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Comment by rland | Hacker News Reader

We need something to invest in. Cryptocurrency is something, therefore we should invest in it.

The point is bitcoin supply is limited. Fiat is not.

If there is anything to learn from LUNA/UST, it's that the quantity of tokens in circulation has basically no bearing on the the _supply_ of tokens offered for sale at any given price.

By that logic, the supply of 1996 Toyota Corollas is also limited, in fact even more limited than Bitcoin's. Should we therefore invest in 1996 Toyota Corollas?

Shit, the supply of Action Comics #1 was also limited. I argue that it would had been wise to invest in those ones.

It's almost as if scarcity alone is not sufficient for something to go up in value.

Are you trying to make bad analogies?

It's a good analogy. Price is a function of supply and demand. I don't understand why bitcoiners struggle so much with price theory.

> good analogy

Sure, comparing and old physical asset that deprecate over time with a pure digital asset built on a blockchain makes a lot of sense. Currencies are way easier to trade than physical goods.

Everything is a question of supply and demand, it does not mean it's valid to compare every goods to another on the market.

Well, if you have a theory of prices that only applies to one good and fails when applied to any other good, it means your theory is rubbish. This is why we must check whether the proposed theory works when applied to goods other than bitcoin. It's not a comparison. Although, there's nothing wrong with comparing different goods either.

Or the good being compared to isn’t an equivalent.

The Bitcoin you hold is exactly the same as the Bitcoin the GP holds.

The 1996 Toyota you hold is very different to the 1996 Toyota I hold. The goods are not interchangeable. They are not commodities.

Eh, once you stop caring about a functional 1996 Toyota Corolla the difference becomes extremely small. You can basically reduce the automobile to its VIN - that's how it's referred to legally. Whoever owns the number owns the "car".

Only 2.1 million 1996 Toyota Corolla VINs were ever minted; there will never be another. If 10% of the world assets were held as Toyota Corolla VINs, that would give us a value target for a VIN of about 14 million dollars per VIN; I think with those assumptions it's quite reasonable to value a Toyota Corolla at 1 million USD, regardless of condition.

So how do I transfer VINs between owners, that’s somehow different to any other (artificially) scarce asset? Whats the risk of counterfeiting with VINs? What if I don’t want a whole VIN but a fraction of one?

Bitcoin having any value is absolutely a shared delusion. But it at least has other properties that differentiate it from other shared delusions.

Bitcoin is limited until a sufficient number of stakeholders decide that the number should increase. While it may be true that this will never happen, it isn't bounded by physics or math.

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