Dinofelis. You seem to be a fairly smart guy; however, you are just coming off as a bit wrong-headed in your attempts to characterize markets, etc, including the value of bitcoin in comparison to other cryptos.
To me, it seems that your oversimplification is likely going to get you into trouble regarding recognizing the value of bitcoin and various methods of investing that go beyond gambling, pyramid schemes and ponzi schemes.
This concept of investing in bitcoin is a zero sum game comes off as ridiculous, and it sounds like some of the same incomplete nonsense arguments that are made regarding social security being a ponzi scheme... ridiculous.
It seems as if I'm hitting some kind of religious sensibility here
Nah, don't try to denigrate criticisms of your position by asserting that they seem religious, because then you are going to become even more ridiculous.
Each person is going to come to any matter with knowns and unknowns and leaps of faith in terms of logic to support such conclusions and observations.
There is little value to assert that opinions that vary from yours are religious merely because you either do not agree with the facts or the logic or the extent of weight that is given to either facts or logic.
Social security is not a ponzi scheme, because you're not "investing" in social security to get out more when you hand it over to a greater fool.
Great. At least you agree with that part, and part of my point was that your arguments directed at the alleged ponzi scheme nature of bitcoin were starting to seem like those same arguments from folks who fallaciously argue that social security is a ponzi scheme.
The reason why I say that "investing" in bitcoin (and any other crypto) is a zero-sum game, is simply because it OBVIOUSLY is, and that should be obvious if you look at the value flows: there is no value creation ! There is no production of any good or service.
Of course there is value creation.. how many times do I have to repeat and point out the various values.
For example, has there ever been a secure decentralized immutable ledger/storage of value. Go ahead, name one?
In its current state and its current history, Bitcoin is absolutely paradigm shifting, even if it could take 20 years for the price to follow? or there is a possibility that it could end up getting destroyed in some kind of way.
That is not something negative: hell, it was DESIGNED to be a zero sum game, because that is what a monetary system ideally is !
Maybe you are mixing up terms? zero sum game is different from scarcity or limited supply or whatever you are attempting to mean by your description of bitcoin as a zero sum game (which implies lack of value apart from the coin itself).
A monetary asset is something, that ideally, is just a transport/store of value, not a generator of value. If it is a store, then at best, it is zero-sum. In reality, it will be lossy (in fact, bitcoin IS lossy: all the mining and all the fees on exchanges are losses to the bitcoin value storage).
bitcoin is a kind of asset that is different from any that have come before it, and sure it is intended to have monetary attributes.
http://www.economicsdiscussion.net/money/top-8-qualities-of-an-ideal-money-material/609"
An ideal money material should possess the following qualities:General Acceptability:
Portability:
Indestructibility or Durability:
Homogeneity:
Divisibility:
Malleability:
Cognizability:"
Bitcoin's white paper frames these attributes a bit differently, but similar ideas as the ideas in the above linked post.
So, you can use bitcoin to store value for a while, between two transactions: one where you deliver value (as goods and services), and obtain the store, and one where you hand over the store, and obtain value (as goods and services). Yes, you can also deliver other stores of value and obtain again other stores of value if you find that practical.
Yes, those are decent descriptions of a couple of the use cases of bitcoin to transmit value and to store value.
Bitcoin is lossy, but not so much: the mining fee, the inflation, and the exchange fees eat something, but this is competitive with other stores of value like fiat or so.
I don't completely understand what you mean by "lossy?" There are expenses in using any system that stores and transmits value, and so these cost benefits are going to be relative to one another. Some systems will be more efficient than other systems, and some systems will hold their value better than other systems. In the end, it could take years and years (and maybe even decades) to suss out the relative value of each, but also in the end, each of us needs to consider the value for ourself and the value of such systems in order to determine for ourselves the extent to which we may choose to invest or gamble in one system versus another.
But, as we said, there's no value creation in a monetary system, apart from its very existence, which has the created value of all those things that you can do with it that you couldn't do without it. In other words, yes, bitcoin and other crypto HAS a created value as such by its usage, like a truck has value because it can transport stuff, if that transport *improves* production quality of goods and services, but not if you are just riding around with an empty truck.
As such, a monetary system derives its utility from its usage, and hence, its value from its usage (I'm talking about the system an sich, not about the value stored in the system). This justifies the fact that the system is somewhat lossy, and "burns value".
Sure, but don't delve into oversimplification by attempting to describe things that you do not know, there is a variety of values that are subjective and objective... and those values also are going to change over time and depending on circumstances. An apple is going to have a whole hell of a lot more value for someone who is starving than a bitcoin, but if the person is not starving then a bitcoin would likely have higher value, because currently, he could sell such a bitcoin for nearly $600.
