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Duplicate comment from the other thread: 11 years ago I sold 100 BTC, and made pretty good money. With that said, the more I think about BTC, the less sense it

Duplicate comment from the other thread: 11 years ago I sold 100 BTC, and made pretty good money. With that said, the more I think about BTC, the less sense it makes to me. Exceedingly few people actually use it for anything practical. The “store of value” functionality has completely eclipsed the practical use that Bitcoin maxis were preaching back then. Since 2016-2017, it seems like people have bought it for the sole purpose of seeing someone else pay more for it. It will never become some “universal” currency that overtakes national fiats. Right now it seems like people are only hoping for governments to hoard up BTC, to moon the price and provide exit liquidity for early holders - which IMO would be reckless spending. It is the ultimate make-believe asset. Also, when I ran the numbers some time ago, I figured a realistic max value for 1 BTC would be 500k-1M. So the big money has been made, imo. Betting on a good stock could make you just as rich, as waiting BTC to reach its max. Most money will be made buying and selling between the boom cycles.

cft 2y ago
>Also, when I ran the numbers some time ago, I figured a realistic max value for 1 BTC would be 500k-1M In what units? What makes you think there won't be Argentina-style inflation of the USD?
- unyttigfjelltol 2y ago
  What makes you think BTC is an inflation hedge? BTC did not hedge the inflation event in 2022.
  - zadler 2y ago
    There’s still room for it to become an inflation hedge, we still havnt really seen much in terms of USD inflation and people scrambling for the exit. OTOH, government crackdowns might be able to tank the price.
    - fragmede 2y ago
      the bet is that the incoming regime won't crackdown and may go do the opposite
    - throw0101d 2y ago
      > There’s still room for it to become an inflation hedge, we still havnt really seen much in terms of USD inflation and people scrambling for the exit. Bitcoin is no more an inflation hedge than gold is, which it is not: * https://www.nber.org/papers/w18706 https://www.nber.org/papers/w18706 * https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3667789 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3667789 and both are something worse, deflationary: * https://www.nber.org/books-and-chapters/financial-markets-and-financial-crises/gold-standard-deflation-and-financial-crisis-great-depression-international-comparison https://www.nber.org/books-and-chapters/financial-markets-an... * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/775143.Golden_Fetters https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/775143.Golden_Fetters Gold did not help in stabilizing currencies or economies: * https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/why-the-gold-standard-is-the-worlds-worst-economic-idea-in-2-charts/261552/ https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/business/arch... and neither would Bitcoin.
- TrackerFF 2y ago
  My rationale is the following: 1) A very high (BTC/USD) rate will come from HUGE whales hoarding BTC. Like governments creating crypto reserves, and purchasing BTC in the magnitude of tens of thousands to low million (US have talked about purchasing a million). 2) BTC will never be a currency that is used for huge worldwide transactions, for things commodities like oil, gas, etc. No serious country will give up control of their currency like that, especially not US that will literally go to war if things aren’t purchased in the Uas dollar 3) Likewise, countries will not adapt BTC as their currency, if they cannot control the supply 100% 4) If BTC becomes too competitive, it will be fairly easy to regulate it into being too unattractive. Those are my macro views. I think it will continue to be some asset that competes against silver, gold, etc.
  - vasco 2y ago
    Where's the numbers, you said you did the math?
  - cft 2y ago
    There might be smarter elected officials in the future that facing two choices: USD losing the world's reserve currency status and: 1. Yuan becomes the reserve currency 2. BTC becomes the reserve currency they would understand that choice 2 is preferrable for the West
    - FollowingTheDao 2y ago
      BTC is not a currency however. The Yaun is a currency because it is controlled by a government. BTC is controlled by no one. It is just like gold, but worse because it has no intrinsic value. There is a reason the US and other governments went off of the gold standard, and that is so we could control the price of our currency, which is what led to te mess we are in now. If BTC were controlled by the government it would be no different than the dollar when we were on the gold standard, and that it why it will never be a currency.
    - throw0101d 2y ago
      > 1. Yuan becomes the reserve currency Who trusts China enough to sign on board with them to do this? > 2. BTC becomes the reserve currency Given what we know of history, why would anyone go towards a new (digital) gold standard? It's a bad system: * https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/why-the-gold-standard-is-the-worlds-worst-economic-idea-in-2-charts/261552/ https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/business/arch... * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/775143.Golden_Fetters https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/775143.Golden_Fetters that limits monetary and fiscal flexibility and helped usher in and prolong the Great Depression.
zadler 2y ago
