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2017-12-11 (discuss.online)
submitted 1 year ago by [M] to c/cyanideandhappiness@discuss.online
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[+] -18 points 1 year ago (4 children)

There is really no reason (other than hype) for the value of Bitcoin to move the way it does.

Sure there is. It is a limited resource which can be exchanged for other things of value (goods, services, currency).

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    A limited resource? You mean like beanie babies?

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Well, if it is not a limited resource, why don't you make a few and cash out?

    Let me know how that goes 👍

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Despite it being limited, you can still make a few and cash out.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    It is a limited resource

    Bad jokeYour Mom is too. Yet I'm still seeing her for free

    (BTW, you're just wrong. If something being a limited resource that can be exchanged for services and goods means it is unstable, why aren't we seeing that with Euros? Dollars? HUF? insert currency here?

    which can be exchanged for other things of value

    ...yet if we look at the triangle of investment, it neither has stability, nor has it got good liquidity, leaving only profitability. And since the job of a currency is being stable and liquidible, it fails at those completely.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Dollars and Euros and other currencies are not a limited resource, nor are they based off of any kind of limited resource. They literally just print more whenever they want.

    There will only ever be 21 million bitcoins. There can never be more than that. Of that 21mil, 19.8 million have been mined. Of those mined, it is estimated that 2-4 million coins are lost. More can not be created, more can not be found in an asteroid, more can not be wished into existence. It is a limited resource.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    That doesn't help with the buying things part though.

    Why would anyone buy anything with it when tomorrow they could have bought ten of the thing they bought today?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Why would anyone buy anything with it when tomorrow they could have bought ten of the thing they bought today?

    Because people need things and to get them they have to buy them?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    They'd be insane or desperate in extremis to use bitcoin though, given the volatility of the "currency".

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    In the short term, maybe.

    But if Bitcoin is always going to go up in value, why would it make sense to spend your USDs buying goods and services instead of using them to buy Bitcoin and increasing the value of that capital?

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    So we're back to bit coin has no intrinsic value.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    No we aren't...

    We're back to: people would spend it in order to buy things

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    But if they're not buying things to buy bitcoin because they want to get returns off their bitcoin then they're literally doing the exact opposite of buying things with bit coin

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    But if they're not buying things to buy bitcoin because they want to get returns off their bitcoin

    I just explained why they would buy things. I said it twice, actually.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (1 child)

    I don't understand your comment then. It reads that people should stop using dollars to buy stuff like bread and just buy bit coin instead.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    It was phrased as a question on purpose, to get you to think about it.

    Your assertion is that no one would spend their Bitcoin on bread, and they'd instead use fiat currency. I'm asking you: why would they take their capital, regardless of what form it's in, and spend it on bread, if they knew they could hold onto that capital and it would appreciate in value?

    The answer is very obvious: they need to eat.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    I see what you're saying now. You're basically describing deflation. Yeah people would buy bread (and other essentials to live) but as their currency would be more valuable tomorrow they'd put off buying non essentials. In fiat currency this is seen as prices dropping in bitcoin is seen as the value of the bitcoin going up.

    Why would I buy a non essential today when I know it'll be 10% cheaper tomorrow?

    Why would I use my bitcoin to buy anything non essential when if I wait until the next spike it'll be 30% more valuable than today?

    The answer of course is I wouldn't. I'll buy it later when it's 10% cheaper for my fiat currency or 30% cheaper if I'm using bitcoin. It's not an essential so why spend more to get he same thing.

    Currency needs stability in fiat currency to much instability is described in terms of inflation and deflation. Because bitcoin is more of an investment than a currency it's described as it going up and down.

    As there's no intrinsic value to bitcoin and because there's no central backing working to maintain the stability it'll never be anything other than a speculative investment for people who're already rich or the few who get lucky to make some actual useable money off.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    People would buy more than just bare essentials because people want things. This doesn't exist in a vacuum -- at this very moment, people are using fiat currency to buy all kinds of things they don't need instead of investing it in some kind of appreciating asset.

    As there's no intrinsic value to bitcoin

    There's no intrinsic value to fiat currency. I'm not sure why you keep saying this.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    People would buy more than just bare essentials because people want things

    People would buy less and ecconomies (rightly or wrongly) rely quite a lot on people buying more than they need. There's a reason economics are scared of deflation. The fear of deflation was why interest rates where so low after the 08 crash and even lower during the pandemic.

    Also, other appreciating assets have some use within the wider economy. Shares you're ingesting in a company that produces goods or services so they can spend that money on growing their business, bonds/guilts you're enabling the issuer to borrow more to do whatever they need to do with that money (in the case of government bonds think roads, hospitals and bombs).

