formerly niche project as a real investment vehicle. And people bought in thinking it was like any other investment. IMHO cyrpto itself isn't bad, it's all the people that pitched it like an old school investment vehicle.

AlotOfReading 4y ago
I remember getting into Bitcoin in early 2010 when the pizza thing happened. Even back then it was hyped to me as an investment and an alternative to the corrupt financial system. There's always been an undercurrent of this stuff. The eternal September came years later, after big scams like Mt Gox had already long imploded.
- origin_path 4y ago
  Mt Gox wasn't a scam, just very poorly run.
  - AlotOfReading 4y ago
    I guess you could argue that it wasn't a scam because it wasn't the leadership doing the theft, but it's a bit of a meaningless distinction in the end. Lots of bitcoins were stolen, withdrawals were halted, and customers lost their money regardless.
Justsignedup 4y ago
I honestly can't think of any positive thing about crypto. It solves nothing, it only acts as a pyramid scheme from day 1.

azangru 4y ago

> When that happened he shuttered the website and kept everyone's bitcoins. > I knew of bitcoin early on due to this guy, but even then I had no interest and considered it bullshit. Then when I saw what this guy did it just solidified my opinion that it can't be trusted. But isn't it instead an early lesson in "not your keys not your coin" maxim that Bitcoin advocates preach? > If the value of gold crashes it still has an inherent value because it's a useful physical good (looking pretty is not the only application of gold). a bitcoin has ZERO inherent value. Yes, but: 1) it's very difficult to self-custody gold (it's bulky, needs a safe place for storage — and if you put it in a bank, you need to be able to trust that you can get it out again); 2) it's very difficult to transfer, especially cross borders, especially in large amounts; 3) it's very difficult to use as an actual money, whereas bitcoin could conceivably be used as such (especially with Lightning).

runarberg 4y ago
Your parent was talking about gold in the niche case of protecting from inflation, and passed no judgement over the merit of doing so, only that it was better then cryptocurrency in that particular niche. If you want to purchase gold to protect your money from inflation (which you probably shouldn’t) then you probably buy it through some insured exchange—maybe even through your bank—that will keep it for you, if you don’t trust any exchange, that is your problem. If you need to transfer your money, or use it, then you’re not protecting it against inflation anymore are you? So you will just use regular money for that. Anyway, you shouldn’t buy gold to protect your money from inflation. Instead you probably should just risk an inflation and keep your money in a savings account, or buy secure government bonds for it, or something.
danaris 4y ago
> "not your keys not your coin" maxim that Bitcoin advocates preach? I keep seeing this phrase crop up throughout the past several days of cryptocurrency news, and something always rubbed me the wrong way about it, but I couldn't put my finger on it until today. It's demanding a change in human nature to accommodate the system, rather than changing the system to accommodate human nature. It's really not that different than the people who, 15 years ago, were saying, "Well, of course your accounts got hacked, because you didn't create a separate 27-character totally random password for every single account you need, like I do, and never store those passwords anywhere except your head!" People don't want to deal with a hardware token every single time they want to do anything with their money...and the only reason they have to, with cryptocurrency, is because its proponents think an unregulated "decentralized" financial system where the only law is code is a good idea. (Of course, it was never going to stay unregulated forever. None of the aspects of cryptocurrency that rely on the government not paying attention can last more than another few years.)

bnralt 4y ago

> If the value of gold crashes it still has an inherent value because it's a useful physical good (looking pretty is not the only application of gold). The value of gold is protected by the fact that the majority of it's holdings (at least, according to this[1]) aren't used for speculation. Still, a good chunk of them are, which means there can be pretty huge swings and it's considered a poor investment. Have tried to say the inherent value of a dollar is because it's backed by the U.S. military, but fundamentally, it's the same reason. Dollars aren't held as speculative assets. The poor returns from the dollar are one of the reasons why people push other investments. If currency does enter into speculative territory, bad things can (and do) happen. See Hot Money[2]. Anything, even if it has inherent value, can be extremely dangerous when there's a large number of speculators. Because no matter the value, speculation can drive the price much, much higher. And it's a snowballing effect - the more an asset rises, the more people want to buy it for speculative reasons, and the more people buy it the more it rises. And then any inherent value (if it even exists) looses significance - you're in a game of chicken with the other investors, trying to both hold on as long as you can and get out before everyone else does. The winner gets the fortune, the loser is left holding the bag. The thing is, almost everyone in the crypto space seems interested in speculation. It might be speculation + decentralized voting rights or speculation + digital ownership, but speculation is always at the heart of it. The idea that if you get in early you'll be able to cash out for a big profit. Of course a space almost entirely driven by speculation is going to be inherently dangerous and unstable, and the "opportunities" are the same type as those of a casino. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_holdings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_holdings [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_money

