Topic: Re-visit the question: What is bitcoin's value backed by? - page 8. (Read 9149 times)

Backed by the shit-ton of hardware that makes up the network.

Exactly, and that belief typically comes from a widespread of acceptance by merchant, or, an exchange  

Interestingly, even bitcoin do not have any value, if there is an exchange who can always exchange it to USD at a fixed exchange rate, then suddenly it gained all the values required to work as a payment medium

And to provide a fixed exchange rate to USD is not difficult at all due to limited supply of coins. Currently you need MAXIMUM 1 billion dollars to keep the exchange rate above $100, for many multinational enterprises and banks this is a piece of cake

Bitcoin is backed by stupidity, just like any other deflationary cryptocurrency is.

PS: 1 BTC can't lose its value just because...

Like all currency, it's backed by your belief that it is worth something to yourself and others. 

I think Bitcoin is back by proof of work

Sorry, I missed one word, it should be "What is bitcoin's value backed by?" Already corrected in the OP. Value is decided by demand and supply, it is less related to technology. Even if you have most advanced technology in the world, if no one want it, it worth nothing. There are some other maybe more advanced coin designs, but since the demand has all been attracted to bitcoin, they did not succeed

Although many people do not admit, get-rich-quick is what everyone ultimately want, if there is such an opportunity guaranteed by government and banks, almost everone will join the game, just like housing bubble

The utilities you mentioned is not the reason behind the success of bitcoin, there are many alt-coins provide even quicker confirmation and scalability than bitcoin, but they never made any real sense, because get-rich-quick effect has already been proved on all the existing bitcoin investors, and part of that success comes from bitcoin's ability to be exchanged into other currency, where MTGOX played a vital role in early days of bitcoin's spread

Bitcoin the currency is backed by blockchain the ledger, with everyone's holdings. The blockchain is in turn is backed by decentralized replication, consensus, advanced cryptography and enormous computing power.

Result: virtual gold.

I totally disagree the ultimate demand is "to get a lot of income quickly".

The ultimate value in bitcoin is its ability to disrupt how money is sent round the world, making the process very very quick and very very cheap for anyone on the planet with a smartphone. Its got nothing to do with get-rich-quick schemes....

What is a fiat currency's value backed by? It is backed by the economy behind it,  you can use that currency to satisfy certain kind of demand, so it has value

What is bitcoin's value backed by? It is backed by some properties, although those properties do not provide goods/services that satisfy any kind of demand, but they combined together can satisfy an ultimate demand: To get a lot of income quickly, and all the other demand will be satisfied in turn

The problem today is not that your demand can not be fulfilled, it is you don't have enough increase in income and the cost is getting higher every year. So, there will never be a race to bottom phenomenon for bitcoin: Everyone selling their last coin to buy a cup of milk before they starved and bitcoin price crash to 0  

In general people will treat it as a digital asset and hold them in hope of fast price appreciation. Price will rise eventually due to higher and higher difficulty and lower and lower coin supply, and you can buy more and more things with bitcoin throughout the world because many merchants will try to get bitcoin through their sales later

Gavin mentioned an interesting thought: If the coin price double each year, you only need to spend half of your coin each year and your purchase power will stay the same forever. So when you have accumulated a certain amount of bitcoin which worth 2 years' worth of living expense, you can retire

Some one will argue that if everyone is doing this then there will be no one working to provide the goods/services, but currently it is over production and low income enviornment, until we have a shortage of labour force (which is very unlikely due to rising of AI and robots), nothing to worry about