First comment of any bitcoin thread on HN is always something like this, generally negative and a bit grumpy.
- fer 2y ago
  Just for the last 5-10 years. Before, BTC was cool.
  - ohashi 2y ago
    Because there was naive optimism about it as a technology?
  - Gigachad 2y ago
    Because 10+ years ago it was being used as a cool currency you could generate with your desktop GPU and buy steam games with. Now there doesn’t seem to be any use case other than hoping it goes up higher, and enabling crime.
    - ozgrakkurt 2y ago
      I understand you disagree with the whole thing but blockchain has a lot of uses already. Most obvious ones are storing money or investment and transferring money. It factually works amazing for these. Assuming you believe in capitalism, people won’t put such enormous amounts of money on something if it has no use. Speculation also applies to stocks in the same way, there is no world where nvidia should be priced like this but people have some view on it and it effects the price. Same idea with blockchain, there are already use cases and it is expanding constantly. Also there is a ton of investment going into research of development of it, there is no reason why people shouldn’t invest in it by buying coins, it is factually a good investment so far if you are able to hold for long periods of time
      - throw0101d 2y ago
        > I understand you disagree with the whole thing but blockchain has a lot of uses already. Not really. NIST has a good blockchain explainer with a handy flowchart that has questions you should ask to see if blockchain is a useful solution: * PNG flowchart: https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Projects/enhanced-distributed-ledger-technology/images-media/dlt-need.png https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Projects/enhanced-distribut... * https://csrc.nist.gov/Projects/enhanced-distributed-ledger-technology https://csrc.nist.gov/Projects/enhanced-distributed-ledger-t... * https://www.nist.gov/blockchain https://www.nist.gov/blockchain And other things are probably a better fit for the majority of people's needs.
gbnwl 2y ago
I ran the numbers some time ago, I figured a realistic max value for 1 BTC would be 500k-1M. Extremely curious about your methodology here. Also I'm not sure how to process "the max value is only 5-10x from current prices so the big money has already been made". Can you explain?
- vasco 2y ago
  There's no methodology anyone can show you, that's why they never show their numbers. Bitcoin is an asset like any other, there's no math I can do that will prove to you that someone can't just arrive tomorrow and buy this rock off of me for $2. And there's no math someone can do that can prove someone else won't show up the next day and offer $2 trillions for it, specially because their math can't predict inflation, or they'd be billionnaires on the futures market very quickly instead of showing off their math claims online.
- IanCal 2y ago
  "If lots of optimistic things happen, then it can't be more than X" doesn't require predicting the future. For example, the total value of all gold is something like $10-20T. At 21M coins, if bitcoin fully replaced all gold you'd be looking at something like 500k-1M. I don't really get the difference between M1 and M2 for money supply but this is about the same as all US dollars. So $500k-$1M seems like a realistic maximum value. That's different from "I think this will happen" and you can have a value much lower than this but the key part here IMO is saying "I cannot see a way it can be higher". I think there are other investments that require significantly less optimism to see 5-10x growth over any reasonable timeframe. > Also I'm not sure how to process "the max value is only 5-10x from current prices so the big money has already been made". Can you explain? A maximum upside of 5-10x assuming lots of things go extremely well for your investment requiring massive global shifts is a tricky sell. To make a huge amount of money you have to put a lot on the line. So I think broadly this is just about whether you read "realistic max value" as "the maximum I expect this to reach" or "scenarios where it goes above this are unrealistic even with a lot of optimism".
seydor 2y ago
Bitcoin at this price level is generally hated by banks, treated with suspicion everywhere around the world, outright banned, and regulators almost actively try to grind it to a halt. They don't do those things for gold for example, and gold is still going up
- bondarchuk 2y ago
  Certainly gold has been the subject of some suspicion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102
- TrackerFF 2y ago
  I don't know why you're being downvoted. Cryptocurrencies in general are a big pain in the ass for banks, due to how much of fraud is associated with those currencies. AML and KYC regulations have made practical use of cryptocurrencies a pain for both parties, for the past 10 years. It's just now, in the very recent years, that it has become somewhat easier and streamlined.
unyttigfjelltol 2y ago
BTC was designed as a drop-in replacement for both the USD and SWIFT for processing transactions. If it were successful, it would be a grave threat to the US financial position. Trump recently issued threats to BRICS nations for contemplating issuing a common currency with precisely those same aims.[1] If BTC was on the verge of realizing its purpose, Trump would work equally hard to burn it down. So, who knows if BTC price goes up or down, but categorical statements about a fundamentally transactional politician sending this permanently to the moon bake in a significant degree of risk of later being contradicted. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/30/politics/trump-brics-currency-tariff/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/30/politics/trump-brics-currency...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- throw0101d 2y ago
