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Comment by vorhemus | Hacker News Reader

I see Bitcoin closer to the art market then to gold or a currency. There is de facto no universal rule for pricing a work of art other than what someone is willing to pay for it at auctions. As long as everyone assumes that artworks will be sold more expensive in the future and no one sells below the purchase price, the prices will rise - provided that the interest in it remains upright.

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An important difference between art and Bitcoin is that Bitcoin is owned by ordinary people with bills.

A market downturn or economic crisis can turn a lot of Bitcoin owners to liquidate, potentially annihilating its value. You just don't see that with people who have money to collect art.

Good reminder that the growth in Bitcoin has almost entirely happened since the last real bear market.

I wouldn't even go to art. But more of traditional collectible ala trading cards. Or maybe even coins. Were the value is the aftermarket.

so beanie babies

I’ve heard this metaphor lots and find it super confusing. The price of art is still based on something - some art looks nice, or was made by someone famous.

Hmm, I don't fully buy the metaphor (since BTC are fungible), but I do think it exhibits collector economics.

I'm in many ways an art fan, but art pricing is totally irrational:

1. Prints cost substantially less than paintings since they're less limited

2. Prints price based on lots of intangibles (how limited the series is, what series it was, what the artist's role was in it, etc)

3. Fundamentally, I don't think buyers get that much more pleasure from an original than from a print or authorized reproduction

4. Many buyers loan their purchases to a museum (which has tax advantages) or keep them in free ports or similar, where they can't visit them in person

The really high end market (i.e. million dollar+ art market) is really clearly speculative a lot of the time. Or the pleasure is "I like owning this", not "I like looking at this', which is itself hard to sever from the speculative value.

I'd like to rebuke #3: like most people, art buyers are vain. They feel pride in owning things of value, especially if that value is recognized by their peers.

FYI, BTC is not fungible. Otherwise companies like Coinbase wouldn't be able to ban people's accounts if they transfered in BTC with a tainted history.

That's more or less like saying dollars aren't fungible because you can check the serial number on a bill to see if it matches one that was reported stolen.

You're correct about being able to match serial numbers, but they are still nowhere near being in the same league.

A stranger across the world can't track your physical currency in real time. Whenever serial numbers are checked (if it ever is), the tracker just knows that bill was at that spot at that time, they don't know how many times it was exchanged or where it was since it was last tracked.

With BTC, anyone can track it in real time, anywhere. The same cannot be said about physical currency.

I suppose it's not a stretch to imagine banks have a machine that scans serial numbers (eg to catch DB Cooper's cash), but I've never heard of any evidence of such machines.

My point re: fungibility was rather that BTC's value does not come from the specific block assignment, whereas art's generally does (though I guess limited-series prints and similar might be a case where "any one of the series" has the same value).

I can get an exact copy of a piece of artwork, say the Mona Lisa, for like $20. It will look identical, maybe another $50 for a nice frame. What you are seeing is identical.

The art market is not buying and selling pieces of artwork. It is for obfuscating money. Where the money came from, where and who the money is going to, how much is owed to or hidden from governments.

Art is expensive because it makes it easier to obfuscate large amounts of money.

in the exact case of the mona lisa, anyone could tell the difference because the real thing has noticeable texture and yours would just be a poster.

maybe a better analogy would be a famous photograph like the rhein 2

You can buy replicas that reproduce the paint texture

https://www.designtoscano.com/products/mona-lisa-classic-art...

I mean you are right, but that texture is doing a lot of work, since the Mona Lisa is about $850 million, and my solution is $0.0001 million, and indistinguishable at 15 meters.

But either way, this doesn't distract from the main thrust of my point. Art is expensive for Money reasons, not art reasons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ3F3zWiEmc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5sOuET8UWA

yeah I agree, theres a lot of speculation in the art market.

What you are seeing may be identical, but you and everyone else knows it's not the one it appears to be. You are buying the label.

Why is the first production car worth more? A buyer won't know the difference between the 1st and the 5th past that tag. IMO the cost is driven mostly by rarity.

Of course what you pointed out is definitely a role in art, but I don't think it's the primary driving force

> some art looks nice

I guess you never came across modern art junk

NFTs?

Obviously not everyone assumes that Bitcoin will be more valuable in the future.

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