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Why Is Bitcoin Valuable?

taylorpearson.me

11–20 of 79 posts

Re: Why Is Bitcoin Valuable?

#11
post #4

OK, so Bitcoin is censorship-resistant. Good. But a practical alternative that would allow high-volume, cheap transactions could blow it off the water. This is weird; I keep seeing 'justifications' of Bitcoin's current value and future success that, to me, can simply be reduced to a sunk-cost fallacy. I have read for instance that Bitcoin's worth 'is the area under curve of the energy expense of the miners' (sunk-cos…

> Are there any justifications for Bitcoin that cannot be explained by a cognitive bias?

Are you aware that you can put nearly everything in this sentence instead of Bitcoin and it still holds just as true?

Free markets haven't really made the world totally fair. Democracy hasn't really given all people the ability to choose. Your job hasn't really paid you as much as you've produced value for your boss. Marrying your wife was a questionable choice, to some degree. And your parents also don't really love each other anymore. Your life isn't really meaningful to anything but the fantasy you run yourself in your head to explain it.

We live off of the cognitive biases that we are able to believe in. Enjoy having some cognitive biases left as long as you still have some.

Re: Why Is Bitcoin Valuable?

#12

Back in 2004, I lived in shithole country called Uzbekistan, I wanted to buy some US stocks but my bank refused to transfer MY money because of strict currency control in Uzbekistan. This was probably the first time in my life I realized that I don't actually own money stored at bank, it's just bank temporarily allows me to use my money and at any whim bank would reject to do so. In 2010, I lived in a little bit bett…

I think your comment raises some very interesting points, but that you go too far.

There are costs (in the wider not just monetary sense) and benefits to various approaches. The reason you had to resort to crypto-currency first of all seems to me to be the problems in the countries you lived in. If they had working institutions, if you had lived in a Western country and had had access to the banking there, would you have come to the same conclusions?

Also, there is a reason why Western banks and Asian ones too, it seems, prefer losing business over dealing with customers from some countries, and I doubt the reason is spite.

Having completely anonymous money sure benefits some small businesses (mostly those living in places with bad institutions), but it also enables a lot of very questionable businesses and people. I would suspect that as far as volume goes the latter might actually be far bigger than the former. As always those who have most to gain are those who have a lot of money to move (same with the question about who benefits from government more - the rich or the poor? The rich! Any "redistribution" is dwarfed by the amounts of money people get to make and to keep under the protections of strong government institutions). Anonymity, not just for money, always works for those who have their eyes closed to all the horrible things humans do when nobody is looking - and that is not a negligibly small amount. Of course, the extremely wealthy already have "anonymous money", tracing who owns what is very hard even for the government, but I doubt giving everybody access to anonymity would be a net positive.

Re: Why Is Bitcoin Valuable?

#13
It had potentials but none of that matters with lack of protection against overhyped valuation. It's not a currency if it what you paid for a cup of coffee could've bought a Ferrari the next day. And blockchain is more like plumbing than some star-fangled magic. Last time I got excited about plumbing is...never mind.

Re: Why Is Bitcoin Valuable?

#14
Interesting article, but more an argument for why a large class of cryptocoins might be valuable, or even more so, why an ecosystem of cryptocoins might collectively value, rather than an argument for why Bitcoin specifically is valuable.

Re: Why Is Bitcoin Valuable?

#15
post #5

Why do all crypto currency enthusiasts assume that when a government cannot guarantee monetary stability there will still be reliable, always on, high bandwidth internet connections to sync distributed ledgers across the globe? Also: Does any crypto currency have anything in store to protect itself against bad nodes? I don't mean nodes that send invalid packages but nodes that act like real nodes but just eat transac…

> Flood a network with a few million of these nodes, don't relay addresses of valid nodes and the network will split eventually.

Could you direct me to the theory supporting this assertion? Was considering doing a simulation of this but need some kind of model.

Re: Why Is Bitcoin Valuable?

#16

Supply and demand curves are what make things valuable or not. Bitcoin has a finite set of coins in its network. Most people only buy fractions of a bitcoin because one full bitcoin is too pricy for them. People used to earn Bitcoins using GPU mining rigs. ASIC miners made that obsolete. GPU mining is no longer profitable but the average person does not know or understand that. I've seen stores like Microcenter sell…

> I am using Coinbase since the new year.

Why put money in a gold rush after the rush? Can you explain the logic behind it? Like, have you never heard about it before 2018?

Honestly if Bitcoin stabilizes around $300/coin it's still a huge profit to the people who started it and invested early (I bout around $90/coin). $12k/coin certainly is ridiculous. But I don't understand why people would even put a single dollar into something at such a point.

Re: Why Is Bitcoin Valuable?

#17
I don't understand people who cite current network speed/overload, transaction problem/cost and co as the reason why Bitcoin (or any crypto) will fail in the future.

Nothing is set in stone - its software, all of these things are fixable and are being worked on. Its still so very early in the game.

If you compare crypto to a traditional startup project - I'd say user engagement and growth is more valuable than a perfect product from the start.

Re: Why Is Bitcoin Valuable?

#18

Back in 2004, I lived in shithole country called Uzbekistan, I wanted to buy some US stocks but my bank refused to transfer MY money because of strict currency control in Uzbekistan. This was probably the first time in my life I realized that I don't actually own money stored at bank, it's just bank temporarily allows me to use my money and at any whim bank would reject to do so. In 2010, I lived in a little bit bett…

I think your comment raises some very interesting points, but that you go too far. There are costs (in the wider not just monetary sense) and benefits to various approaches. The reason you had to resort to crypto-currency first of all seems to me to be the problems in the countries you lived in. If they had working institutions, if you had lived in a Western country and had had access to the banking there, would you…

> Having completely anonymous money sure benefits some small businesses (mostly those living in places with bad institutions), but it also enables a lot of very questionable businesses and people.

I'm not in favor of this argument at all. The internet has incredible benefits, but enables a lot of bad actors. Encryption has incredible benefits but enables a lot of bad actors. Lots of good things also enable bad things, that doesn't mean we shouldn't allow them.

Outside of third world or financially repressive countries, cryptocurrencies are great for "global citizens." I have done contract work while living in a different country, for clients in other countries, both parties have found it much easier to pay each other using cryptocurrencies as opposed to fiat.

Re: Why Is Bitcoin Valuable?

#19
Bitcoin is valuable because demand currently outstrips supply.

If this happens for a long enough period of time it will become like gold, pretty much useless but wanted by lots of people.

Re: Why Is Bitcoin Valuable?

#20

Back in 2004, I lived in shithole country called Uzbekistan, I wanted to buy some US stocks but my bank refused to transfer MY money because of strict currency control in Uzbekistan. This was probably the first time in my life I realized that I don't actually own money stored at bank, it's just bank temporarily allows me to use my money and at any whim bank would reject to do so. In 2010, I lived in a little bit bett…

>I think the only people who hate cryptocurrencies are those bloody conformists, big brother lovers who never experienced first hand how shitty traditional financial system is.

For me personally, I don't hate Bitcoin, I just don't see the value in it. Maybe that's because I'm not from a shithole counry and I can actually rely on my government and financial institutions.

If you need to vent some anger, maybe direct it at the "bloody conformists" and "big brother lovers" in Russia that keep people like Putin in power. Oh wait, maybe these people are also just victims of the system and you should be more careful slinging your insults around.

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