10 ms·

"If you owned all of the Bitcoin in the world and you offered it to me for $25, I wouldn’t take it. Because what would I do with it? I’ll have to sell it back

"If you owned all of the Bitcoin in the world and you offered it to me for $25, I wouldn’t take it. Because what would I do with it? I’ll have to sell it back to you one way or another. It isn’t going to do anything." Warren Buffet

poszlem 4y ago
And if you owned all the dollar bills?
- dragontamer 4y ago
  Dollar bills are backed by the full faith and credit by the US Government. As long as the US Government decides those have value (IE: forces you to pay taxes denominated in bills), then anyone interacting with the government will value those bills. As a centralized currency, the power flows from the Government. If the US Government loses power, of course dollar bills lose value. But generally speaking, the trust in the dollar is one-and-the-same as trust in the US Government.
  - throwup 4y ago
    It's a myth that taxes are what give currency value. Plenty of currencies needed to pay taxes throughout history have hyperinflated into nothing.
    - dragontamer 4y ago
      Its a myth that printing money causes currency to lose value. There are an infinite Dogecoins and yet the value goes up sometimes.
      - tromp 4y ago
        There are only a finite number ever. The amount of Doge is limited by time. Unlike fiat, it is disinflationary (yearly supply rate goes down toward 0).
        dragontamer 4y ago
        There were only a finite number of German Marks in 1923, last time I checked. A very large number, but finite nonetheless.
      - plsbenice34 4y ago
        Doge inflation is only on the ballpark of 0.3% per year and will continue to decrease asymptotically toward 0%. It is a very sound policy imo
        dragontamer 4y ago
        By what measure? DOGE is -53% over the last year, which means its _actually inflated_ by 212% vs the Dollar (or really like 233% in real terms, after accounting for the 9%+ inflation of USD). DOGE inflating by 233% in a single year is horrific policy.
        plsbenice34 4y ago
        The parent comment was obviously regarding total/circulating number of dogecoins. It erroneously made a hyperbolic claim there are infinite dogecoins. It is a common misconception even among cryptocurrency fans that the number of dogecoins increases at a high rate, because it doesn't have a hard max total supply number like bitcoin's 21 million. In a cryptocurrency context, inflation most often refers to the rate of newly printed units because the price volatility is just from market movements and has often little to do with the monetary policy
      - throwup 4y ago
        I'm not sure why you're trying to change the subject to money printing. But thanks for proving my point. You're right that dogecoins have value (for better or worse) and that value definitely doesn't come from any government.
        dragontamer 4y ago
        Dogecoin has hyperinflated 210% this past year, while BTC has hyperinflated 340% this past year. As far as things with inflation, we should be discussing why Cryptocoins are so terrible at it.
        throwup 4y ago
        You've changed the subject again--I didn't mention inflation. Are you a bot or are you just parroting random talking points without reading? Since you brought it up, YoY returns are not really relevant for a long-term investor. If you're speculating/gambling on short-term volatility, then USD/VTSAX/BTC have done poorly--but I'm not much of a speculator. I'm very happy with my 10-year returns. As long as you keep wildly changing the subject (this applies to your next reply as well), I'll assume you have no counterpoints and agree with everything I say. I'm glad we can agree!
        dragontamer 4y ago
        > hyperinflated into nothing You literally said this. Honestly, I'm not sure what subject you want to discuss anymore. But you were the one to first bring up inflation. If you got something to say about my root post, feel free. But you're changing the subject more than I am: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33789831 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33789831
  - mekster 4y ago
    How come people's only definition of value of currency is that it can pay taxes? Everything else's value is determined by the market and not the government, so how does Bitcoin have trouble finding value if the market thinks it has its utility, which is a storage of value without any third party intervention which is its unique capability that people can't seem to figure out after 10+ years of its existence.
    - dragontamer 4y ago
      Seashells and Rai stones have been used as stores of value without any third party intervention. The only thing a currency needs is widespread community coordination. US Government forces this through taxes and bonds/lending, so our system is largely built on top of the dollar and a centralized bank. Other systems can be made however you wish. But solving the coordination problem is the fundamental issue.
- hcknwscommenter 4y ago
  You could pay your taxes. And all the others who need to pay their taxes, would need to trade valuable things to you for the dollars they need to pay their taxes. Also, almost all world trade is ultimately settled in dollars. And so, if you want to buy oil/food/fertilizer/machine tools/etc. on the world market, you need those dollar bills again.