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
- dang 4y ago
  Please don't post HN threads flameward. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

abudabi123 4y ago

I suspected early period Bitcoin gained enormous deposits from corrupt "Tiger" traitors (or defectors) in the Communist Party. They exited China's smog for Canada, for example.

compsciphd 4y ago

I'd go a step further with the comparison to gold. If everyone would stop mining gold today, gold would retain value (or perhaps even go up in value). On the flipside, if we turned off all bitcoin miners today, bitcoin would go to zero instantly (as its worthless without continuous resources being pumped into it). This is why I'm sympathetic to those who say its ponzi scheme, it only has value because of new resources continuing to be poured into it.

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
^ that was exactly my point and why I asked the other poster if they actually understood the point. but I'm in the middle of getting warned and moderated by dang for daring to ask such a question!
tim333 4y ago
Nitpicking but >if we turned off all bitcoin miners today, bitcoin would go to zero instantly isn't true. You couldn't trade them normally with the miners off but you could start mining up the day after - it only takes a couple of computers really.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- feet 4y ago
  Turning mining back on is entirely changing the parent's statement. "Well yea you could do that change to tank the value, but imagine if you just undid it huh???" The point was without mining entirely, there is no value
  - Taniwha 4y ago
    But there's only ever going to be a fixed number of bitcoin - does it all just stop working when it's all mined out?
    - 4y ago

randomdata 4y ago

> It's not possible for the value of gold to go to zero The price might go to zero, though. The price of oil, which is arguably more useful than gold, went negative a couple of years back. Having intrinsic value doesn't necessarily mean it is exchangeable, especially if it needs to be exchanged at a given moment in time.

gizajob 4y ago
The exchange value might fluctuate but the use value remains, in the case of oil and gold. Bitcoin has no use value. Could say that about other financial instruments and derivatives, but they serve a purpose to those who use them. There's a big difference to exchange value and use value though, Marx made a career out of defining it.
- randomdata 4y ago
  Its value is all well and good if you personally have a use for it, but if you are merely stockpiling it in hopes of selling it later then that doesn't help much if the price has fallen to zero. You might be left with something pretty to look at and little more as you hold out for a recovery, if you don't take the bath and end up with nothing. Which could also be said about Bitcoin. I'm sure someone out there would find some kind of academic interest in looking at Bitcoins or enjoy collecting them. There might be almost no value in Bitcoin, but it would probably never erode completely.
  - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
    In fiction there's an idea known as 'plot armor'. In essence, it's the idea that causality and realism are suspended for some reasons related to the plot. Your scenario here is plot armor. Sure, if we pretend that gold stops having ANY use outside of being pretty, then when it stops being considered pretty it's value will go to 0. But the fact is, gold has a myriad of uses besides being pretty and those uses give it an inherent value. And when you go to sell it, others' use of it is what sets the sell value, not your personal use of it. It doesn't matter that I'm not personally using it for conductivity if the person I'm selling it to is (or someone downstream of them is). IOW, stop posting fiction.

anonymousiam 4y ago

Although I agree with almost everything you said, under certain conditions it would be possible for certain prices of gold to go to zero, or even negative. See: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/oil-prices-went-negative-a-year-ago-heres-what-traders-have-learned-since-11618863839 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/oil-prices-went-negative-a...

paiute 4y ago

it honestly sounds a lot like banking. We just have some rules now to prevent this sort of thing. It's not bitcoin that's the problem... It's the money changers.

