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Comment by glerk | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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?

>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.

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