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Comment by fixprix | Hacker News Reader

Bitcoin is a store of value. Nothing more or less. DAOs and NFTs were just distractions trying to ride the wave. The fundamentals remain strong. It really hasn't changed much in 15 years. The Hacker News comments certainly haven't either. Salty as ever.

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By definition store of value means "its ability to purchase other assets in the future without rapidly losing its purchasing power" yet bitcoin has in instances halved it's value. So, no not a store of value.

Meaningless point. All stores of value fluctuate in value relative to each other. Homes and stocks go through periods of doubling and halving in value. Its the entire reason why diversification across asset classes is fundamental to managing your finances.

It’s true that, due to its volatility, Bitcoin is currently not a good store of value, at least in the short term. There’s an underlying truth, though, which is that Bitcoin is a potential store of value. In particular, it has all the necessary qualities of a monetary good, among them durability, divisibility, portability, verifiability, and above all scarcity.

Buying Bitcoin right now involves speculating that others will also see this potential, which is why it’s accurate to describe it for the moment as a speculative asset. The reason buying Bitcoin is a smart bet is that its monetary properties are so good that it has the potential to store a significant percentage of the world’s savings. Once that happens, its volatility will be much lower, so it will be a good store of value. And of course its purchasing power in current U.S. dollars will be much, much higher, which is why it’s a good idea to buy some now.

How exactly does BTC store any more value than an NFT?

Supply & demand?

It's the "chosen one".

Energy wasted to secure the chain

I can also waste energy by leaving my light on, I don't think that stores any value...

what does snark buy you

If audit your life I'm sure I'll find stuff I consider wasteful. The same if you audit mine.

Fungibility is one of the important properties of money. So a non-fungible token has less ability to accrue monetary value.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money#Properties

This is hysterical because four years ago everyone was clamoring on about how the non-fungability of NFTs was the secret sauce to why they’d accrue monetary value.

Taking arguments from the most delusional crypto bros at the time and trying to sell them as something that "everyone" was saying about NFTs in general isn't a way to engage in good faith discussion.

Some NFTs/art might appreciate in value, but most NFTs/"art" are worthless on the open market.

Bitcoin is a speculative asset like a stock.

The SEC doesn't consider BTC a security, so not "like a stock"

Not all speculative assets are neccesarily securities. Bitcoin's value fluctuates in a way that makes it's store of value absolutely resemble a stock, albeit with fewer legal protections and guarantees.

BTC is volatile but one can argue has more guarantees than stocks. There's no counterparty risk. No company that can go bankrupt or entity that can fail. BTC is property.

And companies have intrinsic value. They don't just pointlessly consume resources.

Nothing has intrinsic value. Subjective theory of value. Some find BTC valuable as a store of value hence it has value.

Does this apply to ‘things’ such as life, air, water?

Definitely. Value of life is estimated and changes all the time across cultures, in wars, life insurances, technological tradeoffs like cars that kill people but we accept the cost…

There’s no universal, intrinsic value to life. It’s us that give it value.

Thanks. I agree with you, although question the usefulness of going into what I perceive as a more metaphysical direction. In this sense it is trivial that nothing has intrinsic value. But putting on my more pragmatist hat, I would say that there is a sense in which basic survival is very much universal and unquestionable value. "I don't want to die", "I want to be happy", are pretty much safe assumptions to make across cultures and history (yeah, people commit suicide, hence it is not universal, but still a pretty safe bet and worth to consider 'universal' for all practical purposes).

Try to define happiness in a universal pragmatic way.

Even basic survival varies acc ross culture and contexts. People die in the millions all the time for their countries, ideas, religions, offspring…

Legally it's a speculative commodity like gold but that difference is not important to most people.

Bitcoin has maintained its fundamentals for 15 years. People place value on mature things. Lindy’s law. It’s fair to speculate Bitcoin will be around for a long time to come.

