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Some people own bitcoin only because they expect its value to increase due to demand from others. There is nothing inherently invalid about this-- speculation
by nullc 3y ago
Some people own bitcoin only because they expect its value to increase due to demand from others. There is nothing inherently invalid about this-- speculation occurs in all kinds of valuable assets and it serves the public good of creating a demand buffer.
For those parties, bitcoin's general properties are not very relevant and a centeralized list maintained by DTCC may well better serve their particular needs. To the extent that it does: more power to them!
- miohtama 3y agoNote that the same is for gold. Most people own gold ETFs, not physical gold, and most gold’s value is speculation (not industrial use).
- vasco 3y agoAre there any asset classes in public markets that aren't driven primarily by speculation?
- nullc 3y agoSure, any kind of relatively short duration dividend/interest yielder, to give an example. Though it's possible to make extra money with t-bills by trading against rates, no one can say thats a primary driver. Likewise for much of the bond market.
- FactKnower69 3y agoGold did at one point in history have an actual use case apart from speculation and being pretty: it is almost uniquely suitable as currency and store of value (along with silver) because it is hard to create, easy to purify and non-destructively measure the purity of, fungible, and can be easily split and recombined into units of any desired weight as far as having an actual historic or present day use case, blockchain snake oil is still in search of a problem only it can solve to this day