Comment by SkipperCat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SkipperCat | Hacker News Reader

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At first I thought Bitcoin and crypto currencies were bunk. Totally useless compared to USD or any other national currency. Although I still believe I'm correct, I've pretty much been shown that a lot of other people disagree with that premise because I've seen Bitcoin go from about $10 to $60,000. I still think it's a total bubble but have to admin there's a lot of other people who disagree. The one thing we can agree is that people who want to own Bitcoin do own Bitcoin and those that don't want to spend $60k on a coin dont.

But with NFT.... You don't have to spend any money at all. You can just download the item. Why would you pay any money at all. If Van Gough painted two "starry night" painting and sold the 1st for $10MM but offered me the 2nd one for free, I'd take the free one. Why would anyone pay money for something that you can get for free?

I think its because we're in a time of massive inflation of assets, probably brought on my the Fed's policies. We've inflated housing with low interest rates, stocks with QE and salaries for the lucky few in certain industries have risen much faster than the rest. This has lead to a group of people with excess cash chasing return. Once all the low hanging fruit has become out of reach in terms of value (ie: TLSA), money is seeking any other place to get returns - Crypto, penny stocks, SPAC's and now NFTs.

>I still think it's a total bubble but have to admin there's a lot of other people who disagree.

It doesn't matter if they disagree; a pyramid scheme is a pyramid scheme no matter how successful. And if it somehow still ends up as the world reserve “currency”, then it'll have made a lot of profoundly incompetent, undeserving, and shady people rich. We'd be no better off, even worse off than before. Bitcoin fuels the fire it was set out to extinguish: greed induced financial crime. https://www.cynicusrex.com/file/cryptocultscience.html

Agreed. It reminds me of diamonds. They're super expensive because the DeBeers family convinced everyone it's a sign of love and marriage. They're really not that rare and can be made in a lab. Aside from industrial grinders, there's really not much use for them.

It’s not anything like diamonds - diamond prices have slowly and consistently increased over the last 100 years and doesn’t see the crazy 20-30% swings in weekly prices that NFTs and even BTC sees. It’s considered a safe investment with a solid store or value. And dismissing them as “only useful for grinders” dismisses their value in jewelry. If millions find joy in having diamonds in their jewelry then I’d say there’s plenty of use for them.

I agree that it's not much like diamonds.

DeBeers was essentially a cartel, serving in a role kind of like a central bank. They manipulated the supply to keep prices high and reasonably stable and also manufactured the demand out of thin air. Their power has waned some; diamonds aren't worth much second hand anymore, but they're still overpriced at retail and there's still the legacy of marriage conventions requiring a diamond, now with the additional caveat that it must be natural.

The idea of DeBeers is anathema to the ideals of crypto currency, even if the reality of it is far from perfect.

> If millions find joy in having diamonds in their jewelry then I’d say there’s plenty of use for them.

If millions find joy in having BTC in their digital wallet then I’d say there’s plenty of use for them.

The only reason diamond prices haven't cratered is because of a company propping them up.

Which company is that?? You're probably referring to DeBeers, but your diamond knowledge is like 30 years behind the curve if this is the case. DeBeers does not have a diamond monopoly! This is a myth recycled over and over on the internet from people making some fake moral anti-diamond stance. DeBeers has less than a 30% market share, and aren't even the #1 producer of diamonds any longer.

The real reason diamonds haven't cratered is because they're a commodity that's always in demand - as long as people want to buy them they won't crater.

> The one thing we can agree is that people who want to own Bitcoin do own Bitcoin and those that don't want to spend $60k on a coin dont.

Almost right. Yes, the ones that wanted to own Bitcoin badly enough have Bitcoins by now. The ones that want Bitcoin but not badly enough don't. The ones that don't want to have Bitcoins don't have Bitcoins. The error in your statement is within "those that don't want to spend $60k on a coin dont" because you don't need to spend $60k minimum to buy Bitcoin, that's the price of a full Bitcoin, which you don't need to buy.

> But with NFT.... You don't have to spend any money at all. You can just download the item.

That's not how NFTs work. Yeah, sure, you can download the NFT metadata, or the multimedia that the NFT links to, but that's not "ownership" as defined by blockchains, where the owner is the one the blockchain consensus has said is the owner.

A bit like saying is the same to own the hosting of a SaaS landing page if you download the HTML file. Sure, now you have a copy of it, but that's the limit of your ownership there.

Disclaimer: I'm myself not into NFTs because it mostly seems like hype at this point, I own zero NFTs myself and have no interest in buying. But I also care about accuracy.

The point is if you want to own one, or a fraction of a Bitcoin, you have to trade USD for it. If I want to own an image of a cat with the body of a Pop-Tart flying thru space, I can just download it and have it on my desktop. I don't care if the blockchain says I own it or not. I just want that cat.

For the SaaS example you give, you're paying for the back-end service the SaaS company provides. That's real value. If all the SasS system did was download a Javascript file that did all the work locally, I think you'd see a lot of people download that item and run it locally, bypassing the SasS payment.

> I don't care if the blockchain says I own it or not. I just want that cat.

Of course, neither do I. I'm trying to help you to see the perspective of others though, where "ownership on blockchain" is valuable for them. I myself don't see the value in that, but obviously there is people who do.

And yeah, you're getting real close to getting it, a bit more thinking and I think you got it :)

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