The value of a monetary asset system, however, should not be confused with its market cap. They have not much in common. In fact, the value of the system itself is difficult to estimate. A good analogy is the value of a truck as an capital good, as compared to the value of the contents it transports. The value of the truck as a capital good is the amount of value that using the truck allows to create: the fact that you can transport things with the truck, instead of with a train, allows for a more efficient creation of goods and services. THAT is the value of the truck: the competitive edge it brings you. But that has nothing to do with the value of the stuff it transports. Whether it transports detritus (negative value) or very expensive furniture (high value) has nothing to do with the competitive edge the use of the truck brings you.
The "market cap" is what a monetary system *transports* in a certain way. That is not an estimate of the value of the system itself (the competitive edge it brings you over other solutions to the same problem of storage of value like fiat, gold, ...). If bitcoin *transports* 10 billion, it doesn't mean that it is *worth* 10 billion, not more than if a truck transports 5 tons of gold, the truck itself would be worth 5 tons of gold.
You and I have different opinions regarding the value of market cap as an indicator of value when it comes to bitcoin. Sure, bitcoin's actual market cap is very important because it can show relative value compared to other financial systems, assets or possible investments, and it can also help to demonstrate liquidity and ability to manipulate prices, and it can also help to analyze the extent to which there is overvalue or undervalue in terms of the price per unit.
So you can store value in a monetary system for the short term (between earning it, say, as a salary, and spending it, say, to buy food), or you can store value in a monetary system for the long term (between "putting something aside my whole life" and "profiting from it when I'm old" or "leaving something for the kids"). But the hypothesis is always that the value "in" is of the order of the "value out".
no disagreement, here.
Most monetary systems, apart from gold, come into existence, and then die off. There's no reason to assume that this will not happen with any crypto too.
who cares? I am not going to live 1,000 years, so I could give a ratt's ass what is going to live for 1,000 years, and sometimes 50 years could be too long to plan depending on how long someone expects to live or even the person believes that 50 years may matter in terms of the present value.
Currently more relevant timelines would likely be less than 50 years, because the further we attempt to project out probabilities the more difficult it becomes and the more irrelevant it becomes to what should be our own personal calculations.
In the beginning, when the system "takes value" (loads the truck) there is some seigniorage taken by "early adopters", which is compensated by the losses suffered by the "late users" (when the truck is discharged) - exactly because it is a zero-sum game. However, if that monetary system exists for a very long time, these two "side effects" are negligible ; early adopters will have obtained gains at the expense of the future generation that will suffer the losses when the system dies, but that is, if the monetary system is really used, a small effect compared to its USAGE as an intermediate store of value during the whole period when it was in steady state.
again, so what? There is going to be some higher levels of profit from early adopters in any system that appreciates in value and early adopters recognize the value of holding the asset.
We also know that rich people have more abilities to get rich and stay rich as compared with poor folks. Also, people who are informed about matters have more abilities to profit from the information that they know as compared with uninformed folks. There are a lot of injustices in the world, and bitcoin likely has the potential to address a lot of those injustices in substantial and material ways, even though it may not cure all injustices and some folks are likely to disproportionately benefit from being an early adopter... so fucking what? Those are current dynamics in the world, but it does not necessarily make bitcoin a bad thing or a ponzi scheme or a scam or a zero sum game as you continue to assert.
I mean by that, that the period where the value of the monetary system is stable, and hence "value in" equals "value out" grossly as a store of value, will last hopefully much longer than the "rise" and the "fall" periods ; it is during this period that the monetary system really works as a store of value.
There's no value to be made during that period, and that's the aim: it is a store, nothing more. You can hence not "invest" in it.
I agree that there are going to be lifecycle aspects to any asset or money that may cause it to be more or less valuable to other assets and money, and each of us has to determine the extent to which we are going to invest in one system or another, and sometimes we may not have access or information to help us with our diversification decisions, and we do the best that we can to invest and/or diversify based on information and access that we have available to each of ourselves.
You can gamble on the rise, and if you do so, you are just profiting from those that will lose out on the fall. And yes, it can work. But that is a temporary phenomenon (during the rising phase), and, at the expense of others (during the falling phase). This is not a durable "investment" at all.
This is seeming repetitive... about whether we are gambling or investing and what factors and access do we have and find relevant.