  > BTC was designed as a drop-in replacement for both the USD and SWIFT for processing transactions. That may have been the original intent of BTC's creators, but what is it actually used for now? USD and SWIFT are being used daily for transactions, whereas two-thirds of Bitcoins have been inactive for the last year: * https://en.macromicro.me/charts/32355/bitcoin-supply-last-active-1plus-years-ago https://en.macromicro.me/charts/32355/bitcoin-supply-last-ac... It's simply being hoarded.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
throw0101d 2y ago
> With that said, the more I think about BTC, the less sense it makes to me. Exceedingly few people actually use it for anything practical. The same can be said of gold. It's primary modern use is jewelry, with some industrial uses (electronics, aerospace) as well as medical and dentistry. For a little while it was used as (the basis of) money, and now that particular fetish has stuck around: * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/249245.The_Power_of_Gold https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/249245.The_Power_of_Gold Bitcoin and gold are now simply commodities, like oil or frozen concentrated orange juice. Human psychology is weird.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
wslh 2y ago
In 2015, we paid 20.4 bitcoins for a comic book [1] signed by several key contributors to the cryptocurrency space, including Nick Szabo (known for his work on smart contracts) and Adam Back (the inventor of Proof of Work). A glimpse of these signatures is available on page 4 of this whitepaper [2]. Today, I view cryptocurrency prices as just another signal within the broader economy. While some of my companies focus on cryptocurrency research, security, and development I am not obsessed with trading. [1] https://bitcoinist.com/meet-the-guys-who-paid-10-thousand-dollars-for-bitcoin-comic-book/ https://bitcoinist.com/meet-the-guys-who-paid-10-thousand-do... [2] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L0Me9si4iMclOq8n-oG2yNQfZ7xBpWppi_cPc7brO9A/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.ka9fewl1fxvd https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L0Me9si4iMclOq8n-oG2yNQf...
wslh 2y ago
I believe cryptocurrencies have played a significant role in awakening traditional finance and fintech industries. It’s remarkable that systems like ACH [1] have been used for U.S. payments for decades, and yet FedNow [2], a real-time payment solution, has only recently been introduced in the world’s leading economy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_clearing_house https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_clearing_house [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedNow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedNow
roenxi 2y ago
> Exceedingly few people actually use it for anything practical. That is actually fairly common. Gold has been around for millennia, found basically 0 practical applications [0]. The value of something is roughly the marginal difficulty of procuring the thing by whether someone wants to own it, and at the moment nobody can create bitcoin for substantially less than $100k and broadly speaking people will always want to own them at some price. That being said, I don't think bitcoin will hold its value long term. But the money question now is whether the collapse happens on the scale of years, decades, centuries or millenia. [0] The purpose of gold jewellery is to demonstrate that someone has gold/the wealth to do something impractical; otherwise we could make plastic jewellery that is prettier, lighter and cheaper.
- plextoria 2y ago
  Gold is not only used for jewelry. It has many practical applications and is essential for electronics.
  - throw0101d 2y ago
    > Gold is not only used for jewelry. It has many practical applications and is essential for electronics. 47% of gold is used for jewelry and 6% is used for electronics: * https://geology.com/minerals/gold/uses-of-gold.shtml#history https://geology.com/minerals/gold/uses-of-gold.shtml#history You're not wrong, but not entirely right either.
- timcobb 2y ago
  Gold has many practical applications though. I think our electronics have gold in them, for example…
- Aunche 2y ago
  Gold was the universal medium of exchange for the vast majority of recorded human history. That also gives it a good track record of being a good store of value. This track record can't be said about Bitcoin which has only existed while the of the economy of the nation driving Bitcoin prices has been growing. Plastic jewelry and other cheaper jewelry only really look good when it's new in a store. The main buyers of gold jewelry are Indians, who prefer higher karat gold, which looks good forever. The intersection between a non-reactive metal and a colorful metal make gold the ideal material for jewelry.
sshine 2y ago
> a realistic max value for 1 BTC would be 500k-1M [citation needed]
ryandvm 2y ago
Agree. Bitcoin used to make sense when it could actually be used to buy things, but at this point it's only useful for moving money for extra-legal purposes and even then, it's possibly the worst crypto to use for that because of traceability. I don't deny that a Bitcoin is worth $100,000 right now, but it could just as easily be worth $0 because at the end of the day it has zero intrinsic value.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

