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>There is no underlying value there Plainly wrong on its face when they are immediately exchangeable for $50k USD, which no one in their right mind would argue

>There is no underlying value there Plainly wrong on its face when they are immediately exchangeable for $50k USD, which no one in their right mind would argue "has no underlying value". The rest of the argument can be dismissed as easily. That said, your argument sums to "it's not newsworthy because it's X and X is bad". Unfortunately for you, newsworthy news is more often than not bad thanks to human psychology.

baal80spam 3y ago
> immediately I doubt that. > $50k USD Uh, minus a hefty exchange fee.
- RetpolineDrama 3y ago
  I, and many other people, can execute a sale for very low rates and have a wire transfer hit my bank account in <24h. Even coinbase is pretty fast these days and will give $50k/day wire limits to anyone with a pulse.
tayjohno 3y ago
Liquidity ≠ value. There are plenty of highly liquid investments that are quite speculative, like gold, but you can at least make some reasonable assumptions and say "Would people still pay for a gold ring if it cost $1,000/oz? $10,000/oz? $100,000/oz? There's a natural feedback because of the underlying value of the object. How do you do the same with Bitcoin? People point to factors of the technology as having some inherent value, but if things like divisibility or the distributed ledger were what give cryptocurrencies their value, then any crypto currency should be just as valuable as any other. There are other intangibles that help explain why Bitcoin out-values other coins, like the brand recognition, or the network effect, but there's no explanation for what those are worth. The problem with this is that bitcoin goes up _because_ bitcoin goes up, and bitcoin goes down _because_ bitcoin goes down. There are no other levers to move the price other than sentiment.
- RetpolineDrama 3y ago
  Most of this is irrelevant. Does USD have value? If you say yes, and I can then exchange X for USD in a reasonable amount of time then X is also valuable. You don't have to _like_ it, you don't have to think it's a good thing that X has value, but your emotional reaction does not change the reality that X has value.

baal80spam 3y ago

> immediately I doubt that. > $50k USD Uh, minus a hefty exchange fee.

RetpolineDrama 3y ago
I, and many other people, can execute a sale for very low rates and have a wire transfer hit my bank account in <24h. Even coinbase is pretty fast these days and will give $50k/day wire limits to anyone with a pulse.

tayjohno 3y ago

Liquidity ≠ value. There are plenty of highly liquid investments that are quite speculative, like gold, but you can at least make some reasonable assumptions and say "Would people still pay for a gold ring if it cost $1,000/oz? $10,000/oz? $100,000/oz? There's a natural feedback because of the underlying value of the object. How do you do the same with Bitcoin? People point to factors of the technology as having some inherent value, but if things like divisibility or the distributed ledger were what give cryptocurrencies their value, then any crypto currency should be just as valuable as any other. There are other intangibles that help explain why Bitcoin out-values other coins, like the brand recognition, or the network effect, but there's no explanation for what those are worth. The problem with this is that bitcoin goes up _because_ bitcoin goes up, and bitcoin goes down _because_ bitcoin goes down. There are no other levers to move the price other than sentiment.

RetpolineDrama 3y ago
Most of this is irrelevant. Does USD have value? If you say yes, and I can then exchange X for USD in a reasonable amount of time then X is also valuable. You don't have to _like_ it, you don't have to think it's a good thing that X has value, but your emotional reaction does not change the reality that X has value.