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Comment by Sammi | Hacker News Reader

No. Beanie Babies can be mass produced at will. And so can Tulips for that matter. That's why those are bubbles that will burst.

The whole thing that makes Bitcoin special is that you can't just ramp up the supply of it. The supply of Bitcoin is even better known than that of gold. It's also easier to store and transport. So Bitcoin is a better store of value than gold.

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But Bitcoin is one of many cryptocurrencies is it not? Therefore the "supply" of cryptocurrencies is not exactly finite, no? If Bitcoin becomes too expensive, couldn't users of cryptocurrency just switch to Ethereum or some other cryptocurrency?

No, because of network effects. The alt coins don't have any usefulness because no one is using them. The value of a network is the connections within it.

They already did strongly limit the supply of beanie babies to increase hype, at least for many variants. The problem wasn't the supply, it was that the value was entirely based on speculation.

And bitcoin won't be a better store of value until we can be sure the demand for it will last a very long time.

The supply of Beanie Babies isn't guaranteed to be limited. You are trusting the behavior of one company.

The demand of Bitcoin has only ever increased in the long term. It has already gone further up after three huge temporary bubbles. You really feel comfortable to bet against this long term trend?

The supply of "first run X" is guaranteed to be limited, though.

> The demand of Bitcoin has only ever increased in the long term. It has already gone further up after three huge temporary bubbles. You really feel comfortable to bet against this long term trend?

I'm talking about multiple lifetimes to truly be long term, not fives of years.

Bitcoin won't be a good store of value until it calms down. The demand can't go up forever, and even if it's guaranteed to stay very very very high, what if you buy in when it's very very very very high?

> The supply of "first run X" is guaranteed to be limited, though.

Yeah like art and first edition books, sure.

> Bitcoin won't be a good store of value until it calms down.

It is at a trillion dollar market cap already. Only one single 10x away from gold. The long term regression on the Bitcoin price says that it will flip gold in less than 5 years.

> what if you buy in when it's very very very very high?

You hold. Or hodl as the memers say. Bitcoin is a black hole and it will swallow everything else, because it is better than everything else on every metric. Yes it even uses less power than fiat or gold.

> Yes it even uses less power than fiat or gold.

Until you scale it up.

What does "store of value" mean when the only value you can extract from it, is value that other people put in? Otherwise it wouldn't be any different than holding onto a $20 bill (and having inflation destroy it's purchasing power)

How does gold store any value? It's not because you can extract any value from gold or because it is useful for some industrial purpose. That's only a minor part of it. That's not why people in general covet it. People value gold, because it is hard to get and other people don't have it. Same for Bitcoin.

> you can't just ramp up the supply of it.

nothing stopping demand from collapsing in a panic

Nothing stopping it from going right back up again like it always does. The long term trend is up and to the right like nothing else. Buy the dip.

Bitcoin is a black hole that swallows every other asset, because it is a better store of value than everything else.

Not how a panic works. Markets have too many positive feedback loops and they overshoot. And since bitcoin is actually backed by currency once it is all drained in a panic then it goes down the drain.

Are you trying to describe a panic such as a run on a bank? Because that only makes sense with fractional reserves. Bitcoin has a known and fixed supply with no fractional reserves.

There have already been three separate huge "panics" where the Bitcoin price has gone down 90%. But these don't even register any more if you look at the long term price chart. Zoom out. The Bitcoin price is going up and to the right like nothing else. It just keeps on going.

Bitcoin is fractional reserve. There isn't $982B in currency backing it. If everyone tries to sell at the same time it'll collapse after $10B or so leaves. Prior collapses have been from small enough heights that individual Billionnaires like Jack Ma have been able to rescue it. At some point its going to hit a crash where a billion here or there won't be enough to bail it out when it goes down.

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