Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#121

Post by qwytw » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:18 AM UTC

cyphertruck wrote: post #65

This article is knocking down a squadron of strawmen. First off, bitcoins key attribute is not “privacy” but censorship resistance. It’s why wikileaks has been able to keep operating all these years after being cancelled by the mainstream payments industry. Not to mention many smaller, politically oppressed activist organizations, and much of the marijuana industry. Secondly, the attributes of money are, according to…

- immune to spoilage: bitcoin can’t dissolve in water like salt (a previous form of money) and is quite robust, and can be backed up!

This is a very silly claim considering that 20% of all bitcoin is considered to be "lost" and can't be recovered. Due to the nature of bitcoin this figure should reach 100% eventually (of course this would be a very slow process as long as it has a very high price).

btw I'm not sure if you're aware but you can actually recover salt which was dissolved in water.

Also historically there is no conclusive evidence that salt's use as currency was ever particularly widespread.

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#122

Post by matheusmoreira » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:19 AM UTC

rawtxapp wrote: post #64

spookthesunset wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Bitcoin is it is a horrible currency. It’s slow and it doesn’t scale beyond a few transactions a second. I’ve been following Bitcoin for more than seven years and absolutely nothing about it has fundamentally changed. It has always been a “currency” majority owned by dodgy shadowy characters. It’s always been slow. It’s always been unscalable (by design!). It has always been a get rich quick pyramid…

I feel like beating a dead horse, but there's tons of L2 technologies at this point, lightning payment channels or rollups on eth, etc. The blockchain itself is like a settlement layer. Our current financial system is also layered similarly btw. When you buy something with your credit card, it doesn't settle right away.

There's also Monero which is everything Bitcoin was supposed to be and much more. Why bother trying to fix bitcoin when a solution already exists? There's absolutely no need for this layer 2 stuff.

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#123

Post by tessierashpool » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:19 AM UTC

graeme wrote: post #7

The funny thing is that Bitcoin will basically only have value as a collectible as long as substantial numbers of people believe this essay’s argument is false . People want to collect bitcoin at current valuations because they are convinced it will become a currency/store of value of the future and hence rise in value. If everyone suddenly switched to believing “Oh bitcoin doesn’t do anything but it is a fun collect…

> People want to collect bitcoin at current valuations because they are convinced it will become a currency/store of value of the future and hence rise in value

That’s just objectively false, though. Yes, a small group of people collect Bitcoin because they believe it will become a currency and therefore rise in value. But most people who collect Bitcoin think it will rise in value because they see it rising in value.

Occam’s razor, dude.

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#124

Post by mrpopo » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:19 AM UTC

cyphertruck wrote: post #106

afarrell wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the fiat inflation system which has created all the wealth inequality in much of the world. > The system that lets politicians buy power and escape responsibility for violating rights. Wouldn’t it be more energy-efficient to just go back to golden years before William Jennings Bryan’s 1896 presidential campaign? Can you think of historical examples of dramatic wealth inequality or misuse of political power? As sure…

Your statement about history is probably correct, but I don't agree about energy efficiency. Bitcoin is more energy efficient than gold. Most bitcoin power use is waste power— eg power generated which exceeds instantaneous demand, and bitcoin’s entire power usage is still 1/6th of what is currently thrown away... if bitcoin ever fails to deliver utility beyond its power cost, the network will reduce mining because mi…

What you're saying about bitcoin power use is just not true.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-03-04/china-s-inn...

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#125

Post by beambot » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:20 AM UTC

fny wrote: post #52

graeme wrote: post #7

The funny thing is that Bitcoin will basically only have value as a collectible as long as substantial numbers of people believe this essay’s argument is false . People want to collect bitcoin at current valuations because they are convinced it will become a currency/store of value of the future and hence rise in value. If everyone suddenly switched to believing “Oh bitcoin doesn’t do anything but it is a fun collect…

Here's a question: how many people do you know that buy crypto intend to spend it? You know, use it like currency? Or are they all just HODLing in the hopes that some other buyer will come along who believes it will become a medium of exchange? In my view, it's not a currency until people stop speculating and start using it like a currency. So yes, it's a collectible with ridiculously high transaction costs that make…

Most people I know keep less than 3 months of their net worth in currency. The vast majority of their net worth is placed in real estate (largely, their primary residence), stocks, or ETFs. You can make a case about net-present value of future dividends, but the S&P dividend yield is 1.4% -- i.e. less than inflation. So quite literally, every asset they have as a store of wealth is "just HODLing in the hopes that some other buyer will come along who believes it will become (worth more)".