    There's no intrinsic value to fiat currency.

    True. There isn't to bitcoin either. What fiat has is stability and public confidence. When it looses stability that's when things are bad. Bitcoin has proved itself extremely volatile, its about 16 years to become stable and it never has. Because bitcoin coin is so dominant in the crypto market I can't see any crypo becoming stable while it exists.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Also, other appreciating assets have some use within the wider economy.

    Sure, but that has nothing to do with what I said about them.

    Again, you'll notice people are spending their capital on things they don't need all day, rather than than investing it in appreciating assets. Why are they doing that? Why would they buy things they don't need today, when they could invest in an appreciating asset and be able to afford 10 of those things tomorrow?

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  • [+] -6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Dollars and Euros and other currencies are not a limited resource, nor are they based off of any kind of limited resource.

    They are limited by an authority which you can trust will not try to kill it off. So I kinda see it as more of a feature than a bug.

    Also, dosent answer all the other arguments I just posted

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    where can you go and buy a burger and a sodie pop with Bitcoin?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Where can you do the same with gold?

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Gold is a physical good with intrinsic value and real uses beyond it being valuable.

    ETA - gold is also generally bought as an investment (or jewellery/decorative purposes, or for industrial use), not for use as a currency.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago* (4 children)

    Have you ever heard of anyone using bitcoin for anything other than speculation? I haven't, and I often spend time in those circles. If you send btc you have to pay a lot on transaction fees

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Have you heard of anyone using any financial instruments for anything other than speculation?

    I mean, you literally have to go through tons of warnings and accept various things when opening trading account, all of which basically inform you that there are no guarantees for anything and that majority of people lose money in margin trading.

    You don't spend any time in any circles, you are talking out of your ass, you could right now send few billion worth of BTC for less than a dollar. Or you could do it for 5 bucks, just to be absolutely sure. But you wouldn't know that since you are unlikely to be a human.

    Stupid AI bots rehashing old shit they were trained on, from years ago. Sigh.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Just say that everyone who disagrees is a bot that way You can never be wrong.

    I and most of the world literally use cash and banking everyday for gas and groceries. Literally not speculation. If you mean trading stocks, then I 100% agree. But they are made to be speculative, they don't pretend to be something else (which I absolutely hate)

    I'm not talking out of my ass. I've literally triede every crypto that has caught my eye. Including btc. However, I like self custody, and in the case of btc, just moving from binance to self custody was really expensive and took forever. Go to nostr, and you will see thousands of people using lightning just to avoid paying the huge fees. However using lightning for like 10 USD (which is what I would be willing to try) is not worth it since you have to do a lot of transactions and pay a lot of fees.

    Just keep telling yourself that everyone who disagrees with you is a bot and treating bitcoin as a core part of you personality if it makes you feel smart

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  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago

    You should move some more goalposts and change some more topics.

    I responded to your initial post which very clearly talked about very specific things and now you decided to talk about completely unrelated nonsense. Just stop.

    It's ok to be wrong about something and learn/improve.

    It's bad to just keep talking nonsense.

    But hey, you do you. Not my problem.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    As long as the transaction fees are less than the value you're transferring, there's still value left to exchange. This is part of what drives the price.

    Whether people do use it beyond speculation is not relevant. Another part of its value is that you can use it beyond speculation.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    That is the thing. The person you replied to didn't say "bitcoin can only be used for speculation" they said "there is no reason for the value to move as it does (beyond speculation)". which means that it IS relevant. Otherwise you are saying both " yes there are other reasons" and "it's not relevant if there are other reasons"

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    No, they said

    There is really no reason (other than hype) for the value of Bitcoin to move the way it does.

    Which I responded to appropriately. There are other reasons.

    In my previous response to you, I said

    Whether people do use it beyond speculation is not relevant. Another part of its value is that you can use it beyond speculation.

    I didn't say that speculation wasn't relevant. I said that whether people use it beyond speculation isn't relevant. It remains true that it can be exchanged for other things of value. As a counter-example, it turns out that NFTs attached to random JPGs are pure speculation, mainly because they are not a limited resource, and because the things they are attached to are also not a limited resource. If holding an NFT represented ownership of something which was a limited resource - like a piece of real estate, or a car, or a share of a business - then such an NFT would have value. That would require a common public agreement on such a system, which does not currently exist, but it's not impossible.

    Now, if we're talking about BTC specifically, its use case outside being a store of value is now pretty limited, mainly because of the way it was designed. Other coins and tokens have greater use cases, but there hasn't really been a "breakout" moment for anything yet.

    ENIAC was completed in 1945, and it took many decades for digital computers to become ubiquitous. Now we take them for granted. Someone, at some point, will have a useful practical application for blockchain.

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