That is true of a lot of things. Would diamonds or gold be as valuable if people didn't think it was a store of value?
It only has value as long as people believe it has value.
The caveat of course is that all of the things I listed have SOME more inherent value, but that is NOT the major contributor to their actual trading prices. Gold is not THAT useful. Neither is owning a billionth of a company.
That was my point. Any "real" value in most of these things is dwarfed by social delusion value.
Same with AAPL stock. Sure, I can pay ~$130 per share to technically own a fraction of Apple. And what good does that do for me? What's the dividends on AAPL? Will my vote EVER actually influence the company? I could spend $130 on canned beans and rice and likely get far more utility than I'd get from the ACTUAL share of AAPL. On the other hand, I'll probably be able to sell my AAPL share to the next sucker for more than $130. THAT'S the real reason 99.99% of us are invested in the stock market.
And, like it or not, bitcoin DOES have uses. It's still a little bit cheaper to send money via bitcoin than via Western Union, AFAIK. It's easy to pay for something online without giving your personal info to PayPal or the person who you are paying. Are those minor conveniences worth $40k? Hell no. But that's also my point. It's all crap.
In Apple’s case, you’d now have to pay 136 dollars in order to be entitled to 3.7 dollars of their annual earnings, corresponding to a current annual return rate of 2.7%. That’s better than any bank accounts, and it will most likely rise faster than inflation.
This is how the stock market works and how people value mature companies.
People will only pay for the next Apple product as long as they believe it provides value to them. It's all the same. Perception is king.
So issuing more shares would not change the value of existing shares, at least in the short term.
Never mind the fact that the shareholders would have to make this decision, and that Apple has long been doing the exact opposite.
if the existing majority shareholders chose to do this, then it will happen, but otherwise, this can't happen. And i don't see a situation where the existing shareholders would willingly choose to do this dilution for no reason.
That is not true. There are only 1.5 billion active Apple devices. I myself own 4 of those. Everyone else I know that has an Apple device also has multiple. I'm pretty sure the average Apple customer owns more than 1.5 devices. Thus there can't be over a billion of these people.