  - thesz 4y ago
    The concentration of money in one hand means it is worthless for any other hand. You can't pay taxes with worthless money.
    - selectodude 4y ago
      It’s not worthless. The United States, which happens to be the largest economy in the world, requires taxes to be paid in dollars, regardless of how you’ve settled your transaction. If you and I trade a car for 40,000 chocolate bars, the IRS demands we figure out the dollar cost and pay them their due.
      - 9864250 4y ago
        If I owned all the dollars, the US would simply decide to start demanding taxes in something else because it could not use those dollars for anything. If it refused to switch to another currency, it would not be able to pay the people who would force me to pay taxes, so there would be no reason for me to pay taxes.
        dragontamer 4y ago
        The US Debt is denominated in dollars. The USA has promised to pay its entire $24+ Trillion debt, in dollars.
        9864250 4y ago
        But that would not make any sense if one person held all the dollars. The creditors would have no use for dollars, and the US would need to switch to another currency in order to be able to pay its employees. They could print however many dollars they wanted, and could pay back the debt that way, but that would not solve the problem of the dollar no longer being useful as a currency. The government's employees would have no reason to accept the dollar because nobody else would accept it. The dollar is primarily valuable because it's used as a currency. If it stopped being used as a currency, its value would be zero. This is no different from Bitcoin.
- howlin 4y ago
  The US government accepts these for debts and issues debts denominated in these.
- thesz 4y ago
  Exactly. The same argument can be applied to dollars, to all dollars, not the bills only.
- Eisenstein 4y ago
  If I owned all the dollar bills the Fed would add twenty zeros to them by printing a boatload of money, making mine worth a lot less and the new dollars useful.
- dougmwne 4y ago
  Then you would hold a weird power over the worlds largest economy? It’s the official medium of exchange. The government could print more money, but you would be able to flood the market at any time, essentially being a second federal reserve. Everyone would depend on you for loans to be able to pay their taxes. Likely the US government would need to deprecate the dollar and move to a new currency, which would have incredible economic shocks. Doesn’t sound at all like owning all the bitcoin. I get your point, but they are really not the same.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mode80 4y ago
  You would have an immediate market for them since dollars are the only legal way to pay your taxes. Since everyone must do this, it creates a kind of Schelling point such that everyone defaults to using dollars for everything else also. If you produce something of value in return for Bitcoin, you must still acquire dollars to pay your taxes. If you refuse, men with guns will escort you to jail. That is what ultimately backs Buffet’s preferred currency.
- kylehotchkiss 4y ago
  You buy twitter and burn it down
kjkjadksj 4y ago
Buffets house would look like a zen monastery if he extended these words to all facets of his life.
- gnrlst 4y ago
  Buffett began his answer by saying that if all the attendees in the conference owned “all the farmland in the United States” or “all the apartments in the country” and they offered him a 1% stake for $25 billion, he would write them a check on the spot. (then went on to say that about bitcoin)
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    Own assets people need. It’s a pretty simple investing philosophy. Crypto doesn’t produce anything, nor can you buy anything with it you can’t buy with fiat except perhaps drugs online. What’s the value of magic tokens whose speciality is avoiding monetary controls for illicit goods? No one needs crypto (macro scale), so why would you buy it? Because you hope a greater fool comes along.
  - thomasahle 4y ago
    Sure, and if he could buy 1% of bitcoin for $25 he would probably do that too? Since he could easily sell it again for a higher price. It seems the issue was with buying _all_ the bitcoin, since it suggests that nobody wants it anymore, so he wouldn't be able to sell it.
    - plsbenice34 4y ago
      Yep. Most of the comments here are really disappointing nonsense that take the quote out of context and apply bad reasoning to it
    - cuteboy19 4y ago
      Yeah he doesn't do this buy low sell high thing. He is not a trader. He believes in owning things that generate value. He wouldn't take half of all btc for $25 either
seydor 4y ago
thesz 4y ago
Change bitcoin to US dollars. "If you owned all of the dollars in the world and you offered it to me for $25, I would not take it..." The same argument applies.
- 2devnull 4y ago
  So you’re a gold bug?
- hcknwscommenter 4y ago
  No it does not. See my previous comment.
  - thesz 4y ago
    Yes it does, see my answer to some previous comment.
    - hcknwscommenter 4y ago
