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Comment by addicted | Hacker News Reader

So Bitcoin is a shit currency because it constantly loses 75% of value?

I don’t understand Bitcoin proponents. They’re the biggest cheerleaders of the idea that Bitcoin is the worst possible Currency one could ever have.

Alternatively, if it’s constantly losing 75% of value, it’s also the worst possible store of value it can have.

So it’s neither a good digital dollar nor a good digital gold. According to Bitcoin proponents. So what is it actually good for? According to your own defensive statements?

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> So what is it actually good for?

Among other useful properties, digital currency allows individuals to move their money across borders without anyone asking them where it came from, where it is going and taking a cut. Seems like a very useful thing to have in today's world, no? Seems like something that will become increasingly useful in the near future regardless of your particular jurisdiction...

Is it worth $60k USD or even $20k USD? I don't know. There has been a lot of speculation and hype in this space and with the relatively low liquidity it is not that surprising to see crazy spikes. But there is a fundamental value greater than 0 for Bitcoin, and you cannot dismiss that in good faith.

>Among other useful properties, digital currency allows individuals to move their money across borders without anyone asking them where it came from, where it is going and taking a cut.

A.K.A. Money laundering. Got it.

Or sometimes, your government just decides your money doesn't actually belong to you [1]. But sure, we can call it "money laundering", if it makes that boot taste better.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/russia-ukraine-latest-news-...

>we can call it "money laundering"

Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck...

With a permanent publicly readable record as well!

Government seizing your money because they don’t like the political purpose you used it for is stealing and authoritarianism.

Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck…

That is not money laundering.

Sure sounds like it qualifies in the US.

https://www.irs.gov/irm/part9/irm_09-005-005#idm139929132514...

""" transfers [...] a monetary instrument or funds from a place in the United States to or through a place outside the United States [...] to avoid a Federal or state transaction reporting requirement. """

I guess if you lived in Russia, Iran, Lebanon, Venezuela or Argentina you'd be licking gov boots all day right?

Unfortunately in order for it to be accessible for a person to actually use it, the exchange takes a cut anyway, unless they're running the exchange solely from the goodness of their heart. Which as a business, it isn't. So instead of paying the established middle man who supports eg Western Union, the cut goes to the Bitcoin exchange middleman instead.

Eg, the easiest way for a US person to buy Bitcoin is through Coinbase who will gladly charge you a fee, which is entirely justifiable because they're facilitating the transaction. Without them there's no transaction. So Coinbase takes their cut, same as everybody else in the system.

It’s worth what someone will pay for it, which at the moment seems to be in the 20k range.

Tomorrow? Who knows.

This is not even true. Not at all.

Because bitcoins don't exist as physical objects. They are fully virtual. So you need to make money virtual in order to buy them. So you need to connect to the banking system eventually. You can add middlemen, sure, but it's unavoidable.

And then you arrive to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31462909

So you cant trade labor or anything physical for bitcoin?

That's just the middlemen. Where does the bitcoin come from?

Given a long enough time horizon, bitcoin is a great store of value. The returns are unbeaten in 5 year, 10 year and 13 year (that's how young bitcoin is) time horizons.

As for what it is good for - what else is a permission-less medium of exchange? Regardless of price, the fundamentals of bitcoin stands true.

Being young and having no track record does not inspire confidence.

He said on a board that's mostly about young people without track records coming up with new businesses and tech :)

Touché

Bitcoin is good for immutiabity and irrocovibility. is this worth trillion? likely not but it's something. . this is why scammers like it so much even if it can be traced, because you cannot reverse it or seize it easily (if you don't make mistakes like exposing your seed/key).

It's useful to dodge regulations.

Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on the regulations and who passes them. Americans and Europeans are likely to have a very different perspective on this from, say, Russians.

I believe that it is good at advancing asic technology? not really sure of much else.

One could argue that fiat is fluctuating by 75% constantly :)

I agree, it needs to work as a currency. This is why Bitcoin Cash is the real Bitcoin. BTC was co-opted at the repo level and the block size was stifled. This is how Bitcoin should work: https://www.reddit.com/user/chaintip/

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