If only for this specific use case (e.g. donate to wikileaks), there is actual intrinsic (and social) value in Bitcoin
It's also super disingenuous to suggest that the Bitcoin network isn't collecting its take. Miners are collecting block reward in the amount of 0.004BTC per transaction, roughly $250. This is a direct reduction in net welfare of the system. That's on top of the transaction fees of roughly $3-5.
So yeah, Bitcoin costs $255 to transact, vs a free ACH.
This is also not intrinsic value. Intrinsic value is the calculated value of Bitcoin which remains $0. All value ascribed to Bitcoin is extrinsic, and this transaction extracted non-trivial value.
I don't think you can make that determination unless you know why the sender chose to use Bitcoin.
Avoiding the law is a genuine and legitimate use case of Bitcoin not better served by the classic financial system.
There is strictly no such thing as intrinsic value. There is only supply and demand. We've talked about this before, but I guess there's no convincing you.
I can take gold and turn it into electronics, jewelry and so on. I can do things with it beyond looking at it. What that's worth is subject to market value, but intrinsic value is a math-based derivation of the present value of an asset based on its attributes and qualities (and their utility and marketability), not calculated from what the market will bear for its direct transaction.
Not that I'm advocating gold, I'm just using it as an example.
Pickled cucumbers cannot be used to manufacture bitcoin miners, yet one can surely argue that they have “value” and a certain “price” (= “market value“) which is expected to be a proxy for the perceived intrinsic value.
How you perceive the intrinsic value is subjective, while market value is (though to be) objective. For example, if you personally don’t know what to do with pickles then they have zero (or even negative) value to you. Other people might have different valuation.
It's like trying to tell your debt collector "the real money is the friends we made along the way." Ok, maybe to you, but those kneecaps are still going to hurt in the morning.
> Pickled cucumbers cannot be used to manufacture bitcoin miners, yet one can surely argue that they have “value” and a certain “price” (= “market value“) which is expected to be a proxy for the perceived intrinsic value.
I cannot make sense of this argument. Pickled cucumbers have an intrinsic nutritional value. They're food. Sure they don't have calories, but they have vitamin A, K, calcium, potassium, sodium. You know, things you need, to live.
Folks are welcome to have their extrinsic valuation of pickles too, but that doesn't mean they don't also have an intrinsic value.
> Intrinsic value is the calculated value of Bitcoin which remains $0.
You ascribe no intrinsic value to Bitcoin arbitrarily, because from your viewpoint there is no useful applications for it. And yet, one can use Bitcoin, for example, to store data on Bitcoin blockchain permanently, or to pay miners for performing transactions – this is intrinsic value, similar to nutritional value of pickles.
Not because there's no applications for it - there's crime - but because the value created doesn't accrue to Bitcoin, it accrues to the miners. You cannot use, touch, look at, do anything with a Bitcoin. You can pay miners to move it. That value accrues to miners.
[edit] It's like hoping your Starbucks gift cards go up in value because Starbucks sells more coffee.
Mining rewards are incentive to secure the network. Security increases the net welfare of the system.
Let's compare apples to apples. If you're including mining rewards in the cost for a bitcoin transaction, you should also includes Wells Fargo's payroll in the costs for a "free" ACH
Only to a point. That's the problem, Bitcoin does not and cannot have a negative feedback cycle. It's got the 50 seatbelts problem. If you keep adding seatbelts at some point you're so far beyond safe that any additional incremental seatbelts are simply waste. If you're already consuming 10x as many resources as anyone can possibly muster to attack the network, then any incremental expenditure is simply waste, not added value, not security.
> If you're including mining rewards in the cost for a bitcoin transaction, you should also includes Wells Fargo's payroll in the costs for a "free" ACH
Wells Fargo provides far, far more services than simply facilitating interbank transfers.
ACHs aren't exactly free but they're close, it's like 3/10th of a cent in volume. Low enough that banks are willing to eat it to keep you as a customer. This is actually enough to cover all the costs associated with operating the network, including payroll, as it operates on a cost recovery basis. Because they're not setting fire to all the world's coal to achieve their security model, and a few server racks at the NACHA just aren't that expensive.
Non profits have always been able to take whatever assets that can be valued.
>Essentially what we did was move the funds to hardware wallets owned by the core development team.
How often is it that an org makes their team personally and physically hold funds? Seems like a liability
$1 billion would take a day to clear, but it would still be 100% free.
Irreversibility of such a transaction would be ridiculous for all parties involved, of course they don't offer that.
Also, opening bank accounts these days is done entirely online and usually you get approved within an hour or so. Apart from having to scan my ID with my phone's camera, I don't remember any bureaucracy.
But yeah, if you want to donate to $shadyorg, somebody might stop you or come after you.
Don't see how Bitcoin is better in this regard.
Because there's obviously a clear and universal agreement on what falls in the $shadyorg bucket.
Like when Visa and their cronies decide to cut off donation to an org they don't like just because.
Must be nice where you live
However it does not therefore follow that making your own money that consumes as much power as Poland (60 days of power for the average US household per transaction) or generates as much e-waste as the Netherlands each year is a better solution in any way. Certainly not while miners re-activate shuttered fossil fuel plants and burn Kazakh coal. It's an abject, unmitigated disaster. All while processing the transaction volume of a small Costco.
If anything it distracts from actual solutions.
Each country is surely going to legislate within its borders, but outside it's quickly turning into the international law territory. And the great secret of international law is that there isn't any.
Bitcoin at least provides actually internationally enforceable operation framework. You cannot unilaterally alter the deal.
If organization X is considered shady by country A, but totally legit in country B, then Visa operating in both countries A and B cannot allow transfers from B to A. Regardless of what country B and its residents think, Visa would get into trouble with country A. Country B cannot legislate Visa to ignore the laws of A, and there is no recourse for residents of B.
Marijuana is a federal crime in the US and basically everywhere else on Earth, but you can buy pot at Canada's government-run pot dispensaries online with your Visa, Mastercard and American Express cards. Like at http://ocs.ca
Lol. In my country there is no easy way to do an international bank transfer. Crypto is literally the only solution I can imagine if I want to donate a few bucks to a FOSS project, all other options would be too much effort and too expensive.