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Comment by calgoo | Hacker News Reader

"It’s an OK commodity but it’s the equivalent of selling real estate on the moon. There’s no inherent value. I applaud the ability of speculators to make money from selling it to other people, but I don’t think even calling it a commodity is enough. It’s a kind of shadow asset."

I love when people who are in finances say that bitcoin has no vale; when actual money today is so complex in determining its value that you could basically say its a virtual coin as well.

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Conventional money is backed by national governments. Stable currencies tend to be associated with democracies, where that government will be held accountable.

Bitcoin by contrast is like a rotten borough where all the votes are bought: you get a vote in bitcoin in exact proportion to how much of the mining capacity you own.

That's still more democratic than currencies issued by dictatorships, yet nobody would say they have no value.

I'm probably not entirely in the 'bitcoin has no value camp.'

But that those currencies issued by dictatorships having value as you say, doesn't really have much to do with bitcoin, apart from being another example of currency.

Those dictatorial governments have real world clout, they can make things happen, by contrast bitcoin's govt is it's users, and as a group the only changes they can affect on the real world are changes directly pertaining to bitcoin.

Also, those currencies issued by dictatorships, for the most part have zones where they are 'the coin of the realm,' meaning they are the only or one of the few currencies widely circulated. This gives a currency value.

A currency's value derives from some combination of it's supply and it's currency(this use of 'currency,' meaning how widely it is accepted as payment for goods, services, etc.)

So there is a lot of value in the US dollar system for example, because it is a currency that is used widely throughout the world.

It's also obviously not true with even the tiniest amount of research. If you want to buy something online anonymously, then you use Bitcoin. There's the value.

The problem with this is that Bitcoin is just about the least anonymous thing ever. It only seems anonymous because nobody's built the infrastructure to track it yet.

This statement is a bit hyperbolic. Bitcoin isn't as anonymous as say cash, but it's a lot more anonymous than most online payment methods (excluding a few altcoins which can really just be seen as innovations in the bitcoin/blockchain space).

Bitcoin will evolve to be exactly as fungible as is required to maintain its efficiency. As the cats build tracking tools, the mice will continue to expand on bitcoin's fungibility.

Tumblers..

I don't think that's really inherent value in the sense referenced. A commodity is something that satisfies wants and needs on its own. See, e.g.:

http://money.cnn.com/data/commodities/

The reason I think it matters is that when commodities are used as currencies (e.g., gold, silver), the use value supports the currency value. If gold's value as a currency falls to zero, you can still make some nice jewelery. Whereas if people stop accepting dollars or Bitcoins for things you actually want, then they are basically useless.

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