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Comment by spookthesunset | Hacker News Reader

Again. Circular logic of crypto shysters at work.

> It's real, measurable economic activity on a massive scale.

What economic activity? It is people speculating. Nobody is using bitcoin for buying coffee or sending micropayments to websites. Nobody is using it as a "store of value", despite what the shysters say. It is just people buying and selling a meaningless ticker symbol hoping to get rich and buy some island in the south pacific (using fiat, I might add).

With bitcoin, you might as well just throw away the technology behind it and just trade on the BTC ticker instead. I mean, that is almost what is happening given all the trades on any given exchange are off-chain transactions happening in a centralized exchange-owned database. There is no rumbling of miners recording every trade. The only people doing cross-trade are people trying to arbitrage away the price difference between exchanges.

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> Nobody is using bitcoin for buying coffee or sending micropayments to websites.

I was, I've spent more Bitcoins than traditional currencies on buying actual products during last year (electronics, games, hotels, flight tickets, etc.). That ended, 1 months ago when fees rose to a point limit that made such relatively small operations inviable.

That said, I still hope for new cryptocurrencies to provide a solution to scalability issues. Maybe https://failsafe.network/ or maybe something else.

You paid flights with bitcoins? Who accepts them?

A fair number of vendors, actually. The first comment in this Reddit post has a list:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6pgxb6/where_can_i...

I used https://www.abitsky.com/ and if BTC fees decreased I would use them again without hesitation.

"That said, I still hope for new cryptocurrencies to provide a solution to scalability issues"

But, if this is indeed a new cryptocurrencie, it will drain value out of bitcoin, and bitcoin will then be worth nothing.

The only scenario in which bitcoin isn't a bubble and has intrinsic value as a currency, is if the payment problems you mention, as well as liquidity issue, are solved by bitcoin itself.

Bitcoin Cash solved the issue by just increasing the block size. Its fees are pretty low.

I think you could think 'store of value' as stocks. As long as there are people willing to pay fiat for it, it is indeed a potential store of value.

Given the trends, a lot of people are willing to exchange fiat to get hands on the coins. And so, in the current situation, it does look like coins, however speculative their worth may be, are in fact potential store of value. I don't see a circular logic here, tbh?

I agree, though, unlike stock options of publicly/privately traded companies, there's no real value generated here; its... umm... 'ether' But the point I am trying to make is, at the cost of repeating my self here, as long as people are willing to pay fiat in exchange for the coins (and the trend is strong and investments continue to pour in), isn't it actually a potential store of value? For how long though, it is anyone's bet.

> as long as people are willing to pay fiat in exchange for the coins

Buffett's comment on gold is applicable for Bitcoin as well.

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/buffett-on-gold-2012-2?r=...

The "store of value" thing is such bullshit. People only started saying that after the fees made it even more impractical than it was. Maybe it will end up as "digital gold", but until recently everyone was talking about how it would be a currency.

Try buying drugs online with your credit card

This comment is a little facetious, but perfectly captures the fundamental misunderstanding the general public has about crypto currencies.

It's not just drugs: any point where regulatory or market conditions create enough suboptimal conditions (ie demand), there will be a possibility for arbitrage by taking the transaction outside of that market. Weapons, people, oil, real estate, and such will constantly create this possibility over time.

The tinkerbell effect - ie money has value as long as everyone believes is has value - is combined with real economic value creation. BitCoin is a 'bubble', and is 'worthless', and is 'meaningless', but BitCoins or some BitCoin competitor will have value as long as that potential for arbitrage exists.

Legalize drugs, weapons, fake passports, money laundering, unregulated international trade, and smuggling and BitCoin will have no value. As long as those things exist, and the tech exists, the global market will demand some kind of grey currency, and keep its value relatively high.

It follows that if crypto is the most efficient way of buying drugs online, that it's probably also the most efficient way of doing other illegal stuff online. Of that we're both in agreement.

Where we'd disagree is on bitcoin or any digital bearer assets being an efficiency for transactions that don't require censorship resistance. You'd better make sure you're sending that half a million in savings to buy your new house to the right address, because it's gone forever if you mess up a single character. Also, even if you did get the right address, you'd better hope you aren't being scammed (because in both scenarios, the traditional banking system and the government at large has your back).

This is the point where you say: but multisig / smart contracts! For a start, if the 'smart' part of the contract is a human oracle, why use a blockchain in the first place (if you're both willing to rely on a third party). Additionally, point me to a single transaction where the legal ownership of a house was transmitted through a block chain transaction (with no human oracle).

Let alone crypto being a terrible idea for smaller transactions. Last I saw bitcoin at ~$20 fees, Ethereum converts to a brick as soon as someone comes up with a popular contract, etc.

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