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Comment by beachwood23 | Hacker News Reader

You are correct that there is no fixed price. However, you might be assuming that the US Dollar has a fixed price too. The US Dollar is fixed at the price of the US Dollar, which is of course only a relative value.

Likewise, a Bitcoin is worth what a Bitcoin is worth.

The difference between the two, what the OP is pointing out above you, is that Bitcoin currency has a limited supply and so can't be devalued. Relative to each other, a Bitcoin will increase its value to the USD because the supply of the latter is always increasing.

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Bitcoin advocates focus on the limited supply when comparing to the USD, and forget that bitcoin also has very limited utility as a currency. I don't want to transact in something so volatile, nor something with such high transaction cost or latency.

Bitcoin is being actively developed. Maybe you would have good ideas on how to improve the things you critizise if you allowed yourself to think about them.

Thanks for the ad hominem attack, it's validation for the fundamental issues I raised.

Bitcoin is a massive waste of the natural resources used to create and maintain the blockchain entries, nothing more, and probably won't ever be anything else. A properly designed cryptocurrency could be useful, but it won't look anything like bitcoin.

Ad hominem was not my intent, rather stating, that people try improving Bitcoin every day. It is just the state of the art which does not mean, that things cannot be improved, e.g. by you.

> Relative to each other, a Bitcoin will increase its value to the USD because the supply of the latter is always increasing.

Until Bitcoin crashes entirely, of course.

OK, new topic: Draw a graph of each currency's Big Mac Index, or how much of each you need to buy a Big Mac in some major American city over the same timeframe. (We could do the same thing with Wonder Bread or a dozen jumbo eggs, but the Big Mac Index is actually A Thing.)

USD is required to pay US taxes; that gives it a baseline reference point.

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