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Comment by chaosbolt | Hacker News Reader

Well an apple has value because it's food, but if today people are willing to pay 1 banana for it and tomorrow they're willing to pay 2 bananas for it, the apple still has the same value it did yesterday because the calories in it haven't changed, but you can actually obtain twice the calories you could've obtained yesterday by taking the banana (2 bananas today), so its value today has doubled.

Bitcoin is a 0 calorie apple, today you can exchange it for 1 banana, people who hold it think tomorrow they'll be able to get 2 bananas for it.

At the end of the day we are biological entities, value is what survival and reproduction benefits we think something can provide, and if enough people are paying that price then its value is that price in dollars.

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This is well said, I’m gonna borrow that - “crypto is like a 0 calorie apple.”

This matters. Even gold, at least I can wear it and display my wealth. You can’t even display your crypto wealth like that. It is entirely lacking in any “real” value.

Idea: luxury tshirt made out of a $5 white tee with a wallet QR code slapped on the front showing off the balance of the shirt. Or a ring. Crypto fine jewelry.

>Even gold, at least I can wear it and display my wealth. You can’t even display your crypto wealth like that

I'd feel much safer displaying large sums of wealth online by posting a wallet than by wearing luxury goods in public.

Totally agree. For example, I have 10,000 SOL (Solana tokens) that I regularly screenshot and show off. It's all on devnet, though, so it's free and worthless.

It's the web3 version - in web 2 I'd be instagramming my knockoff Rolex I bought in Tijuana

Bad example.

Would you show off real SOL tokens of that qty?

Oh totally agree - someone can just pull a necklace right off you. I was just surfacing the point that at least gold does has some value on its own as a status symbol - there is a market for jewelry outside of gold as a transfer protocol. An bitcoin wallet without ability to transfer it is just some used up memory, it doesn’t have any value on its own. See coins going to 0 when exchanges close their doors. All the banks in the world could close and people would still find shiny rocks attractive and admirable. We have for thousands of years.

> someone can just pull a necklace right off you

I wonder if there's an argument to be made that nothing is of any real value unless there's also some risk of losing it.

e.g. you drop your apple in a gutter, or someone takes it from you, or it turns out to have a nice fat worm inside it

I like that. Risk of losing it, and difficulty of recovery of the same or an equal asset.

Life, for example, is extremely valuable. Everyone loses it, but there’s no getting it back. If you lose the apple, you can probably get another relatively easily, unless we’re talking a post-apocalypse situation…

As long as people are willing to take cryptocurrency, people will be willing to steal, or work for, cryptocurrency.

nothing is of any real value unless there's also some risk of losing it.

If you're looking for a commodity to have trade or exchange value, then it must be tradeable or exchangeable. That's the notion of "inalienable" as used in the US Declaration of Independence: rights which cannot be alienated (separated) from the individual posessing them. Life, liberty, happiness being the three used in that document.

This doesn't mean undeniable, and there might be some value which can be extracted through threats of denial: "your money or your life".

And there are aspects of value which can be exchanged though the good itself doesn't move: title, copyright, and patent rights might be three such of these. If I transer you land title, the land itself doesn't move, but the claim to usefruct from it does.

A hypothetically nontransferable, non-appropriable technical asset is still subject to claims if a superior right or denial of access to that asset may still be claimed.

And in general, a currency which is used to facilitate trade should in general be portable, readily recognisable, divisible, durable, and homogeneous, all attributes William Stanley Jevons proposed in 1875:

https://archive.org/details/moneyexchange00jevorich/page/30/...

(He also claimed money required intrinsic value, which appears to be an error. Rather, intrinsic value exchanges for trust within the financial system.)

That said, an interesting suggestion.

Real value doesn't matter. "Marginal" value is what matters. Breathable air and drinkable water have the greatest real value of anything, but their marginal values are zero and near zero respectively for a number of reasons (chiefly scarcity).

Marginal value itself is unstable compared to real value. Sure, the amount of air you require may change, albeit insignificantly. Marginal value can go +/- total value at any moment due to external factors.

> Breathable air and drinkable water have the greatest real value of anything, but their marginal values are zero and near zero respectively for a number of reasons

Case in point. Sure, abundant now. But when they are not, which we know is actually happening, that “0 marginal value” will quickly become “whatever we can afford so we can survive”.

The counter to this point is that if (through monetary mismanagement) the amount of dollars exponentially rises, the value of those dollers drop. Fiat isn't backed by a hard asset; it can be arbitrarily increased/decreased in value through organisations and unelected officials.

The original QE decision by the fed was taken during a meeting that has meeting notes that can be downloaded. I highly advise you to do so if you are under the illusion that the decision was made by highly competent experts basing their decisions on hard data and well-made, objective models.

This is not deep. This is you getting confused about how money works. Nothing you are realizing applies specially to specific money like gold or Bitcoin - it applies to all money and frankly it makes little sense.

Would you mind elaborating please? I am not following your point.

I understand cash has this same issue. Assets do not - they provide an actual value to the physical world - which is what my point was in the above statement. A crypto t shirt can still provide value as a t shirt, regardless of the value of the coins it holds. I’ll admit it’s a reach, but just to illustrate the point.

Bitcoin is the same value-add as cash because you can basically redeem it anywhere now, with few speedbumps if any due diligence is done.

This doesn’t really address the point. As I said above, yes cash and crypto have this same flaw, they are useless without the ability to trade it. What is a dollar good for? Wrapping a stick of gum? That was the point. True utility value.

Money is important, it provides liquidity for trading. It is based on trust, so it makes sense that it can feel arbitrary, but you simply have to compare a world where you must barter assets directly between those who actually want that specific asset to realize how much of an improvement money is; meaning its not so arbitrary.

What gives money its value? Well it depends on the money. Fraud, violence, trust, in the case of Bitcoin: cryptography and game theory.

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