Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Is Bitcoin Valuable?

taylorpearson.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 79 posts

Re: Why Is Bitcoin Valuable?

#61

Post by candiodari »

mstade wrote: post #57
ThomPete wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which they haven't yet.

But certainly not for lack of trying. In Sweden, it’s fast becoming nigh impossible to pay for things with cash, particularly in places like restaurants, cafés and bars. If you have a business that deals in cash, banks make it almost farcically difficult to deposit said cash into your business account. For example, in one town the largest bank will only accept cash through a deposit machine, outdoors, for one hour du…

That's another problem cryptocurrencies solve. You'd think that when people say governments and banks provide currencies, that they'd provide very basic services related to that, such as the ability to get currency into an account.

As any business owner can tell you, they don't provide these services. Which of course means that someone could step in, provide these services, and actually has a chance of success.

It sounds so incredibly absurd, but it's actually true: governments do not provide the ability to transact in currency. Only banks do, and only for hefty fees. Hell, the aborted attempt by Varoufakis to issue a tax-backed currency by the Greek IRS would have been the first time I've heard any state providing such a service.

One might think, in reaction, governments would be a little worried and then 2 reactions are possible:

a) governments could make sure these services are provided. Basic banking services, after all, are a complete necessity in todays world. In trade they'd get insight, maybe even a little control, and would make a LOT of people very happy, because the government is omnipresent, and a lot of people feel that banks exploit things (e.g. cashing checks in the US).

b) governments could punish everyone involved, AND threaten everyone until insight is, grudgingly and only after every option to obfuscate things is utilized to the maximum extent, provided.

Of course in the case of b), insight would be a punishment inflicted on businesses and people, and make it very clear to everyone involved that citizens and the government are each other's enemy, and therefore naturally everyone would be trying to make that insight as useless as possible.

Needless to say, every government on the planet has chosen only a single avenue, namely b).

Can I just say: may God help governments as soon as someone realizes a way to provide a cryptocurrency that can't be easily blocked over radio or ... because it will turn into an utter disaster for them very quickly.

Or perhaps I should say: the first government to issue a tax-backed currency with a government provided ability to transact, banks, the entire financial sector, and all other governments are in extreme trouble.

Re: Why Is Bitcoin Valuable?

#62

Post by rhapsodic »

nefitty wrote: post #59
rhapsodic wrote: post #55

Bitcoin is no different than any other non-commodity currency. It's only valuable because people believe they can, or will eventually, be able to use it to acquire something with intrinsic value. Without that confidence, it's worthless. Personally, I have lots of confidence that the USD in my bank account will one day, at a time of my choosing, get me intrinsically valuable things like cars, a home, food, cloths, etc…

Do you have the same mindset in regards to physical gold? Gold has very little, if any, intrinsic or practical value, yet generations of humans have been motivated to acquire more of it. With digital currencies like Bitcoin, I think we're seeing the birth of a new type of scarce resource that will motivate generations of people to come.

>Do you have the same mindset in regards to physical gold? Gold has very little, if any, intrinsic or practical value, yet generations of humans have been motivated to acquire more of it.

That statement is self-contradicting. If people covet gold for reasons other than what they might exchange it for, that means it has intrinsic value. And in addition to the satisfaction some people get from decorating their bodies with gold, it has many other practical uses. It's used in all types of electronic devices, including the computer you're reading this on.

And as a medium of exchange, gold does not rely on a global computer network being available. (But in a post-apocalyptic world, gold probably would not have as much intrinsic value as it does currently. Whiskey, guns and cartridges would probably be a better bet.)

The only thing scarce about crypto-currency is the energy it consumes, and the world's tolerance for its environmental impact. Aside from that, what prevents anyone from creating a new one?

It's all about the mindset. As long as enough people believe bitcoin is valuable, it will be valuable. I could be wrong, but I don't think that will continue to be the case long term. I think crypto-currencies will continue to exist and will have some practical uses, but, IMO, their values relative to USD are going to be, shall we say, "adjusted" to a more sane level sometime in the future.