      Hmm. something wierd going on. Both of us don't seem to have a previous comment. Perhaps it got deleted or my memory is going poor. Anyway, my earlier point was that US dollars have an intrinsic value in that they keep you in good standing with the US federal and local Govs. You can pay your taxes in US dollars and nothing else. If someone had all the US dollars in the world, then everyone else would need to trade very value things to that person to get those dollars. The value of those dollars would go up a lot in terms of a basket of tradeable assets Bitcoin is the opposite I think. If someone had all of the bitcoins, then I would expect bitcoin to be worth nothing.
- jerf 4y ago
  Not quite. With US Dollars, you could pay the US government to not send the MenWithGuns to your house because you failed to pay income tax on "all the dollars in the world" coming in to your possession. It is a crucial difference. If you want to say, this isn't really that solid a foundation to build a money system on... hey, I'm right there myself, honestly. The US dollar really is based on "the full faith and credit of the US government", and specifically its ability to project power in order to harass people failing to pay its taxes. Looking out into the world, I'm seeing a negative first derivative on that, and possibly a negative second derivative too. But that is still a cut above the nothing standing behind cryptocurrency. At the present time, based on its behavior, cryptocurrency is a derivative of the US dollar and is dependent on it and the prior low interest rates it had, not a separate entity with its own trust base.
notch656a 4y ago
Warren Buffet got his start with pinball machines, which have no inherent value beyond entertainment. His only option was to sell back the pinball machine either all at once or in pieces at a time through timeshare (quarters for a game).
- anon291 4y ago
  Entertainment has inherent value in that humans for all of known history and prehistory have engaged in entertainment and expended energy (hence money, whether they knew it or not) to acquire it. Money has no inherent value other than that which you can buy with it, and so far the biggest value of bitcoin is in being able to buy USD, or other fiat.
  - notch656a 4y ago
    I find bitcoin entertaining, and incrementally so the more I have.
    - shkkmo 4y ago
      Would it still be entertaining if you owned all the bitcoin and nobody else used it? Pinball can be entertaining without a market for pinball machines, I don't see how bitcoins would be entertaining if there were no market for them.
    - anon291 4y ago
      Great! So long as people like you exist, bitcoin has value .In fact, in my opinion, the entertainment aspect has been the main driver of bitcoin and other crypto value over the past year. In fact, almost any pump and dump is really fun for all players. It only settles in after you end up bag holding. It's like gambling.. People consistently love to lose money. So if you view bitcoin as a consumable you are consuming to provide entertainment to you, that's great. I'd personally take a lower cost source of entertainment, but to each his own.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
dcolkitt 4y ago
> Because what would I do with it?... It isn’t going to do anything. This isn't strictly true. The fundamental utility of crypto assets is to pay for transactions that execute on blockchains. Blockspace is a scarce resource, and running transactions on-chain requires bidding for inclusion in a fee market that's denominated in the native currency of the chain. This isn't just hypothetical. Currently, more than $2 million worth of Ethereum per day is being paid to the network as "gas" necessary for Ethereum transactions.[1] The blockspace demand comes from a variety of blockchain applications, such as NFT marketplaces, DeFi applications like Uniswap and AAVE, and stablecoin payments such as USDC[2]. (Not to mention simple peer-to-peer Ethereum transfers.) We can debate a long time about whether blockchain based applications are here to stay or just fads. But there is a compelling case that some users and use cases will value the decentralization, immutability, censorship resistance and credible neutrality that comes with on-chain applications. In that type of decentralized digital economy, native crypto is very useful in the same way that crude oil is very useful to the industrialized economy. [1]https://cryptofees.info https://cryptofees.info [2]https://etherscan.io/gastracker https://etherscan.io/gastracker
- D13Fd 4y ago
  > "Blockspace is a scarce resource" That might be true within a system. But anyone with the skills can start a new cryptocurrency at any time.
  - dcolkitt 4y ago
    In the same way that someone can also start a new city at any given time. Yet, the price of real estate in Manhattan remains expensive. Blockspace on major pre-existing chains is valuable because 1) the ability to compose with other applications running on that chain, and 2) higher value of native assets increases the security of consensus in PoS networks. Again, this isn't just hypothetical. Today, users pay an orders of magnitude premium for Ethereum block space compared to other chains. That's because Ethereum has much higher value applications to compose against and better security guarantees around consensus.
    - 4y ago
taolegal 4y ago
Buffet wants investments, when Bitcoin is meant to be a low-time-preference store of value. And of course, central planners and standard economists, Buffet's buds, are all high-time-preference and that's why the economy is an instant-gratification consumerist junk hellscape.
xboxnolifes 4y ago
If I owned all of the USD in the world, would you pay me 25 euros for it?