So essentially, the phases in a monetary system's existence are:
1) a phase of "greater fools" when you can find greater fools, and you make benefit
2) a (hopefully long) phase of "same fools": value in is about value out, and the thing is a store of value
3) hyperinflation and the end of it, value lost.
Sounds like you are just making up some factors and attempting to apply them to all assets/money... which is not very convincing at all.
The benefits made in 1) are financed by the losses suffered in 3). This is why this thing is zero-sum.
As it should be.
sounding like goofy logic and theory to me.
Again, compare this to the typical life of a company. A company issues stock, and with that money, it makes production capital and creates goods and/or services. At the end of its life, it goes broke, and the stock becomes toilet paper.
However, in as much as at every moment in time, the stock is correctly evaluated (in practice impossible but let us assume that...) the stock price always reflects the diminished cash flow of all future dividends minus a risk aversion fee. The initial stock holder is hence just rewarded for the value he permitted to create (that didn't exist before). It doesn't come out of the pocket of a looser. The successive stock holders will get something, in as much as the initial stock holder compensated for his risk and didn't take everything. When the stock is dead, in principle, nobody lost any money if all estimates were right, because they have been compensated with dividends which are a NET INFLUX of value because there is VALUE CREATION. This is "investing": allowing for value creation, and taking the reward for that.
The FUNDAMENTAL difference between stock and a monetary asset is that stock returns dividend, and its value estimation is based upon the estimation of the dividend ; while a monetary asset is based upon an infinitely recursive belief system (which is necessarily wrong because no monetary system lasts forever). Stock value estimation can integrate the finiteness in time of its existence ; a monetary asset derives its value from the denial of that finiteness in time. A monetary asset only has value in as much as one believes in its eternity (which is obviously going to be false).
That said, in as much as a monetary system is used as a store of value on storage times *much shorter* than the life time of the system itself (say that bitcoin will "live" for 40 years, then a few years of storage is "short"), it is useful and the service provided by that storage can overcome the potential losses when the system comes to an end. But for that, the system has to be used as a store of value for real. So, saying: I have access to a certain value right now because I sell some land, which I want to store and use 10 years from now, when my kids go to college, is a right way to use a monetary asset, if you believe that the monetary system will not collapse within 10 years (if it does, you have been financing the gains of early adopters with the value of your land).
Sure this happens, but again oversimplification when attempting to describe these kinds of lifecycles for all assets and to suggest that you have any kind of clue regarding what stage any asset is in, including bitcoin.
And now we come to the bad effects of *dominant* speculation. Speculation an sich is good: it is the "oil" that fluidizes the market, that brings extra information to price. Ideally, speculation should be almost impossible if the market is efficient, but speculation is necessary to make the market efficient.
As long as speculation has only a marginal effect on the overall price of an asset (essentially, is only of the size of the volatility), speculation plays its role as lubricant.
The problem however, with a price of an asset made ESSENTIALLY out of speculation, is that this price is totally unstable. A monetary asset normally has a price given by Fisher's formula: the price is set by the DEMAND for the asset to use it as store of value (the amount of value, and the average storage time ; the inverse of the average speed of circulation). The usage of that store of value is normally determined by its competitive edge over other stores of value, and hence you can compare that price to the price of any other market-determined good or service: its price is set by its usage and the competitive edge it brings. This price is quite robust as long as the usage pattern is robust ; as long as there are good reasons to use this store of value over another. However, this is not the case with a speculation-dominated price. That price is entirely dependent on belief, which can change from one day to another.
And the problem with most crypto market caps is that they *essentially* consist of speculation, and only marginally of the price set by the demand for its use (given by Fisher's formula). This makes that these assets are totally unreliable, *especially* as store of value. So this domination of speculation kills the usage of it.
Yes, you seem to be repeating points that you already made that you believe that there is too much value in bitcoin that is associated with speculation,and you attribute little to no value to speculation. Fine. We differ in our assessment and how much weight we give to the usefulness of speculation and how much speculation that we believe is actually taking place in bitcoin as compared with other cryptos.
But my conclusion remains that one cannot "invest" in a monetary asset. One can USE a monetary asset to transport value from today to later. Early adopters will gain, at the expense of late users, but this phenomenon is not an "investment". An "investment" is an action where you use value today not to consume directly, but to do things that create new value in the future. That is not possible in a system that only TRANSPORTS value. If you get more out, that means that someone has lost it on the other end. Which is not the case with an investment.
O.k.. whatever, you are not really justifying any further your repeated conclusion with this additional analysis. Let's just agree to disagree to the extent to which bitcoin can serve as an investment in comparison to pure speculation, gambling or ponzi scheme.