Comment by me_me_me | Hacker News Reader

Comment by me_me_me | Hacker News Reader

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BTC is a value store.

You can use it to exchange large values without traditional middleman.

Saying that BTC is just a hash, a virtual nothing and it has no intrinsic value is silly. Its not a tulip bulb.

Talking about pretty things, how come nobody gets railed up when a painting gets sold for millions and its a single color modernistic piece? Its literally just a hearsay that it has any value and no function apart from being expensive firestarter.

Bitcoin costs money to mine like it take money to mine gold. So there is 'work' involved creating it. It has built in mechanism for fighing inflation (finite source), and security for exchanging it. Try to liquidate 100k of gold.

Also its funny to me how people claim btc has no real value when over 20% of USD were printed last year. Out of thin air. Its all about confidence of people using it. If people were confident tulip bulbs have value of 100m per one we would be trading them to this day no matter how usless they are.

I've just dug a hole in my back garden, and created 21 million tiny slices of air that now occupy that space. It took work to dig this hole, so it definitely has value. And I'm only digging one hole, ever, I promise.

I've also made a list of people who own the different bits of air in the hole. I'm using pencil and paper, but it works. If you give me some money I can write your name on there and you can "store value". Later if you tell me to write someone else's name, I can rub yours out and you can "exchange large values".

If you or your friends want the money back later, I can give it to you. Probably... mostly. But don't ask me for more money than you gave me in the first place, because I won't have it.

p.s. I lied when I said I dug the hole by myself. I really dug up a billion tonnes of coal and used it to power a microscopic spaghetti noodle which dug the hole. For some reason this gave a lot of people confidence that my hole is the One True Hole.

That's such a crude reductionist argument that I can smell the sent of arrogance and mockery, and I am not sure if response is warranted.

Especially since your simile has rather gaping holes in it.

Actually thinking about it... ironically your example is better description of fiat currency than btc.

Use low resource output to generate cheap tokens that will be loosely tracked by 'One True Government', and people agree that they have value. People can exchange it for goods and even can go back to the 'One True Government' to exchange their gold back token back to gold... oh wait... right we got rid of that whole gold backing while back...

Is there a reason you believe Bitcoin has value, aside from "other people believe it has value"?

Is there a reason you believe USD, EUR etc. has value, aside from "other people believe it has value"?

Bitcoin at least has a utility built into it, facilitating transfers and 100% guarantee that limited amounts of btc can be created.

Fiat currencies and btc are not the same but the underlying principle is the same. Demand and supply. If there is no demand its value will plummet.

2007 crash cause swiss frank to sky rocket in value. For no other reason then international crowd started buying franks to store their wealth in it not USD.

There are many obvious reasons to believe fiat currencies have value. But perhaps the most obvious one is that having and using fiat currency is required by 99.9% of people in order to stay alive. Staying alive is quite valuable.

No, to stay alive you need oxygen, water and food.

eh... you are shifting the goalposts and not addressing any of my points. I am done continuing fighting another windmill.

you win btc is scam usd is real. Have a great day.

In the real world 99.9% of people require fiat currency to obtain water, food, shelter, and the rest of the things required to keep them alive. This is actual real-world value, as opposed to the theoretical value that Bitcoin might possess some day if everyone buys into it and nothing goes wrong.

I (and anyone else) can buy food and water with BTC. This statement along completely negates your point. To understand why BTC is valuable and educate yourself on the topic of money, I recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BPM3GZQ/

All assets have value store abilities. BTC is arguably bad value store. Value changes too much. When you need to withdraw the money you can lose or wing big.

TIPS (Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities) are good value store. You neither lose nor gain.

You're definitely losing.

Inflation of things you actually want and need is 10-15% per year and if you're not keeping pace with that, you're losing. TIPS can't help you with real world inflation.

Look at housing, medical care, higher education, quality food—these items are increasing in cost every year by more than the fictitious 2% CPI the government aims for.

Being a store of value doesn't mean the value of something never changes or that there's no volatility; just that over the medium to long term, it will at least keep pace with inflation, so that you don't losing buying power.

Gold has traditionally been a reliable store of value, but now it's becoming bitcoin.

Bitcoin has never had a negative 5-year period, but the return on TIPS can be negative during a deflationary period, not to mention federal taxes that occur while you hold them [1].

Bitcoin is only taxable when you sell, which, if you're smart, you never actually have to do, since you can borrow dollars using bitcoin as collateral [2].

[1] https://www.thebalance.com/how-do-tips-work-417128

[2] https://news.bitcoin.com/10-loan-providers-taking-crypto-as-...

And what sort of rates will you pay on those loans? Quite a bit more than 2%, I would imagine. And what happens to those loans if the price of Bitcoin falls dramatically, as it has done quite frequently?

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