Hacker News Reader

Ability to send vale across the world, to anywhere, for relatively low fees, could count as providing value, don't you think? A lot of people do.

Bitcoin got labeled just a "store of value", but with Bitcoin Lightning it can be used for low fee payments too.

Pity about mining though, I wish they followed Ethereum into staking. It doesn't matter how much value you provide if you burn the planet along the way.

If it's working as intended then there's no point in holding on to the crypto itself as there should be a race to the bottom to keep fees low. By investing in crypto as a technology you're hoping that the technology becomes popular but remains expensive.

Being a store of value and a medium of exchange provides value by itself.

Yeah but that's the network, not the Bitcoin itself. Money as a system is valuable but that doesn't mean it's worth holding cash.

Blockchains can potentially produce value by receiving transaction fees and burning them. This is similar in some ways to a stock buyback.

Both Ethereum and Solana are currently coded to do this, though AFAIK neither of them are currently cash-positive due to their burned fees not being enough to offset issuance yet.