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Comment by throwaway248329 | Hacker News Reader

There is over $10 billion settled on Bitcoin network per day.

How much of that is exchanging value though? E.g. paying for goods or for work, or giving a loan. Even 1%

We can't know, but that percent is likely growing. Year ago it was unthinkable that Bitcoin will be declared a legal tender in any country.

Bitcoin being legal tender in certain places seems like more of a negative indicator on those countries, rather than a positive indicator for bitcoin.

That's your opinion based on your disapproval of Bitcoin.

Care to share why you are negative on Bitcoin?

I believe most people confuse Bitcoin as an alternate means of payment instead of what it really is which is an honest sound digital money system, with a transparent monetary policy from now to infinity AND a censorship-resistant payment network built on the most secure distributed computer network ever created by humans.

Bitcoin is not competing with Visa or Mastercard. It is competing with all fiat currencies, as well as any other security or property that is used as a store of value (stocks, bonds, real estate, etc).

I am mostly indifferent to bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general, but strongly opposed to people shilling for them. I see no evidence thus far for bitcoin being anything other than a vehicle for speculation; just one more form of gambling with the froth on top of our financial system, distracting people and diverting resources from actual useful activity.

Curious, if we replace the word 'shilling' with advocating, and replace the word 'bitcoin' with another arbitrary technology, say Linux or Typescript, would you still be strongly opposed?

Tl;dr: are you strongly opposed to technology advocacy in general or are you simply anti-bitcoin?

I am mildly opposed to technology advocacy actually, but that is besides the point. Dev advocates are paid to market software and tools, and everyone knows their inherent bias and can factor it in when assessing their claims. When someone is pro-bitcoin, it is impossible to know whether they have a genuine interest in the technology (divorced from use-cases), a desire to see a new financial system come into being (regardless of the technical mechanism), some mixture of both, or if they have the literal definition of a vested interest like the dev advocate and just want to see their coin values increase for monetary gain. Most importantly, that final group get away with lying and other questionable behaviour because unlike with the paid advocate, there is no-one (ie an employer) to hold them accountable for their bullshitting.

100% of it is exchanging value. Less than 100% is for payments for goods or services.

I think it is arbitrary and capricious to declare that the store of value use case and/or increasing the value of your investment use case are not valid?

Do you believe that when one exchanges cash for shares in Tesla or Google they are not exchanging value?

Let's be honest, most of us work for a living to earn money to provide for a lifestyle for ourselves and our families.

Bitcoin solves the unique problem that all other fiat-based monetary systems allow those at the top to manipulate the money supply and print money out of thin air thereby diluting (inflating away) the value of all existing holders of the currency. This is Bitcoin's value proposition - sound money, honest money with a transparent monetary policy from now to infinity.

The temptation to print money instead of raising taxes is too great as we are seeing in the US with a multi-trillion dollar Build Back Better plan that politicians claim will not cost taxpayers anything.

Can you explain that math without disclosing that the money is costing taxpayers by way of monetary inflation?

There is over $34 billion settled on the Visa payment network every day (averaged over 12 months), and nearly 100% of this is merchant transactions for actual things and services.

So Bitcoin manages to compete with Visa in terms of amount of value settled while being decentralized, permissionless and uncensorable. That's pretty cool.

Also I just checked the median transaction amount on Bitcoin and it's something about $200. So it's reasonable to assume that at least half of all transactions are actual purchases of things and services.

I had to comment because you’ve pulled off possibly the biggest non sequitur I’ve seen on this site. Congrats.

You need a false implication for a non sequitur. I didn't imply anything.

You said that a $200 average transaction implies at least half of transactions are for goods or services. That doesnt follow, at all.

And this coming from Dr Nonsense himself! What an honor.

(I agree though, that was impressive mental gymnastics.)

> Also I just checked the median transaction amount on Bitcoin and it's something about $200. So it's reasonable to assume that at least half of all transactions are actual purchases of things and services.

No it isn’t.

Any other reason why you would move $200 worth of BTC? I've only ever done such transactions when I was making purchases with it.

Wash trading.

Wash trading happens on exchanges, not on-chain.

Lots of people invest by buying small amounts regularly.

Isn't that comparing apples and oranges? Doesn't your bitcoin figure include trading?

No, it only includes on-chain transactions. Average daily Bitcoin trading volume over past 3 months on exchanges was $36 bln, according to Yahoo Finance.

https://finance.yahoo.com/u/yahoo-finance/watchlists/crypto-...

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