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Gold and silver have industrial uses. Gold and silver are used in jewelry. Gold and silver have proven to be a store of value for thousands of years. Gold and s

by declan 13y ago

Gold and silver have industrial uses. Gold and silver are used in jewelry. Gold and silver have proven to be a store of value for thousands of years. Gold and silver are also, to a first approximation, truly anonymous. Not one of those four characteristics is true for Bitcoin, so saying it's "just like" gold and silver is a bit of a stretch. This doesn't mean Bitcoin is awful, as Krugman's trollish column is titled, but just that it doesn't have the same intrinsic floor value as gold and silver.

johndevor 13y ago
I meant to say that Bitcoin - or something like it - will emerge to facilitate online transactions of the black market kind. Rightly so that Bitcoin doesn't inherently gain value from the black market, but I do believe the black market will use something to do online transactions (as shown by the Silk Road and others). Thus far, that currency has been Bitcoin. Gold and silver have industrial uses today. That may change tomorrow (albeit highly unlikely). Bitcoin is the currency of cyber criminals today (hence giving it value today). That also may change tomorrow.
- declan 13y ago
  These are reasonable points. I don't know enough about modern-day black markets to say how much Bitcoin facilitates them. If you're right that Bitcoin is a major factor, then yep, that could be an effective price floor (at least until a better rival comes along). It would be interesting to learn how much of Bitcoin purchasing is due to black market transactions. My intuition says it's mostly speculation, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
  - johndevor 13y ago
    > The value of the transactions over this period are equivalent to "roughly $1.2 billion in revenue and $79.8 million in commissions" and involved 146,946 buyers and 3,877 vendors.[13] That was the value transacted on the Silk Road. Quite impressive numbers, given that it was a single site and much of that growth occurring in Bitcoin's less user-friendly days.
    - eru 13y ago
      The revenue was in bitcoins not in USD. How was it converted? (If at the end, then that overstates the volume quite a lot, given the rise of bitcoin's exchange rate.)

by declan 13y ago

johndevor 13y ago

I meant to say that Bitcoin - or something like it - will emerge to facilitate online transactions of the black market kind. Rightly so that Bitcoin doesn't inherently gain value from the black market, but I do believe the black market will use something to do online transactions (as shown by the Silk Road and others). Thus far, that currency has been Bitcoin. Gold and silver have industrial uses today. That may change tomorrow (albeit highly unlikely). Bitcoin is the currency of cyber criminals today (hence giving it value today). That also may change tomorrow.

declan 13y ago
These are reasonable points. I don't know enough about modern-day black markets to say how much Bitcoin facilitates them. If you're right that Bitcoin is a major factor, then yep, that could be an effective price floor (at least until a better rival comes along). It would be interesting to learn how much of Bitcoin purchasing is due to black market transactions. My intuition says it's mostly speculation, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
- johndevor 13y ago
  > The value of the transactions over this period are equivalent to "roughly $1.2 billion in revenue and $79.8 million in commissions" and involved 146,946 buyers and 3,877 vendors.[13] That was the value transacted on the Silk Road. Quite impressive numbers, given that it was a single site and much of that growth occurring in Bitcoin's less user-friendly days.
  - eru 13y ago
    The revenue was in bitcoins not in USD. How was it converted? (If at the end, then that overstates the volume quite a lot, given the rise of bitcoin's exchange rate.)