poszlem 4y ago

And if you owned all the dollar bills?

dragontamer 4y ago
Dollar bills are backed by the full faith and credit by the US Government. As long as the US Government decides those have value (IE: forces you to pay taxes denominated in bills), then anyone interacting with the government will value those bills. As a centralized currency, the power flows from the Government. If the US Government loses power, of course dollar bills lose value. But generally speaking, the trust in the dollar is one-and-the-same as trust in the US Government.
- throwup 4y ago
  It's a myth that taxes are what give currency value. Plenty of currencies needed to pay taxes throughout history have hyperinflated into nothing.
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    Its a myth that printing money causes currency to lose value. There are an infinite Dogecoins and yet the value goes up sometimes.
    - tromp 4y ago
      There are only a finite number ever. The amount of Doge is limited by time. Unlike fiat, it is disinflationary (yearly supply rate goes down toward 0).
      - dragontamer 4y ago
        There were only a finite number of German Marks in 1923, last time I checked. A very large number, but finite nonetheless.
    - plsbenice34 4y ago
      Doge inflation is only on the ballpark of 0.3% per year and will continue to decrease asymptotically toward 0%. It is a very sound policy imo
      - dragontamer 4y ago
        By what measure? DOGE is -53% over the last year, which means its _actually inflated_ by 212% vs the Dollar (or really like 233% in real terms, after accounting for the 9%+ inflation of USD). DOGE inflating by 233% in a single year is horrific policy.
        plsbenice34 4y ago
        The parent comment was obviously regarding total/circulating number of dogecoins. It erroneously made a hyperbolic claim there are infinite dogecoins. It is a common misconception even among cryptocurrency fans that the number of dogecoins increases at a high rate, because it doesn't have a hard max total supply number like bitcoin's 21 million. In a cryptocurrency context, inflation most often refers to the rate of newly printed units because the price volatility is just from market movements and has often little to do with the monetary policy
    - throwup 4y ago
      I'm not sure why you're trying to change the subject to money printing. But thanks for proving my point. You're right that dogecoins have value (for better or worse) and that value definitely doesn't come from any government.
      - dragontamer 4y ago
        Dogecoin has hyperinflated 210% this past year, while BTC has hyperinflated 340% this past year. As far as things with inflation, we should be discussing why Cryptocoins are so terrible at it.
        throwup 4y ago
        You've changed the subject again--I didn't mention inflation. Are you a bot or are you just parroting random talking points without reading? Since you brought it up, YoY returns are not really relevant for a long-term investor. If you're speculating/gambling on short-term volatility, then USD/VTSAX/BTC have done poorly--but I'm not much of a speculator. I'm very happy with my 10-year returns. As long as you keep wildly changing the subject (this applies to your next reply as well), I'll assume you have no counterpoints and agree with everything I say. I'm glad we can agree!
        dragontamer 4y ago
        > hyperinflated into nothing You literally said this. Honestly, I'm not sure what subject you want to discuss anymore. But you were the one to first bring up inflation. If you got something to say about my root post, feel free. But you're changing the subject more than I am: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33789831 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33789831
- mekster 4y ago
  How come people's only definition of value of currency is that it can pay taxes? Everything else's value is determined by the market and not the government, so how does Bitcoin have trouble finding value if the market thinks it has its utility, which is a storage of value without any third party intervention which is its unique capability that people can't seem to figure out after 10+ years of its existence.
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    Seashells and Rai stones have been used as stores of value without any third party intervention. The only thing a currency needs is widespread community coordination. US Government forces this through taxes and bonds/lending, so our system is largely built on top of the dollar and a centralized bank. Other systems can be made however you wish. But solving the coordination problem is the fundamental issue.
hcknwscommenter 4y ago
You could pay your taxes. And all the others who need to pay their taxes, would need to trade valuable things to you for the dollars they need to pay their taxes. Also, almost all world trade is ultimately settled in dollars. And so, if you want to buy oil/food/fertilizer/machine tools/etc. on the world market, you need those dollar bills again.
- thesz 4y ago
  The concentration of money in one hand means it is worthless for any other hand. You can't pay taxes with worthless money.
  - selectodude 4y ago
    It’s not worthless. The United States, which happens to be the largest economy in the world, requires taxes to be paid in dollars, regardless of how you’ve settled your transaction. If you and I trade a car for 40,000 chocolate bars, the IRS demands we figure out the dollar cost and pay them their due.
    - 9864250 4y ago
      If I owned all the dollars, the US would simply decide to start demanding taxes in something else because it could not use those dollars for anything. If it refused to switch to another currency, it would not be able to pay the people who would force me to pay taxes, so there would be no reason for me to pay taxes.
      - dragontamer 4y ago
        The US Debt is denominated in dollars. The USA has promised to pay its entire $24+ Trillion debt, in dollars.
        9864250 4y ago
        But that would not make any sense if one person held all the dollars. The creditors would have no use for dollars, and the US would need to switch to another currency in order to be able to pay its employees. They could print however many dollars they wanted, and could pay back the debt that way, but that would not solve the problem of the dollar no longer being useful as a currency. The government's employees would have no reason to accept the dollar because nobody else would accept it. The dollar is primarily valuable because it's used as a currency. If it stopped being used as a currency, its value would be zero. This is no different from Bitcoin.
howlin 4y ago
The US government accepts these for debts and issues debts denominated in these.
thesz 4y ago
Exactly. The same argument can be applied to dollars, to all dollars, not the bills only.
Eisenstein 4y ago
If I owned all the dollar bills the Fed would add twenty zeros to them by printing a boatload of money, making mine worth a lot less and the new dollars useful.
dougmwne 4y ago
Then you would hold a weird power over the worlds largest economy? It’s the official medium of exchange. The government could print more money, but you would be able to flood the market at any time, essentially being a second federal reserve. Everyone would depend on you for loans to be able to pay their taxes. Likely the US government would need to deprecate the dollar and move to a new currency, which would have incredible economic shocks. Doesn’t sound at all like owning all the bitcoin. I get your point, but they are really not the same.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mode80 4y ago
You would have an immediate market for them since dollars are the only legal way to pay your taxes. Since everyone must do this, it creates a kind of Schelling point such that everyone defaults to using dollars for everything else also. If you produce something of value in return for Bitcoin, you must still acquire dollars to pay your taxes. If you refuse, men with guns will escort you to jail. That is what ultimately backs Buffet’s preferred currency.
kylehotchkiss 4y ago
You buy twitter and burn it down