cft 2y ago

>Also, when I ran the numbers some time ago, I figured a realistic max value for 1 BTC would be 500k-1M In what units? What makes you think there won't be Argentina-style inflation of the USD?

unyttigfjelltol 2y ago
What makes you think BTC is an inflation hedge? BTC did not hedge the inflation event in 2022.
- zadler 2y ago
  There’s still room for it to become an inflation hedge, we still havnt really seen much in terms of USD inflation and people scrambling for the exit. OTOH, government crackdowns might be able to tank the price.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    the bet is that the incoming regime won't crackdown and may go do the opposite
  - throw0101d 2y ago
    > There’s still room for it to become an inflation hedge, we still havnt really seen much in terms of USD inflation and people scrambling for the exit. Bitcoin is no more an inflation hedge than gold is, which it is not: * https://www.nber.org/papers/w18706 https://www.nber.org/papers/w18706 * https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3667789 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3667789 and both are something worse, deflationary: * https://www.nber.org/books-and-chapters/financial-markets-and-financial-crises/gold-standard-deflation-and-financial-crisis-great-depression-international-comparison https://www.nber.org/books-and-chapters/financial-markets-an... * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/775143.Golden_Fetters https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/775143.Golden_Fetters Gold did not help in stabilizing currencies or economies: * https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/why-the-gold-standard-is-the-worlds-worst-economic-idea-in-2-charts/261552/ https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/business/arch... and neither would Bitcoin.
TrackerFF 2y ago
My rationale is the following: 1) A very high (BTC/USD) rate will come from HUGE whales hoarding BTC. Like governments creating crypto reserves, and purchasing BTC in the magnitude of tens of thousands to low million (US have talked about purchasing a million). 2) BTC will never be a currency that is used for huge worldwide transactions, for things commodities like oil, gas, etc. No serious country will give up control of their currency like that, especially not US that will literally go to war if things aren’t purchased in the Uas dollar 3) Likewise, countries will not adapt BTC as their currency, if they cannot control the supply 100% 4) If BTC becomes too competitive, it will be fairly easy to regulate it into being too unattractive. Those are my macro views. I think it will continue to be some asset that competes against silver, gold, etc.
- vasco 2y ago
  Where's the numbers, you said you did the math?
- cft 2y ago
  There might be smarter elected officials in the future that facing two choices: USD losing the world's reserve currency status and: 1. Yuan becomes the reserve currency 2. BTC becomes the reserve currency they would understand that choice 2 is preferrable for the West
  - FollowingTheDao 2y ago
    BTC is not a currency however. The Yaun is a currency because it is controlled by a government. BTC is controlled by no one. It is just like gold, but worse because it has no intrinsic value. There is a reason the US and other governments went off of the gold standard, and that is so we could control the price of our currency, which is what led to te mess we are in now. If BTC were controlled by the government it would be no different than the dollar when we were on the gold standard, and that it why it will never be a currency.
  - throw0101d 2y ago
    > 1. Yuan becomes the reserve currency Who trusts China enough to sign on board with them to do this? > 2. BTC becomes the reserve currency Given what we know of history, why would anyone go towards a new (digital) gold standard? It's a bad system: * https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/why-the-gold-standard-is-the-worlds-worst-economic-idea-in-2-charts/261552/ https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/business/arch... * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/775143.Golden_Fetters https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/775143.Golden_Fetters that limits monetary and fiscal flexibility and helped usher in and prolong the Great Depression.

zadler 2y ago

First comment of any bitcoin thread on HN is always something like this, generally negative and a bit grumpy.