Re: Why Is Bitcoin Valuable?

#63

Post by Karnickel »

ThomPete wrote: post #45
Karnickel wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not like cash at all. You can't pay with cash unless you are right there. Also, paying with large amounts of cash is hard or suspicious or even impossible.

So crimes arent possible with cash?

I don't understand what your question has to do with anything I wrote. Unless your intention is not an actual honest discussion, but to mislead - but surely that cannot be true.

Re: Why Is Bitcoin Valuable?

#64

Post by ThomPete »

Karnickel wrote: post #63
ThomPete wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So crimes arent possible with cash?

I don't understand what your question has to do with anything I wrote. Unless your intention is not an actual honest discussion, but to mislead - but surely that cannot be true.

My intention was to show you that there is in fact similarities between cash and bitcoin and that your claim that there isnt at all is wrong.

They are both used for crime and cash is used way more for crime than bitcoin is.

So your claim is simply wrong.

Re: Why Is Bitcoin Valuable?

#65

Post by ben_w »

ThomPete wrote: post #53
ben_w wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fewer crimes are possible with cash than with cryptocurrencies. It’s not boolean.

https://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/09/19/22-billion-dollars-... How you can even claim that with a straight face is beyond me. Here is just one person's cash usage.

First, by writing “just one person’s cash”, it is automatic to infer you consider this representative. I assert that it is not, and furthermore that if it were even close then the criminal economy would vastly exceed the non-criminal one.

Second, look at the date on that and tell me, with a straight face, that they didn’t use any cryptocurrencies. If they really did have $22bn, perhaps even if they only had $22m, I expected they used a dozen forms of currency they couldn’t even name.

Re: Why Is Bitcoin Valuable?

#66

Post by ben_w »

ThomPete wrote: post #50
ben_w wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fewer crimes are possible with cash than with cryptocurrencies. It’s not boolean.

Yet more crimes are being done with cash than cryptocurrencies.

How many crimes occurred on or by means of the Silk Road and it’s clones?

Re: Why Is Bitcoin Valuable?

#67

Post by ThomPete »

ben_w wrote: post #65
ThomPete wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/09/19/22-billion-dollars-... How you can even claim that with a straight face is beyond me. Here is just one person's cash usage.

First, by writing “just one person’s cash”, it is automatic to infer you consider this representative. I assert that it is not, and furthermore that if it were even close then the criminal economy would vastly exceed the non-criminal one. Second, look at the date on that and tell me, with a straight face, that they didn’t use any cryptocurrencies. If they really did have $22bn, perhaps even if they only had $22m, I e…

I am not the one claiming one is worse than the other. You are.

Re: Why Is Bitcoin Valuable?

#69

Post by bamazizi »

kjullien wrote: post #47
MsMowz wrote: post #3

The most interesting part of the cryptocurrency phenomenon has been the rise of pseudo-academic writing to support individual coins or the concept itself. Every time a new coin emerges, there's a detailed advertisement that's styled like an economics journal article. At the same time, there's low-level sophistry like this article to assert that cryptocurrency is going to solve social problem X. People who believe cry…

You should check out a project like Cardano then, they make their research go through academic peer review before they do anything. They also write their code in a way that you can prove it is an actual implementation of what the paper said (if I'm remembering correctly,but I'm not very familiar on the topic so I won't say much more about that, you can research it if you want).

Cardano is the perfect example of hot air blurring the lines of sales vs. science.

Re: Why Is Bitcoin Valuable?

#70

Post by mygo »

Why is it valuable? Because we keep talking about it. Because we hear about people who made their wealth using the inter webs and we want to make money and we have credit cards and we speculate. Oh well. Since the dollar must circulate, we have to give monetary value to things. And if not bitcoin it would be something else.
Post reply on HN