Loughla 4y ago
If an item only works well in theory, then the item itself is the problem. A firearm is absolutely, 100% safe as long as no one ever interacts with it. Because we are humans, in a society, and everything we do relies on human interactions, if Bitcoin (and crypto in general) cannot operate positively and effectively, except in theory, then it is the problem, regardless of the underlying reason.
- paiute 4y ago
  the history of money seems to be lost on you. It literally went through the same sorts of things. Fiat works because we learned. My Good that gun comparison was dumb.

ManuelKiessling 4y ago

Just for the record (and not as a defense of crypto): using gold for protecting your money from inflation is completely nonsensical, too.

georgeecollins 4y ago
Can you teach me about this, like with a link or something? I have known wealthy people who for generations kept a portfolio like 60% equities, 35% cash and very liquid things like bonds, ~3-5% gold, usually in the form of equities that track gold. I am not saying that is good.. I don't know. Tell me why it is bad. Thank you.
- ManuelKiessling 4y ago
  Well, for one, I might be wrong: https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/empeco/v60y2021i3d10.1007_s00181-019-01807-0.html https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/empeco/v60y2021i3d10.1007_s001... However, I don’t get how holding gold – which doesn’t generate dividends and therefore cannot benefit from compound interest – could be a good long term invest, compared to, say, an accumulating ETF. No financial advice.

BLKNSLVR 4y ago

That's not a Bitcoin problem, but a human problem, and one that exists in any realm where value is held by a third party. It's like saying that sausages are bad, and should go away from existence, because the dog ate them off the kitchen counter.

wizofaus 4y ago

I don't think I've ever seen a convincing argument that the physical "usefulness" of gold is a significant factor behind its market value. The closest is the argument that it's useful as marker for indicating wealth/status/privilege, because of its rarity (and obviously the skill involved in crafting it into various ornaments/utensils etc.). But yes, arguably more useful than cryptocurrency (where there's value in the concept of a distributed cryptographically-backed ledger, and the software that exists to support it, but not really in any individual unit of a cryptographic currency). Then again, there's really no absolute utility in units of fiat-issued currency either - it just happens to be the only sort of currency that governments accept for paying taxes (therefore necessary for keeping yourself out of jail).

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
The point is that gold is useful, crypto-coins are not.
- hnarayanan 4y ago
  Another point is that the perceived value of gold has never been tied to its supposed usefulness.
  - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
    It's never been tied solely to it's usefulness. The real point is that if the value that isn't tied to its usefulness ever goes away, it still has value. bitcoins do not.

majikandy 4y ago

If the value dropped to Zero, I’d “buy” them all and then run my own miner to confirm the transaction and sail off into the virtual sunset with my story about how I bought all the bitcoin in the world. I’d keep running the miner and publishing my chain. But then someone would come along with more hashpower than me and rewrite all my transactions with their longer chain and my sunset would turn to darkness, and I’d be poor again… but ironically they’d probably not be worth zero anymore. Then people would rewrite that chain with more hashpower… And so on, until greed secures the transactions again and restores value. At which point I’d turn my miner off and wind the chain back to when I was rich on my private virtual island for one and live happily ever after.

LawTalkingGuy 4y ago

> People try to compare it to things like gold for protecting your money from inflation, but that's completely nonsensical. It's just like gold. You give me your gold and I'll take it all right now, saving you from losing it incrementally or at a later date. Not your vault, not your bars. Theft-as-a-Service. /s Gold has a special status because of how long we've mythologized it, but generally you'd be encouraged to invest/buy futures in things that impact your life and income directly. Your inputs and outputs. If you produce food from fertilizer and power then those are your three important commodities. Gold isn't a great fit because you can't eat it, fertilize with it, or run a tractor on it. You have to do a gold-to-dollars transaction first which can waste a fair bit of the value. If you forward packets and consume electricity to do so then holding gold also isn't economically relevant, but by trading proofs of work which were generated by burning electricity you track the value of your commodities and do so natively. If we used HashCash (or similar) to solve the initial-contact problem then we'd be creating a secondary market in the proofs and they could be used as currency by a related ecosystem like hosting providers with little friction or risk. Tulips didn't cause the problem, speculators (and scammers) did.

andirk 4y ago

A lot of things have no value to most people. Go to an antique show or an art auction and you yourself may see boring drawings and literal garbage, but many others pay handsomely for it! BTC has no visual or any sensory representation so it's not apples-to-apples but it's a collector's item at the very least.