fer 2y ago
Just for the last 5-10 years. Before, BTC was cool.
- ohashi 2y ago
  Because there was naive optimism about it as a technology?
- Gigachad 2y ago
  Because 10+ years ago it was being used as a cool currency you could generate with your desktop GPU and buy steam games with. Now there doesn’t seem to be any use case other than hoping it goes up higher, and enabling crime.
  - ozgrakkurt 2y ago
    I understand you disagree with the whole thing but blockchain has a lot of uses already. Most obvious ones are storing money or investment and transferring money. It factually works amazing for these. Assuming you believe in capitalism, people won’t put such enormous amounts of money on something if it has no use. Speculation also applies to stocks in the same way, there is no world where nvidia should be priced like this but people have some view on it and it effects the price. Same idea with blockchain, there are already use cases and it is expanding constantly. Also there is a ton of investment going into research of development of it, there is no reason why people shouldn’t invest in it by buying coins, it is factually a good investment so far if you are able to hold for long periods of time
    - throw0101d 2y ago
      > I understand you disagree with the whole thing but blockchain has a lot of uses already. Not really. NIST has a good blockchain explainer with a handy flowchart that has questions you should ask to see if blockchain is a useful solution: * PNG flowchart: https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Projects/enhanced-distributed-ledger-technology/images-media/dlt-need.png https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Projects/enhanced-distribut... * https://csrc.nist.gov/Projects/enhanced-distributed-ledger-technology https://csrc.nist.gov/Projects/enhanced-distributed-ledger-t... * https://www.nist.gov/blockchain https://www.nist.gov/blockchain And other things are probably a better fit for the majority of people's needs.

gbnwl 2y ago

I ran the numbers some time ago, I figured a realistic max value for 1 BTC would be 500k-1M. Extremely curious about your methodology here. Also I'm not sure how to process "the max value is only 5-10x from current prices so the big money has already been made". Can you explain?

vasco 2y ago
There's no methodology anyone can show you, that's why they never show their numbers. Bitcoin is an asset like any other, there's no math I can do that will prove to you that someone can't just arrive tomorrow and buy this rock off of me for $2. And there's no math someone can do that can prove someone else won't show up the next day and offer $2 trillions for it, specially because their math can't predict inflation, or they'd be billionnaires on the futures market very quickly instead of showing off their math claims online.
IanCal 2y ago
"If lots of optimistic things happen, then it can't be more than X" doesn't require predicting the future. For example, the total value of all gold is something like $10-20T. At 21M coins, if bitcoin fully replaced all gold you'd be looking at something like 500k-1M. I don't really get the difference between M1 and M2 for money supply but this is about the same as all US dollars. So $500k-$1M seems like a realistic maximum value. That's different from "I think this will happen" and you can have a value much lower than this but the key part here IMO is saying "I cannot see a way it can be higher". I think there are other investments that require significantly less optimism to see 5-10x growth over any reasonable timeframe. > Also I'm not sure how to process "the max value is only 5-10x from current prices so the big money has already been made". Can you explain? A maximum upside of 5-10x assuming lots of things go extremely well for your investment requiring massive global shifts is a tricky sell. To make a huge amount of money you have to put a lot on the line. So I think broadly this is just about whether you read "realistic max value" as "the maximum I expect this to reach" or "scenarios where it goes above this are unrealistic even with a lot of optimism".

seydor 2y ago

Bitcoin at this price level is generally hated by banks, treated with suspicion everywhere around the world, outright banned, and regulators almost actively try to grind it to a halt. They don't do those things for gold for example, and gold is still going up

bondarchuk 2y ago
Certainly gold has been the subject of some suspicion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102
TrackerFF 2y ago
I don't know why you're being downvoted. Cryptocurrencies in general are a big pain in the ass for banks, due to how much of fraud is associated with those currencies. AML and KYC regulations have made practical use of cryptocurrencies a pain for both parties, for the past 10 years. It's just now, in the very recent years, that it has become somewhat easier and streamlined.

unyttigfjelltol 2y ago

BTC was designed as a drop-in replacement for both the USD and SWIFT for processing transactions. If it were successful, it would be a grave threat to the US financial position. Trump recently issued threats to BRICS nations for contemplating issuing a common currency with precisely those same aims.[1] If BTC was on the verge of realizing its purpose, Trump would work equally hard to burn it down. So, who knows if BTC price goes up or down, but categorical statements about a fundamentally transactional politician sending this permanently to the moon bake in a significant degree of risk of later being contradicted. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/30/politics/trump-brics-currency-tariff/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/30/politics/trump-brics-currency...

