Topic: I know Gold and Silver are money. Is Bitcoin money? - page 2. (Read 2381 times)

bitcoin is money

yeah it lacks 1 and 8. but 1 will come in due time and 8 well thats just not possible with bitcoin ya know since its a crypto currency.

but to me money is something that has value and will hold that value .

this is bitcoin

Fuck these "qualities".

Gold and silver supply is centralised, the market totally controlled and transactions highly taxed by states.

A money that is not a cryptocurrency is worthless to me.

If you mean 'money' as a payment instrument, then, yes, it is.

No other coin can be Bitcoin, though, in the same way that tungsten isn't gold. Bitcoin has its own data, its own protections, and its own rules. You can't create an infinite supply of bitcoins (that is, you can't print yourself to a higher %total ownership), and I don't think you can lump all cryptocurrencies together for the same reason we don't lump all metal together. They all have unique properties and uses.

The currency so far no one can do to guarantee its value, is a kind of no practical credit support of virtual currency, the real value is that we all believe it, it is worth, you would not believe it, it is not to be worth a hair.
Of course, the selling point is the hype "no inflation, but inflation", not the absolute a limited number of currency is not, because the original price can not be any guarantee any price changes in people's confidence, this is tantamount to saying inflation changes can occur with any currency as it is difficult to control.
Gold without monetary function at least retain ornaments and metal functional value, then it can be used in any currency exists in society through the value exchange and to become a real money.
However, any pure forms of credit are defined virtual currency amount, whether it is a national currency, electronic money or the so-called, must have certain amounts of real wealth can start to get the real value into the form of the credit guarantee and credit assignment, can have the value true. Any lack this injection value process and obtains the guarantee of the so-called credit money, credit money is 0.
As long as the currency is not any social entity with economic credit (such as a government) for the injection of the actual value and make a formal guarantee, will just be a legal credit only equal to 0 of the nominal currency. Any country may take the form of electronic money to improve the currency put false function and other management functions, but this kind of electronic money purely itself can't from a credit currency itself attributes and forms, such as the dollar or yuan can take the form of this kind of electronic currency issue management, but this is not equal to said the dollar and the renminbi itself from an actual credit guarantee forms and assignment procedure becomes the real value of money.
A certain amount of any currency, can be diluted decentralization in more number of other "non equivalent wealth assignment nominal money" and suffer devaluation, for example, said the central bank from issuing currency to the market to use; and in another logic, any fixed number of credit currency dominance value wealth assignment, also can in the reality of the change and change, when it abandoned its itself was the original credit support, the actual value of the wealth of the credit right is terminated, for example, an economic expenditure on the bankrupt country, even if the quantity of money is fixed, it will fall the bottom, because of the currency itself has lost the original normal amounts of wealth dominating right. When a currency is not a formal political entity assignment in legal form and process, its value can only be equal to is empty.

We've already got enough properties to ensure that nothing satisfies the definition.


Stating that a clonecoin can serve the same function as Bitcoin is like claiming that "telti" can serve the same function as the word "water".

You forgot the most important property - scarcity. Gazillions of crypto 'currencies' can be created at basically no cost, having identical properties and serving the same function as bitcoin. Infinite digits on a computer screen, yeah sounds a little like the USD.
Gold on the other hand is limited in supply and unique in color, shine and other physical properties.

If you can divide the unit "1" infinitely, I can assure you that "1" is very liquid.

Bitcoin is not useful as money.   Neither is gold or silver

Money needs to be elastic in order to be useful in modern economies.   As economic activity expands,  the money supply needs to expand to meet demand.   Liquidity is one important aspect of money.

Read about Modern Money Theory L. Randall Wray if you want to know more.   Money should be approached as stock and flow rather than commodity

Gold and Silver are not money at least not anymore.   They fail #1 on your list.

What % of merchants accept gold and silver as payment for goods and services.  Please compile a list.  Would that % constitute "general acceptance" to you.  The number and scope of merchants which accepts Bitcoin is incredibly small but is far larger than gold and silver.

