Bitcoin and Crypto Thread

[chance vought]

It certainly matters what the broader population thinks if your aim is mass adoption. It also matters if your goal is passing legislation for a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, which becomes increasingly unlikely if Bitcoin is politically tied to Trump.

Why would gold go to zero even if Bitcoin continues to appreciate indefinitely? That makes absolutely no sense. People would be buying up gold to turn into jewelry long before its value ever reached zero. Conversely, there is literally no floor underneath the price of Bitcoin or any other crypto, since they have no underlying real-world application.

real world application: money

No, people actually do make that argument all the time. You're making it right now, in fact, because that's essentially what you're saying when you claim that Bitcoin is the greatest money ever invented. Why? Because the 21 million limit is literally the only thing differentiating Bitcoin from every other shitcoin on the market. The fact that it is strictly limited in supply is the only reason you can claim it has any value in the first place, which is in turn the only thing that makes it function as a perfect form of money (in your view).

limited supply, transportability, divisibility, ease of custody, low cost of ownership

What is money? Money is not paper, gold, or anything in particular. It is a ledger that keeps track of who has provided value to society. It allows strangers to demand each other's time, in a cooperative and mutually beneficial way. Fiat is a corrupted form of money, but it still is a ledger that mostly keeps track of that (bankers and government parasites not withstanding). 95% of fiat money isn't in the form of physical notes or coins - it is simply a highly centralized electronic ledger, subject to the corruption that centralization leads to.

Bitcoin is simply a ledger - the absolute genius feature of which is triple-entry accounting: double entry accounting with timestamps (which solves the double spend problem of a decentralized ledger).

 

[scorpion]

transportability, divisibility, ease of custody, low cost of ownership

Bitcoin absolutely has these properties - but so does every other crypto. Thus, they cannot be the reason that Bitcoin is perceived to have value over and above any random shitcoin. The only thing that makes Bitcoin unique is its brand name, its network effect (popularity) and its limited supply of 21 million coins (although this property could also be copied by any other crypto). In other words, it's not the technology itself that provides value, it's entirely peoples' perceptions and beliefs about it.

 

[chance vought]

Bitcoin absolutely has these properties - but so does every other crypto. Thus, they cannot be the reason that Bitcoin is perceived to have value over and above any random shitcoin. The only thing that makes Bitcoin unique is its brand name, its network effect (popularity) and its limited supply of 21 million coins (although this property could also be copied by any other crypto). In other words, it's not the technology itself that provides value, it's entirely peoples' perceptions and beliefs about it.

Bitcoin is the most decentralized and thus the most immutable. Is also has by far the most powerful computer network by at least 1000x, and is that much more secure than crypto.

These are crucial properties that crypto cannot duplicate.

Proof of work is what makes it real and ties something digital to the laws of nature - what typically can be infinitely copied is made perfectly scarce.

If only one person controls the ledger, at no cost for the privelege, you have Trump coin, or the Federal Reserve. If no one controls it — only those who choose to expend energy, at a cost, to provide security — that is bitcoin.

 

[PurpleUrkel]

I yawn as we rehash the same statements that those of us who know what BTC have already debunked at least 10 times on this thread.

You don't know what bitcoin is. Bitcoin is nothing and so you know nothing about nothing. Bitcoin is nothing without electricity, bitcoin is nothing without the internet, bitcoin is nothing without nerds and gamblers to claim that it is something. Bitcoin is nothing if you lose the pass key to your hot pocket. Bitcoin is nothing unless you were an early adopter that bought 10 coins at $100 each and sold them recently at 100K, converted the cash into gold bars and now have a million dollars in gold bars buried in the woods out of the reach of thieves and the governnent. For 50 Cent bitcoin is something, for late adopters like yourself it is nothing. Possession is 9/10ths of the law, and if you don't have physical possession of an asset then you have nothing. Bitcoin is not physical, therefore it is nothing. Bitcoin is a state of mind, and the human mind is subject to change without notice.

You use these words because you try to fool others and yourself into maintaining this charade that the market is wrong after 16 years.

A whole 16 years? You're the one trying to fool others, because your imaginary Bitcoin goes down in value if you don't convince others to buy into this elaborate group think charade.

It has value because of all of the things I've said above, which include being the greatest money ever invented/discovered to this point in human history.

How can this be known if it's only 16 years old?

The correct answer is "gold is the greatest money ever invented/discovered to this point in human history." Everything you see of importance in the world from Michaelangelo's David to The Hoover Dam were built using gold as payment. All Bitcoin has done in 16 years is allow dark arts thieves to shut down the Colonial Pipeline for 3 days and allow a few outlier geeks to get rich by doing nothing.