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Comment by postingpals | Hacker News Reader

A store of value is just one aspect to what makes money, money. It also has to be a medium of exchange and a standard of value. Bitcoin's value changes so wildly that it cannot be a standard (right now) and no one uses it to buy things.

Everyone is investing in bitcoin on the promise that its going to be so much more useful than dollars, in the hopes that they will make a lot of... dollars? Do you see the contradiction? If they think it's going to be so much better than dollars what are they going to do with their long term investment dollars if, in the long run, bitcoin surpasses them?

Don't use economics terms to explain the usefulness of bitcoin when economics itself disagrees.

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Your logic stumbles when you consider gold. "no one uses it" either to "buy things", and yet it is valueable and has been so for eons. Store of value is a very important function in itself.

The gold standard was abandoned precisely because it was inferior. It was pretty useful up until early 20th century as a medium of exchange too. People used to use gold coins to buy things, didn't they?

Now it's not, and yet it's still valueable.

Honest question: in 20 years would you prefer to own a 21 milionth of bitcoin (1 bitcoin) or 21 milionth of gold (~8kgs of gold)?

Not thinking about the value of it, but of its future usefulness as value store and as mean of payment

Bitcoin 100%, because of the optionality and network effects.

I don't believe you can separate the value of Bitcoin and it's usefulness because the more valuable Bitcoin is, the more useful it becomes.

The more people who hold Bitcoin, the more scarce it becomes and therefore the more valuable it becomes. In 20 years, Bitcoin could go to 0, or become a widely used currency and skyrocket in value.

Once the number of Bitcoin holders reaches equilibrium then the value would remain stable, but we are definitely not at that point yet.

Gold value will never go to zero though

For the simple reason that it exist in the physical space and can't disappear, unless the laws that regulate our existence change, which is quite improbable

Gold will also work and retain a value even if society suddenly shuts down and reset to a "sticks and stones" state

Bitcoin advocates have this weird tendency to completely ignore decades of game theory

That's why people don't trust them

> Everyone is investing in bitcoin on the promise that its going to be so much more useful than dollars

I doubt this is true in every case, maybe even most cases. Though this sentiment does seem to become more rigid toward the core of the crypto community, a huge swath of other investors are playing price action. There are tons of technical traders in crypto, and they tend to care much more about MA deviations, gaps, pennants, and candlestick forms than what's going to replace USD.

You can also think of it as a play by (people who don't have as many concerns about the dollar) off the fears of (people who are afraid about the future of the dollar).

IMO there is a lot of room in a speculative ecosystem for non-value, non-traditional-economics, and even hugely irrational viewpoints. They can all meet with success by using their own sets of strategies.

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