Self-Described Bitcoin Creator Craig Wright Sues a Podcaster for Libel

Storage can change value at the blink of an eye, as can the junk token which purports to represent it. The things which dictate value are supply and demand. In storage, you will pay what you need based on your demands, and the price will be determined by how much is available. If there is abundance, it it cheap, if it is scarce, it will be expensive. The same is true for the token. However, as I've pointed out, the token is by-design not scarce, because anybody can print their own substitute. The token only creates additional friction between the consumer, who wants storage, and the seller, who wants money for their service.

If the seller ends up with a bunch of "storage tokens", what good is it for them if they want to do their grocery shopping? What good is it for paying their bills? Do you think each of these services will have their own token, and each one will present an additional layer of friction for every person who just wants to get on with their lives?

Of course this isn't the case. People will sell of whatever junk tokens they have and try to accumulate and save the most saleable commodity, which will be the one which does not depreciate, or depreciates as the slowest rate compared to any other commodity, ensuring that they will get their value's worth when they eventually want to trade it for something they need.

The seller of storage is also going to want to trade their commodity, storage, for a commodity which is more saleable than storage. They would never sell it for something less saleable than storage unless they had a direct need for that commodity. The seller will therefore, also offer their services in exchange for the most saleable commodity - the one with universal applicability which the greatest number of other people will accept in exchange for goods or services.

I suggest reading Carl Menger's "On the Origins of Money"[1] for a better understanding of how certain commodities become money.

[1]:http://monadnock.net/menger/money.html

Not sure why you're being downvoted here; I also would like to see a breakdown of what people are actually buying with bitcoin thru BitPay. To this day I still don't know anyone in real life who actually uses it over any other payment method.

Nothing as any inherent value either though. Gold can't be eaten and food is worth nothing when you just had a feast. Value is a social construction highly dependent on the context.

The value of bitcoin isn't how much energy it took to create, but how much energy it would take to steal. By being energy intensive, it ensures that an attacker or malicious agent who wishes steal it, or install an involuntary tax on its users, is unable to do so without consuming at least an equivalent amount of energy. If they fail to muster up the majority of the energy, they end up wasting money on electricity spent. The bigger the cost of "electricity wasted" through mining, the bigger the risk the potential attacker must take to attempt to undermine its security.

So turns out there are some people who want to save money without it being involuntarily taxed (through forced inflation), and that itself is valuable. Bitcoin has inherent value, and unlike the fiat money it is competing with, that value cannot be arbitrarily adjusted by a monopoly control of money printers, but it is dictated entirely by supply and demand in a free market.

The "BTC/USD" exchange rate is not the value of bitcoin, but is a big distraction. If you are tied up in thinking of bitcoin in dollar cost you will end up being the greater fool who only buys when the price is rising rapidly because of FOMO. Or instead, you might be the greatest fool, who resists it until the last possible moment when you realize the world has moved on and nobody wants paper money anymore.

Bitcoin alone doesn't make the greatest payment system, but it needs comparing to gold for its best physical analogue. With physical gold, confirming it takes expertise, special equipment and time. It has a huge attack surface for fraud, which is why it is impractical for everyday payments. Bitcoin is superior to gold in many regards: it is very easy to validate, it requires no physical storage, it is very cheap to transport, and very easy to divide.

The systems which are being built on top of bitcoin will enable the use of the currency in practical payment systems: instant transactions, very low fees, and automation - some of which on a scale which was never previously possible because of the high cost of payments in existing payment systems. Systems like the Lightning Network will enable the creation of brand new economies which were simply not possible to do before bitcoin.

In terms of deflation, bitcoin is also more similar to gold - it cannot simply be created out of thin air, and must consume energy to extract from the earth. The deflationary nature of bitcoin, and gold before it, make it an excellent store of value, even if it is not the most practical solution for national economies which, according to Keynesians, require stimulation through inflation.

The money people are using for their payment systems does not necessarily need to be backed 1-1 by real bitcoin. We can already see some services like conbase are taking custody of people's money, offering debit cards to consumers and Point-of-Sale services to merchants. These will enable the everyday use of bitcoin without any strain on the bitcoin network, and without it necessarily being backed 100% by actual bitcoin. These may benefit their users by providing convenience, but can only work for as long as the providers are sufficiently responsible as to not become insolvent.

There are plenty of people who will refuse to use such "fiat bitcoin" services, and will only ever use bitcoin proper. This makes it kind of difficult for conbase and the like, whose fiat bitcoin will end up trading at a lower rate than bitcoin proper - and who will probably try to counter this damage by preventing withdrawal of bitcoin proper from their digital coffers, making their fiat bitcoin only spendable to merchants who will accept fiat bitcoins. They are essentially, trying to recreate the existing banking system on Bitcoin.

There's a big difference between the banking system and bitcoin though, and that is permission. Nobody needs permission to use bitcoin proper, and given the choice of fiat bitcoin or bitcoin proper, those with sense will choose the latter. It doesn't matter that bitcoin is deflationary, because people will always act in their own best interest and acquire the most saleable currency, which will continue to be bitcoin proper.

The opponents of deflation think that somebody ought to dictate the supply of currency, or that individuals should act against their own self-interest for the good of the many, but this is just a complete ignoring of the reality of human nature. People will always act in their own interest, and deflation is beneficial to ones own interest if they are intent on saving money.

Unlike historical events where governments have threatened to send in their henchmen if people don't surrender their gold, bitcoin can not so easily be seized. Bitcoin does not care if you think that deflation is bad, or whether you think "expert economists" ought to decide how much inflation there should be. They are absolutely powerless against the force of Bitcoin. Everybody is. Nobody can control it, but everybody controls it through their own selfish interests.

If this happens to lead to people accumulating and spending less, and this leads to economic depression, then that's what will happen! It might make you uncomfortable to think that you are no longer in control, but you're going to have to get over it. The die has been cast. If economic depressions end up occurring as a result deflation in bitcoin, we'll just have to find new ways of dealing with it, because Keynsian's forever money printing method has run its course.