Why Bitcoin Matters

>You're still confusing the burden to pay taxes under the penalty of law in one particular country with value.

Let's say I'm a schoolyard bully. An honest one. I hand out slips of paper that say "Keep your lunch". If I tell you I want your lunch, and you give me a "Keep your lunch" ticket, you get to keep your lunch that day. If you don't have one, or don't want to give me your "Keep your lunch" ticket, I take your lunch. Clearly if you believe I'm capable of taking your lunch, that slip is going to have value for you. Agreed?

Now let's say you're three grades above me, so you aren't worried about me taking your lunch. But there are still plenty of people who are worried about me taking their lunch because they're smaller than me. That ticket still has value for them. You know you can trade it to them, and they'll take it. Therefore it has value for you, even though you have no direct use for it. The fact that I am willing to take that ticket in exchange for not taking someone's lunch backs the value of that ticket, even if you yourself don't need the ticket to stop me from taking your lunch. You can trade it to others who will use it for that purpose. Now do you understand?

>But I don't care. I paid in Bitcoin.

I know you don't care. But they had to buy dollars. Someone has to buy dollars in order to pay your taxes. That's the whole point. Someone has to buy dollars in order to pay your taxes. Someone has to buy dollars in order to pay your taxes. Someone has to buy dollars in order to pay your taxes.

>I doubt dollar "intrinsic value" comes from the fact that you have to pay taxes in it.

The fact that you have to pay taxes in dollars is one of the biggest reasons why people trade in dollars rather than some other random currency.

>It can spiral into a 10000%/year inflation and lose most of its value, and you will still be able to pay taxes with it.

I never said it was the perfect currency. I never said it got 100% of its price from the fact that you can pay taxes in it. You are completely missing the point, and I'm guessing it's because you just don't understand what's going on in this debate.

>In fact, you've been required to pay US taxes in dollars for the last 100 years. It didn't stop the dollar from losing 97% of its value.

What did I say that would lead you to believe this contradicts what I think?

>Again, you're confusing value with some criminal law.

No, you just have no idea what they have to do with each other.

>What? You can't transport something that has no value? Like an empty box?

Do people normally transport things that have no value to them or anyone else?

>Ah, red herring. I was talking about "majority of the world", and you switched back to the Americans, as if that somehow proves that most of the world doesn't give a crap about US criminal codes, which, according to you, somehow back the value of the dollar.

See the first two paragraphs of this reply.

>Which adds to its value, like features of... everything.

It is more akin to a multiplier. If it has value, it makes the value greater. If it has no value, then no one cares how easily it can be transported, because no one wants it to be transported to them.

>We already went over this. Multibillion transportation industry.

The transportation industry is moving things that people value for reasons other than the fact that they can be transported easily. If people didn't already value the things they have shipped, they wouldn't pay to have them shipped. If I had some worthless box of cat excrement, it wouldn't suddenly be worth something because I could cheaply ship it to a foreign country. If I had a worthless unit of cryptocurrency, it wouldn't suddenly be worth something because I could cheaply send it to someone in a foreign country. If no one wants it, they don't care how cheaply I can get it to them. They don't want it. Do you get it?

> You can already get paid in BTC too

Unless your salary is denominated in BTC, i.e. you make the same BTC every paycheck, I'd argue you're still being paid in USD and just using a third party service to hide the exchange from you and deliver your paycheck in BTC.

That's what happens when people hijack words that mean one thing and then use it to mean another; there's a transition period where confusion rules and people argue about definitions. Bitcoin is a fiat currency by the standard meaning of the word, but Bitcoin'ers don't use it that way, it's their fault for creating a new meaning in their community for the word. Fiat doesn't mean government backed, now it does to them, soon someone will add a new definition in a dictionary somewhere and the debate will rage for decades.

Did you mean "bitcoin" instead of gold here?:

  .. and a distributed fiat currency (like gold) 

> It has value only to the extent that you say it has value.

I think there are a few definition of "fiat"* (one of which, as you mentioned, is lacking "intrinsic value"). I agree though that the word "fiat" adds only ambiguity to this discussion.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money

If your argument is that I'd have to convert bitcoin to dollars in order to pay taxes, that's a nonargument. I am sure they would take Bitcoin directly if pressed. Just ask the FBI, who is now in possession of the largest bitcoin cache on the planet... I suppose you think they're just going to erase all of them because, you know, they're not "backed" by anything?