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
throw0101d 2y ago
> BTC was designed as a drop-in replacement for both the USD and SWIFT for processing transactions. That may have been the original intent of BTC's creators, but what is it actually used for now? USD and SWIFT are being used daily for transactions, whereas two-thirds of Bitcoins have been inactive for the last year: * https://en.macromicro.me/charts/32355/bitcoin-supply-last-active-1plus-years-ago https://en.macromicro.me/charts/32355/bitcoin-supply-last-ac... It's simply being hoarded.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

throw0101d 2y ago

> With that said, the more I think about BTC, the less sense it makes to me. Exceedingly few people actually use it for anything practical. The same can be said of gold. It's primary modern use is jewelry, with some industrial uses (electronics, aerospace) as well as medical and dentistry. For a little while it was used as (the basis of) money, and now that particular fetish has stuck around: * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/249245.The_Power_of_Gold https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/249245.The_Power_of_Gold Bitcoin and gold are now simply commodities, like oil or frozen concentrated orange juice. Human psychology is weird.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

wslh 2y ago

In 2015, we paid 20.4 bitcoins for a comic book [1] signed by several key contributors to the cryptocurrency space, including Nick Szabo (known for his work on smart contracts) and Adam Back (the inventor of Proof of Work). A glimpse of these signatures is available on page 4 of this whitepaper [2]. Today, I view cryptocurrency prices as just another signal within the broader economy. While some of my companies focus on cryptocurrency research, security, and development I am not obsessed with trading. [1] https://bitcoinist.com/meet-the-guys-who-paid-10-thousand-dollars-for-bitcoin-comic-book/ https://bitcoinist.com/meet-the-guys-who-paid-10-thousand-do... [2] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L0Me9si4iMclOq8n-oG2yNQfZ7xBpWppi_cPc7brO9A/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.ka9fewl1fxvd https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L0Me9si4iMclOq8n-oG2yNQf...

wslh 2y ago

I believe cryptocurrencies have played a significant role in awakening traditional finance and fintech industries. It’s remarkable that systems like ACH [1] have been used for U.S. payments for decades, and yet FedNow [2], a real-time payment solution, has only recently been introduced in the world’s leading economy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_clearing_house https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_clearing_house [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedNow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedNow

roenxi 2y ago

> Exceedingly few people actually use it for anything practical. That is actually fairly common. Gold has been around for millennia, found basically 0 practical applications [0]. The value of something is roughly the marginal difficulty of procuring the thing by whether someone wants to own it, and at the moment nobody can create bitcoin for substantially less than $100k and broadly speaking people will always want to own them at some price. That being said, I don't think bitcoin will hold its value long term. But the money question now is whether the collapse happens on the scale of years, decades, centuries or millenia. [0] The purpose of gold jewellery is to demonstrate that someone has gold/the wealth to do something impractical; otherwise we could make plastic jewellery that is prettier, lighter and cheaper.

plextoria 2y ago
Gold is not only used for jewelry. It has many practical applications and is essential for electronics.
- throw0101d 2y ago
  > Gold is not only used for jewelry. It has many practical applications and is essential for electronics. 47% of gold is used for jewelry and 6% is used for electronics: * https://geology.com/minerals/gold/uses-of-gold.shtml#history https://geology.com/minerals/gold/uses-of-gold.shtml#history You're not wrong, but not entirely right either.
timcobb 2y ago
Gold has many practical applications though. I think our electronics have gold in them, for example…
Aunche 2y ago
Gold was the universal medium of exchange for the vast majority of recorded human history. That also gives it a good track record of being a good store of value. This track record can't be said about Bitcoin which has only existed while the of the economy of the nation driving Bitcoin prices has been growing. Plastic jewelry and other cheaper jewelry only really look good when it's new in a store. The main buyers of gold jewelry are Indians, who prefer higher karat gold, which looks good forever. The intersection between a non-reactive metal and a colorful metal make gold the ideal material for jewelry.

sshine 2y ago

> a realistic max value for 1 BTC would be 500k-1M [citation needed]

ryandvm 2y ago

Agree. Bitcoin used to make sense when it could actually be used to buy things, but at this point it's only useful for moving money for extra-legal purposes and even then, it's possibly the worst crypto to use for that because of traceability. I don't deny that a Bitcoin is worth $100,000 right now, but it could just as easily be worth $0 because at the end of the day it has zero intrinsic value.

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