Bitcoin is actually just a bunch of numbers. Whatever value you think you're storing with it is always denominated in fiat which is very ironic.

You could say any currency is just a bunch of numbers, the US dollar isn’t backed by gold anymore and hasn’t been for a long time.

The question is more like: Would you let everyone dictate the value of a currency and leave it decentralized? Or would you rather a government controlled centralized currency.

It’s preference and opinion at the end of the day

The dollar is backed by the fact that you can pay any debt with it and (if you’re a US citizen) have to pay your taxes with it.

I'm not sure people care much about the debt repayment thing? If I rack up a bill at a bar, I can technically force them to accept a sack of pennies as repayment, but most people use digital payments like credit cards. At that point it doesn't really matter if my bank account holds USD, GBP, BTC or any other liquid asset, as long as the payment infrastructure can handle any necessary conversions.

There are no assets for digital currencies so the words you're using to describe it are ontologically nonsensical. It's numbers, binary sequences, in databases. The only thing that makes it all work is your belief and faith that the numbers mean something other than the electricity and infrastructure necessary to maintain the databases. The only real assets in the entire scheme are the computers and power plants with the spinning dynamos necessary for maintaining the illusion of "value".

This is why the masses are always dazed and confused. Your water and food are full of poisons but the numbers in databases are what get the most airtime. Bitcoin is the purest distillation of fiat currencies because there is no longer any actual physical manifestation of it anywhere other than whatever paper key you keep on you as a reminder that there is a database with some numbers which you and those like you collectively believe to be "valuable".

The fact that it is not physical makes Bitcoin more valuable. Why? Because I can store millions of it in my pocket. I can move millions around the world in less than an hour. 24/7. No banks or approvals or intermediaries required. I can keep it in my own custody safety. It is easy and fast to exchange. It is easy to validate its authenticity. The supply is fixed and near impossible to dilute. Etc.. Etc..

that is why Bitcoin is valuable. It’s valuable because it stores value with all the important properties I listed above. Those properties are intrinsic to Bitcoin. Say that for any other asset.

If you’re worried about civilization crashing and Bitcoin becoming worthless. Fair enough, you should diversify into guns and toilet paper.

Well, with toilet paper I can wipe my ass. Even a dollar bill will do the trick but I'm not sure what I can do with a number in a database disconnected from the spinning magnets that make it functional.

I'm not here to convince you that bitcoin is worthless because clearly there are enough people who think it is worth more than $100k so you'd be better off convincing those people to offer you services in exchange for bitcoins instead of arguing with a random stranger about the collapse of civilization.

> Well, with toilet paper I can wipe my ass. Even a dollar bill will do the trick

Wait, are you saying dollars are good because you can wipe with them? I think you're in full agreement with the person you're replying to!

My point is that Bitcoin is no different from fiat. In fact, it can't be anything but fiat because it has no physical representation.

Fiat can be minted easily. Bitcoin cannot any faster than the rate that it is mined. Massive difference. And the key reason why the dollar continually depreciates.

Fiat means faith and that's all you have with bitcoin, faith in the algorithms that make the ledger very hard to mutate without spending the required "effort" to "mint" the entries on the ledger. You can believe whatever you want but as I said previously you're better off convincing people to sell you services for your bitcoins instead of arguing with random strangers on the internet about cryptographic hashing functions.

Great for the government, terrible for anyone holding dollars. The government continues diluting the dollar to pay its debt.

All of our assets are denominated with depreciating dollars. It’s nice because our assets always look like they’re going up. Of course a big part of that is just the dollar going down.

Money is a meme, there is no value it can measure other than whatever delusion people collectively agree to call "value".

The US Dollar is quite the meme! If you’re a US citizen and you have an income in any currency whatever, you have to acquire US Dollars to pay taxes with, or else you’ll eventually wind up in jail :)

Money based on violence.

Yes, and…?

In a stateless society, how would the landed deal with squatters? Couples therapy?

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