kjkjadksj 4y ago

Buffets house would look like a zen monastery if he extended these words to all facets of his life.

gnrlst 4y ago
Buffett began his answer by saying that if all the attendees in the conference owned “all the farmland in the United States” or “all the apartments in the country” and they offered him a 1% stake for $25 billion, he would write them a check on the spot. (then went on to say that about bitcoin)
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Own assets people need. It’s a pretty simple investing philosophy. Crypto doesn’t produce anything, nor can you buy anything with it you can’t buy with fiat except perhaps drugs online. What’s the value of magic tokens whose speciality is avoiding monetary controls for illicit goods? No one needs crypto (macro scale), so why would you buy it? Because you hope a greater fool comes along.
- thomasahle 4y ago
  Sure, and if he could buy 1% of bitcoin for $25 he would probably do that too? Since he could easily sell it again for a higher price. It seems the issue was with buying _all_ the bitcoin, since it suggests that nobody wants it anymore, so he wouldn't be able to sell it.
  - plsbenice34 4y ago
    Yep. Most of the comments here are really disappointing nonsense that take the quote out of context and apply bad reasoning to it
  - cuteboy19 4y ago
    Yeah he doesn't do this buy low sell high thing. He is not a trader. He believes in owning things that generate value. He wouldn't take half of all btc for $25 either

seydor 4y ago

thesz 4y ago

Change bitcoin to US dollars. "If you owned all of the dollars in the world and you offered it to me for $25, I would not take it..." The same argument applies.