In this light, how is Bitcoin any different?

Note that currency has two functions: store of value (Bitcoin) and medium of exchange (Ethereum? Ripple? Carbon credits? Other?). That we can split these functions should not be surprising. Plus, our modern money system is a fairly new invention and it's clearly being disrupted. Hell, even the idea of an electronic ledger to track stock ownership was only really developed in the 1980s by Cede and the DTC -- and it still takes 2 days to fully settle.

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#126

Post by arthurcolle » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:21 AM UTC

paxys wrote: post #99

matheusmoreira wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would pay and get paid using monero. It's everything bitcoin was supposed to be.

> I would pay and get paid using monero If you agreed to work for a company for X monero a month, and the value of monero (relative to USD or your local currency) dropped by 90% a few months later, would you continue to work at the originally agreed upon rate? And on the opposite end, if a coffee shop sold lattes for Y monero, would you be okay with continuing to pay Y if monero shot up by 1000%?

just do it relative to some low vol underlier

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#127

Post by matheusmoreira » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:22 AM UTC

handmodel wrote: post #39

dnautics wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If everyone suddenly switched to believing “Oh bitcoin doesn’t do anything but it is a fun collectible which also has mining costs to track ownership” its value would plummet. That's generally true for all currencies. If everyone suddenly switched to believing "X-sovereign-currency" doesn't do anything but legitimizes that sovereign and has military and human rights costs to maintain the illusion of that legitimacy…

> their value is in your head, or at the tip of the gun, or because you can pay taxes in it or get sent to jail. These all seem very real. And not something that will disappear (or even drop) if media attention or nerd interest moves elsewhere.

Every currency ever created eventually disappeared. Nothing particularly special about them. The only reason people even bothered using them at all was due to government mandate: businesses are required to accept the local currency and taxes can only be paid using it.

Cryptocurrencies exist in a digital and decentralized world. They will outlast governments.

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#128

Post by ZephyrBlu » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:22 AM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #89

graeme wrote: post #7

The funny thing is that Bitcoin will basically only have value as a collectible as long as substantial numbers of people believe this essay’s argument is false . People want to collect bitcoin at current valuations because they are convinced it will become a currency/store of value of the future and hence rise in value. If everyone suddenly switched to believing “Oh bitcoin doesn’t do anything but it is a fun collect…

Bitcoin's only value is the fact it's the most popular and well-known cryptocurrency. It came first and a lot of people are aware of it. Technologically it's already been surpassed by everything that came after. Monero in particular is essentially bitcoin with all the problems fixed. I wish it'd just lose it's value already so that liquidity will flow into all the much better coins out there. Not likely to happen tho…

You say that like it's not important. The fact Bitcoin has become so ubiquitous is an achievement in itself.

A large aspect of currency/store of value/whatever is social/network effects.

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#129

Post by mrpopo » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:22 AM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #63

graeme wrote: post #7

The funny thing is that Bitcoin will basically only have value as a collectible as long as substantial numbers of people believe this essay’s argument is false . People want to collect bitcoin at current valuations because they are convinced it will become a currency/store of value of the future and hence rise in value. If everyone suddenly switched to believing “Oh bitcoin doesn’t do anything but it is a fun collect…

I’ve basically come to believe the argument described in the following is true: https://www.matthuang.com/bitcoin_for_the_open_minded_skepti... Bitcoin isn’t a cash competitor, it’s a gold competitor - and it’s a pretty good one. Part of something like gold is the shared social belief in it as a store of value. Bitcoin has this and there’s enough time and infrastructure behind it at this point that I’d bet it’s likel…

> Part of something like gold is the shared social belief in it as a store of value.

Gold has inherent uses as a precious metal. Bitcoin mining only computes SHA256 hashes for no actual purposes.

Re: Bitcoin has few attributes of money but all the attributes of a collectible

#130

Post by ZephyrBlu » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 6:23 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #67

zbraniecki wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That feels like a rationalization of an emotional argument. Gold's current value is not related to its function as a material for jewelry, but from a myth that it is a store of value. If people would stop believing the myth, the cost of gold would plummet and stabilize around the value it provides as a material for jewelry. Similarly, "art is lovely" is a really stretched argument. If you want, you could print your t…

> If people would stop believing the myth imagine if tomorrow, we suddenly find ourselves mining gold from asteroids, and that gold suddenly became super-abundant. Would the price of gold drop to match just the material usage value (e.g., for jewellery and electronics)?

I would say yes.