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

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

#51

Post by zbraniecki »

Ansil849 wrote: post #15

As a casual observer I see the cryptocurrency space only seriously used by two groups of people: those who want to buy goods/services which are controlled in their or the seller's jurisdiction and so need a bit more anonymity than Paypal; and people who run ICO and more recently NFT swindles. I have yet to see a widespread other usage of cryptocurrency.

Read about Celo or Stellar.

I'm not trying to hype you up, but I think that there's a lot of utility happening outside of your bubble. Some of that happens in countries you don't live in, other use cases appear between banking systems which remain opaque to you. That's not the same as "no utility".

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

#52

Post by fny »

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 it difficult for me to use as a currency.

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

#53

Post by paxys »

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.

A lot of "real" currencies – backed by governments with guns – have disappeared in the past, simply because people stopped believing in them.

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

#54

Post by paxys »

throwaway81523 wrote: post #41
Ansil849 wrote: post #15

As a casual observer I see the cryptocurrency space only seriously used by two groups of people: those who want to buy goods/services which are controlled in their or the seller's jurisdiction and so need a bit more anonymity than Paypal; and people who run ICO and more recently NFT swindles. I have yet to see a widespread other usage of cryptocurrency.

I don't use bitcoin but one attraction I see is that it lets you spend your money without anyone else's permission. If you buy something with it, the seller gets the money without your having to worry about automated fraud checks causing your credit card to be declined, check to be put on hold, etc. It's like cash that way. Wire transfers might be an alternative, but they are only practical for fairly large transacti…

Every bitcoin transaction happening online today is brokered by the same payments processors who decide that your credit card is committing fraud.

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

#55

Post by ALittleLight »

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…

Just recently I was looking into making bets on polymarket - a prediction market that uses Ethereum and advertises zero fees. I happened to have a bit of eth from a while back but I was dismayed to find out that the transfer fee, seemingly to move any amount of eth into polymarket, was something like a flat 50 dollar equivalent. I just wanted to bet with a few hundred dollars, and having to spend 50 of that just to get started felt unfun.

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

#56

Post by brutaltruth »

Congratulations to the author on missing that it's possible to swap tokens with DeFI, that bitcoin is one of the most liquid instruments in the world, and that Bitcoin isn't competing with cash: it's competing with a ledger entry at a bank that can go bust denominated in a currency that can be printed at will.

(Leaving aside 3-10% fx conversion fees, ACH delays, wire deadlines, and more that prevent "dollars" from being a useful international or digitally transferable form of "money")

But otherwise good take circa 2010 ;)

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

#57

Post by drak0n1c »

Ansil849 wrote: post #15

As a casual observer I see the cryptocurrency space only seriously used by two groups of people: those who want to buy goods/services which are controlled in their or the seller's jurisdiction and so need a bit more anonymity than Paypal; and people who run ICO and more recently NFT swindles. I have yet to see a widespread other usage of cryptocurrency.

One use case is Hedera Hashgraph, used by an NGO that built a decentralized early warning system for airstrikes in Syria [1]. There are many other large corporate users of the technology for decentralized consensus purposes. Crypto has already moved beyond currency/collectibles.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNE7oTJcOnE

https://hedera.com/consensus-service

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

#58

Post by beefield »

brbsix wrote: post #46
thesausageking wrote: post #11

This doesn't make any sense. That's a poor definitely of money. And Bitcoin does not have "all of the elements of a collectible". Collectibles have cultural, artistic, or other value on their own and are limited numbers of a set ("non-fungible"). Bitcoin is very fungible. If you own 2 BTC, there aren't specific Bitcoins that are marked for you.

If you own 2 BTC, there aren't specific Bitcoins that are marked for you. If you mine 2 BTC, you posses the private keys to two very specific BTC (unspent outputs) on the blockchain. No one else may spend them without the private keys. If you own 2 BTC in an exchange then it is true that you are unlikely to own any specific 2 BTC but that's an entirely different subject. At that point you don't really own them.

Out of curiosity, as I do not know enough details:

1. Alice owns one BTC

2. Bob owns one BTC

3. Both send their BTC to Charlie

4. Charlie sends one BTC to David

Question: Is there unambiguous way to define whether David got the BTC originally owned by Alice or the one owned by Bob? If yes, how? If no, doesn't that mean that there exist no specific bitcoins anywhere?

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

#59

Post by dehrmann »

nxpnsv wrote: post #26

Can I turn this around to understand why anyone would care about baseball cards?

I think baseball card collecting has been in decline for a while. That said, a lot of baseball card collectors get started as kids (remember in Moneyball when it's called "the children's game?"), then when they're 30-50 and have money, they buy cards from their childhood they always wanted. The generational dynamic of bitcoin and baseball cards is different, but ideas like a fixed number of cards in existence, some get discovered, some lost, and how price is arbitrary and only tied to supply and demand match well.

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

#60

Post by Closi »

throwaway81523 wrote: post #41
Ansil849 wrote: post #15

As a casual observer I see the cryptocurrency space only seriously used by two groups of people: those who want to buy goods/services which are controlled in their or the seller's jurisdiction and so need a bit more anonymity than Paypal; and people who run ICO and more recently NFT swindles. I have yet to see a widespread other usage of cryptocurrency.

I don't use bitcoin but one attraction I see is that it lets you spend your money without anyone else's permission. If you buy something with it, the seller gets the money without your having to worry about automated fraud checks causing your credit card to be declined, check to be put on hold, etc. It's like cash that way. Wire transfers might be an alternative, but they are only practical for fairly large transacti…

Spending money without automated fraud checking, dispute resolution and the ability to do chargeback sounds like a great idea until you think for more than 2 seconds about why those things exist.

And I’m not sure why I would want to maintain two currencies anyway, one for small payments where for some reason I don’t want protection, and another when I do want protection. Having to hold multiple currencies dependent on what I want the level of dispute resolution to be sounds like a huge step back.

The main risk isn’t that someone wants to reverse a coffee, it’s that their whole wallet gets stolen.

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