2devnull 4y ago
So you’re a gold bug?
hcknwscommenter 4y ago
No it does not. See my previous comment.
- thesz 4y ago
  Yes it does, see my answer to some previous comment.
  - hcknwscommenter 4y ago
    Hmm. something wierd going on. Both of us don't seem to have a previous comment. Perhaps it got deleted or my memory is going poor. Anyway, my earlier point was that US dollars have an intrinsic value in that they keep you in good standing with the US federal and local Govs. You can pay your taxes in US dollars and nothing else. If someone had all the US dollars in the world, then everyone else would need to trade very value things to that person to get those dollars. The value of those dollars would go up a lot in terms of a basket of tradeable assets Bitcoin is the opposite I think. If someone had all of the bitcoins, then I would expect bitcoin to be worth nothing.
jerf 4y ago
Not quite. With US Dollars, you could pay the US government to not send the MenWithGuns to your house because you failed to pay income tax on "all the dollars in the world" coming in to your possession. It is a crucial difference. If you want to say, this isn't really that solid a foundation to build a money system on... hey, I'm right there myself, honestly. The US dollar really is based on "the full faith and credit of the US government", and specifically its ability to project power in order to harass people failing to pay its taxes. Looking out into the world, I'm seeing a negative first derivative on that, and possibly a negative second derivative too. But that is still a cut above the nothing standing behind cryptocurrency. At the present time, based on its behavior, cryptocurrency is a derivative of the US dollar and is dependent on it and the prior low interest rates it had, not a separate entity with its own trust base.

notch656a 4y ago

Warren Buffet got his start with pinball machines, which have no inherent value beyond entertainment. His only option was to sell back the pinball machine either all at once or in pieces at a time through timeshare (quarters for a game).

anon291 4y ago
Entertainment has inherent value in that humans for all of known history and prehistory have engaged in entertainment and expended energy (hence money, whether they knew it or not) to acquire it. Money has no inherent value other than that which you can buy with it, and so far the biggest value of bitcoin is in being able to buy USD, or other fiat.
- notch656a 4y ago
  I find bitcoin entertaining, and incrementally so the more I have.
  - shkkmo 4y ago
    Would it still be entertaining if you owned all the bitcoin and nobody else used it? Pinball can be entertaining without a market for pinball machines, I don't see how bitcoins would be entertaining if there were no market for them.
  - anon291 4y ago
    Great! So long as people like you exist, bitcoin has value .In fact, in my opinion, the entertainment aspect has been the main driver of bitcoin and other crypto value over the past year. In fact, almost any pump and dump is really fun for all players. It only settles in after you end up bag holding. It's like gambling.. People consistently love to lose money. So if you view bitcoin as a consumable you are consuming to provide entertainment to you, that's great. I'd personally take a lower cost source of entertainment, but to each his own.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]

dcolkitt 4y ago

> Because what would I do with it?... It isn’t going to do anything. This isn't strictly true. The fundamental utility of crypto assets is to pay for transactions that execute on blockchains. Blockspace is a scarce resource, and running transactions on-chain requires bidding for inclusion in a fee market that's denominated in the native currency of the chain. This isn't just hypothetical. Currently, more than $2 million worth of Ethereum per day is being paid to the network as "gas" necessary for Ethereum transactions.[1] The blockspace demand comes from a variety of blockchain applications, such as NFT marketplaces, DeFi applications like Uniswap and AAVE, and stablecoin payments such as USDC[2]. (Not to mention simple peer-to-peer Ethereum transfers.) We can debate a long time about whether blockchain based applications are here to stay or just fads. But there is a compelling case that some users and use cases will value the decentralization, immutability, censorship resistance and credible neutrality that comes with on-chain applications. In that type of decentralized digital economy, native crypto is very useful in the same way that crude oil is very useful to the industrialized economy. [1]https://cryptofees.info https://cryptofees.info [2]https://etherscan.io/gastracker https://etherscan.io/gastracker

D13Fd 4y ago
> "Blockspace is a scarce resource" That might be true within a system. But anyone with the skills can start a new cryptocurrency at any time.
- dcolkitt 4y ago
  In the same way that someone can also start a new city at any given time. Yet, the price of real estate in Manhattan remains expensive. Blockspace on major pre-existing chains is valuable because 1) the ability to compose with other applications running on that chain, and 2) higher value of native assets increases the security of consensus in PoS networks. Again, this isn't just hypothetical. Today, users pay an orders of magnitude premium for Ethereum block space compared to other chains. That's because Ethereum has much higher value applications to compose against and better security guarantees around consensus.
  - 4y ago

taolegal 4y ago

Buffet wants investments, when Bitcoin is meant to be a low-time-preference store of value. And of course, central planners and standard economists, Buffet's buds, are all high-time-preference and that's why the economy is an instant-gratification consumerist junk hellscape.

xboxnolifes 4y ago

If I owned all of the USD in the world, would you pay me 25 euros for it?