Ask HN: Why is Bitcoin's value rising so fast?

Post by eregorn » Fri, Nov 03, 2017, 3:37 PM UTC

I've speculated that it might be related to ransomware picking up in recent years. In particular, wannacry and notpetya coincided with some of bitcoin's surges in price.

Before this, purchases with Bitcoin not for investment purposes were niche in the illegal or attempts at regular purchases that only involved a few users. After these large-scale attacks, Bitcoin has basically been forcibly introduced to the populace at large to (possibly) retrieve their data.

I could argue that this has finally attached Bitcoin's value into something more than trust: data. Hence, bitcoin's value is mirroring the value of another increasingly valuable commodity.

Post by oulrich » Fri, Nov 03, 2017, 6:57 PM UTC

appleflaxen wrote: post #39

theklub wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine, I'm not talking about the price. I just mean its not really scarce when you can divide it up so much and trade it. The scarcity is fake. It's like saying there is only 10 trillion dollars in a bank so the trillions are scarce if I'm only going to trade 1 trillion at a time.

i don't understand your reasoning. it seems like you're saying potato chips aren't scarce, because I can break the chips in my bag up until everyone in the world has a piece of potato chip, and thereby feed the world. in economic terms, scarcity means that the supply is fixed. and bitcoin supply, by definition and network consensus, is fixed.

Potato chips have some intrinsic utility. Coins (digital or otherwise) generally do not.

I think this is what makes 'breaking up potato chips' into a million pieces to solve hunger seem ridiculous. Where-as splitting a coin into values seems natural. To me at least.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Bitcoin's value rising so fast?

Re: Ask HN: Why is Bitcoin's value rising so fast?