Comment by cocktailpeanuts | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cocktailpeanuts | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

cocktailpeanuts

> Except this Bitfinex thing shows that while an amount of bitcoin can't be manipulated or counterfeited, their actual value is relatively easy to influence.

This is because the only usage Bitcoin has left is a lottery ticket. Bitcoin used to actually have utility value (payment) but now with that gone, it is easy to manipulate the price because its value is built on people's perception only.

If Bitcoin was still being used to send money across borders, to buy things with super low transaction cost, send money without censorship-which by the way used to be why a lot of people saw value in it in the first place--it wouldn't be so easy to manipulate the value because any fool can see that there obviously is value in there.

Bitcoin losing utility has singlehandedly created the scam market we're seeing right now. People who want to make money choose the most efficient way to make money. And if they can see that they could make more money by building productive things on top of Bitcoin instead of building their own scam coin or scam scheme to manipulate the idiots who fall for it, they would probably rather work on those instead. But that's not the case, which is why we are where we are.

>If Bitcoin was still being used to send money across borders, to buy things with super low transaction cost, send money without censorship-which by the way used to be why a lot of people saw value in it in the first place--it wouldn't be so easy to manipulate the value because any fool can see that there obviously is value in there.

Bitcoin had all those things - not that long ago. You need volume to ensure stability, not utility.

> You need volume to ensure stability, not utility

Wow you've drunk some serious kool-aid there.

You need both. A huge volume of nothing is still nothing.

The "you need volume for stability" argument is what pro-bitcoin people used to say when Bitcoin could actually be used as a currency. Many people would say "Bitcoin isn't a legit currency because it's so volatile", and we would say "No, that's only because there isn't enough Bitcoins out there yet compared to USD for example". This was a valid argument and used to be my go-to-comment for convincing people. But that's only when Bitcoin can be used for something.

Now Bitcoin is like a pet rock, it's scarce, but very risky because the value that comes from the scarcity is based on people's perception only and not based on utility.

My point was that if the value is based only on perception (speculative value), this is very susceptible to manipulation.

I can't believe people actually believe just because something is scarce it's automatically valuable.

Uh, could the volume here mean the volume of the actual useful transactions, rather than the volume of the currency?

Mere utility is not enough, you need huge volume of such utility to make it stable.

The only type of transaction that exists on BTC chain today is people buying it for investment and HODL. Even that may dwindle in the coming weeks now that it's looking more like a crash.

I never said mere utility is enough. I clearly said "You need both", in response to parent saying it's not about utility but only about volume. So in summary I agree with your comment.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com