Is Bitcoin "money"?  I don't know I guess it depends on who's definition you use (there is no universal standard) but I think based on the properties you laid out in the OP that Bitcoin is closer to the definition of money than gold and silver are TODAY.  Now 500 years ago yeah Gold and Silver were money.  Maybe in 500 years they will be money again but they aren't today.

Of the eight properties you described Bitcoin is only inferior to gold or silver on one of them (#7) and for a currency that is less than six years old that isn't too bad.  If Bitcoin continues to gain traction and the markets get deeper and more liquid I would expect that #7 will improve as well.

That list is not the list of fundamentals, as many people assume.

The root premise for money is: a minimum of 2 parties agree that one object (abstract or physical) can be used as a medium of exchange (maybe you might think that cryptocurrency is the first abstract currency, but it is preceded by knots in ropes, gravings on a wall, or marks in clay)


So that can go from two people who are butterfly collectors agreeing on using their shared interest (butterflys) as an exchange item, all the way up to something like gold or bitcoin. And it's all subjective, I don't care what anyone says. Whatever "objective" property one medium has that another doesn't isn't necessarily eternal. Gold could be synthesized using fusion, or made less chemically stable with a different isotope, or made less physically verifiable with tungsten, or displaced from monetary use due to it's physical properties being more highly valued for some specific industrial or commercial use. Bitcoin could have it's persistance affected by widespread EMP, draconian ban campaigns or the development of a successful attack on the SHA-2 algorithm.

State of the art technology has always been used to enable different monetary paradigms; precious metals, printing techniques and cryptocurrency are a testament to that. Cryptocurrency may well not be the last time this will happen.

I was drawing a parallel between tangible "money" which must "melt". I broke the requirement down to the basis for why it is a requirement to "melt" and came to the conclusion that money must serve a secondary purpose besides just that of money; it must be valuable when used for an actual purpose. Gold is used in manufacturing as a secondary function and melting is an industrial process. Bitcoin can serve a multitude of additional purposes besides that of money; it can be used for legal contracts, property deeds, voting, etc... Bitcoin and gold are both useful when not being used as "money" and so Bitcoin fits the purpose behind why reason number 8 was determined to be necessary.

I agree that fungibility and transportability are benefits, and I think Bitcoin will be considered real money.

My biggest question was always how will the "unbanked" use bitcoin without a smartphone?

Exactly my point.  USD or Fiat is not money.  They are currencies

I reject the premise of defining "money" in terms of concepts such as "fungibility" and "transportability".  Certainly, the study of such properties is useful (indeed, such study guided satoshi in the design of Bitcoin), but they do not constitute a satisfactory definition.

Whether or not Bitcoin is money will not be established by such definitions.  Instead, time will tell us if Bitcoin is money, and if so, the definitions that claim otherwise will become obsolete.

Regarding 8 (Malleability) - 174,100,000,000 grams of gold have been mined. Total future BTC will "melt" into 2,100,000,000,000,000 satoshis. It's not a straight comparison (a gram of gold can obviously melt down further) but I'd suggest Bitcoin trumps gold for malleability.

I don't agree with most of those requirements and your interpretations of them -- especially #8.

Gold and silver doesn't meet requirement #1 so I don't know why you are even posting.

I think Bitcoin fails #1, #7 and #8, but no money is universally accepted, the necessity of #7 is a matter of opinion, and #8 is ridiculous.

I don't mind if someone doesn't consider Bitcoin as money because it is not universally accepted. At least they have a legitimate reason.

money is different than currency

people get these two mixed up

currency is like fiat, usd

money is like gold, silver

i would say bitcoin is money not currency

wait, who made up those criteria? Because according to those criteria, USD is not money. Neither is pretty much any of the fiat currencies.

When I was in the Amazon jungle, paper bills were worthless, but there were only two units of exchange: alcohol & coca leaves. If alcohol is consider money, then certainly bitcoin can be considered money.

Why must money melt? Ask yourself the purpose of the requirement and then ask if Bitcoin fulfills the reason behind the purpose.

Bitcoin does fit the reason behind the purpose.