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> Gold, houses, stocks, etc. With a caveat that houses and stocks can provide cashflow in terms of rent payments and dividends / option income.
...And gold is a physical commodity with both industrial and consumer product applications.
The only things that I can think of that are somewhat similar to cryptocurrency as a "store of value" are things like baseball cards.
Simulated gold is not actual gold, in other words. They are under current conventions interchangeable, but the context that allows that is contingent.
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Reading your comment finally made it click to me why cryptocurrencies (specifically Bitcoin) are distinct from a gold bar or other non-currency stores of value. A gold bar is going to remain a gold bar forever, people's perception of its value will change even though the supply will remain mostly steady, but it will stay a gold bar no matter what. Bitcoin may change in value based on perception, it's supply will rema…
To be fair, people could also stop thinking gold is worth much. Maybe a modern-day alchemist finally figures out the formula. I don't know. Probably far less likely than the Bitcoin scenarios though.
Personally, I think a better comparison is to the diamond trade. Through a series of machinations (price fixing, artificial supply constraint, marketing) diamonds are deeply overvalued if you consider just the fundamentals of them - aka they're in a bubble. However, due to those same expertly administered steps they've maintained a high retail value for decades.
They should have replaced it with Lightning Network, is amazingly fast and cheap and works on top of Bitcoin. I'm running a test node, this stuff really works! > Lightning is a decentralized network using smart contract functionality in the blockchain to enable instant payments across a network of participants. In case you are curious https://lightning.network and another good resource here https://www.reddit.com/r/B…
The lightning network will not work. Yes, you can run a node and connect to ACINQ's lightning hub (called endurance), and you can even buy coffee at https://starblocks.acinq.co , their lightning demo site, but that demo was designed to be misleading. The only reason it works is because the endurance hub has locked up its own funds in a channel with Starblocks -- and it's no surprise that it did, since both are owned…
"hubs" are incentivized to open channels, because they can charge fees for any transactions that go "through" them. Locking up some BTC for a short amount of time (roughly 3 days on average right now) to make some fees for routing transactions counterparty risk free doesn't seem like that bad of a deal...
> ...and I have no way to even ask it to...
The protocol has a way to "ask" for a new connection, you don't need to do anything but point your node at a funded address that is willing to accept new channels.
>I can't get paid unless every buyer opens a channel with me directly.
Or a single buyer opens a channel with you, that also has a channel open with that hub, and now you have a path to everyone and anyone that wants to buy coffee from you. Or maybe a single buyer opens a channel with you, that has a channel with another buyer, that has a channel with the hub.
This reads a bit like the sort of things people say when breaking up so as not to upset the other person too much. You're a great person, but you're just more of an asset than a medium of exchange, and what I need in my life right now is a medium of exchange. What future does an asset have if people don't actually buy stuff with it? That is not a purely rhetorical question; cryptocurrencies change things a lot. But t…
> What future does an asset have if people don't actually buy stuff with it? I look at it (maybe naively) like a solid gold bar. You're not going to walk in to a convenience store and pay with a bar of solid gold; you might flee the country with one though. Beyond that, I totally agree with your read on the post. Linking the pull request[0] was especially backhanded. It feels like there's some underlying frustration…
The properties that make gold a good value holding asset is:
1. It's rare and supply is limited (holds value in low physical volume) 2. It doesn't decay or rust 3. It's easy to split into smaller pieces or combine into a larger one.
Bitcoin is good at all three plus added benefit of easy, fast, cheap global transaction (compared to gold at least).
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> To be fair, people could also stop thinking gold is worth much. They've already noted that: > people's perception of its value will change But as they say, a gold bar will remain a gold bar, until and unless it is actively destroyed. Not so for bitcoins, which only remain so as long as they're actively maintained (not just individual coins but the mining networks which allows the creation of new transactions)
How do you think the story would end for gold, if it became unpopular and the exchanges closed? You can sell your gold bar, and you can sell your private key. I see them as the same and no, I don't own Bitcoins.
If there's no support network for your bitcoins, their value is 0, exactly. Even if you assume people stop caring for shiny imputrescible metals, its intrinsic property (of being shiny and imputrescible) pretty much ensures there will always be some demand for gold, and thus it will keep a non-zero price. Possibly low, but not actually zero.
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Gold as a metal has an inherent value though. If not only for jewelry, it also has important uses in electronics. The value associated with bitcoin seems purely sentimental.
Gold is not valuable because you can make jewelry with it. Jewelry is valuable because it's made of gold. Important distinction.
This reads a bit like the sort of things people say when breaking up so as not to upset the other person too much. You're a great person, but you're just more of an asset than a medium of exchange, and what I need in my life right now is a medium of exchange. What future does an asset have if people don't actually buy stuff with it? That is not a purely rhetorical question; cryptocurrencies change things a lot. But t…
Semantic judo at its finest.
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Gold as a metal has an inherent value though. If not only for jewelry, it also has important uses in electronics. The value associated with bitcoin seems purely sentimental.
Gold is not valuable because you can make jewelry with it. Jewelry is valuable because it's made of gold. Important distinction.
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With South Korea trying to regulate anonymous trading on Korean exchanges, makes me wonder how long we have before regulations become more widespread. And if this happens do you think privacy coins even stand a chance?
Well, the problem with regulating anonymous transactions is you don't know who's doing them.
Doesn't matter how many years it's been since you've done business. Doesn't matter if you knew that the random dude you bought an antique thimble from was a political dissident or not. You still sent money to that btc address, that address owned by a terrorist, and now they're gonna wanna know why you were funding terrorism...