Topic: Why Bitcoin will collapse in price. - page 10. (Read 24584 times)

1) Dumping Gold or Gold 2.0 on the next guy does give value.
2) Therefore both are functioning as a store of value
3) Price is an indication of value. Over the long term you will be quiet. Very quiet.

Why woud they want to do that?

Once mining becomes unprofitable, there is no point in outlawing it.

While mining is still profitable, it adds to the bitcoin supply and hence lowers the value of coins in people's wallets. You get bitcoin inflation, just as governments printing causes inflation of ordnary currencies.  This will make bitcoin less attractive.

Moreover, the government will profit by taxing the miners' income.

Yes they are willing to pay money to use a clone of the bitcoin protocol as well. That's in favor of my argument not against.

porc -

Your appraisal of Bitcoin from the outset is flawed.

You've based your conclusions on the wrong observations - observations which are incidental to the fundamental nature of "money" and not central to it.

Cryptocurrencies are a *token*. A token of value. Their utility value to the economy is in functioning as a form of money. They have no other utility value. Conversely, there is no other technology available to man which can fulfil this function in an electronic trading environment. For this reason alone they have value.

The fact that they are not spendable in Tescos or Wallmart is incidental to this. I can't spend a lump of Gold either.

Lets now look at the non-electronic environment and see how it compares.

In the "physical" world, Gold is basically a physical Bitcoin. Its primary use is a "token" or "placeholder" for value. It has very little utility value other than this function - to operate as a peer to peer form of money that does not require a counterparty - i.e. the physical equivalent of a "Bitcoin". It is not backed by anything, has few industrial uses to speak of, but has certain properties (basically scarecity and resistence to counterfeiting) which allow it to function as money.

Since it is not backed by anything, we say it has "intrinsic value" - or put another way, it represents the last element in a call chain of trust.

In an electronic trading environment such as the internet, there is a need for a transmittable entity which can perform the function of money that gold did in the physical. Banks do not actually transmit "money" - they just increase a number in one account and decrease it in another. There's no sense in which anything is actually "transmitted" in this process and since the whole operation is so arbitrary it requires a huge amount of counterparty involvement to give "value" to those arbitrary numbers.

Bitcoin on the other hand is the genuine article - it is a uniquely identifiable electronic entity which is transmittable through the public network without the need for a counterparty.

If you don't appreciate the collosal implications of this for money, the banking system and the economy in general, then fair enough. Nobody realised that travel agents were dead in the water the day the World Wide Web was invented either. But those implications are academic - not a question of subjective value, market value, popularity or whether you can "spend" them or not.

Bitcoin and Litecoin work on the same protocol? So you mean I can send you LTC to your BTC address?


BTC is still limited to 21 million even if there are 21 million other altcoins in existence.


If you could produce something with the exact same properties as gold, it would be gold. But you are right in that case the value of gold would likely fall ... If you could produce unlimited bitcoins the same would happen. But that's (currently) not possible, because it would work on a different blockchain an therefore cannot be the "exact" same.


You are right that all coins are crypto currencies, but they don't have equal properties, therefore are not interchangeable.


We will see what the future holds. It's true that btc could fail, but I wouldn't bet on it...

Apparently many people disagree with you that the bitcoin protocol has no meaning without bitcoins because people are willing to pay 40 bucks for litecoins using the same protocol.

Fact is, the scarcity argument that BTC is limited to 21 million is a complete and utter myth. It can be replicated a gazillion times over with the exact same properties, just called by a different name.

How absurd would it sound if you applied this false btc scarcity logic to something like gold. If tomorrow, someone invented material that looked and behaved like gold, the exact same properties, etc with an unlimited amount that can be created but called it Koalapuss instead of gold, would gold be scarce anymore ? Obviously not, the price of gold would plummet to zero.

I can see value in the bitcoin protocol. Bitcoin itself is worth nothing. Zilch. It is no different then litecoin or quarkcoin or tulipcoin. And all of them are worth nothing because they can all be run on the same bitcoin-like protocol and therefore an unlimited supply of these 'coins' can be created.

When this finally dawns on people, watch out. You'll be seeing bitcoin suicides. Whether intentional or not, this has all the makings of a grand pyramid model. In a hundred years, btc might be talked about similar to how tulipmania is mocked now.

1) Dumping BTC on the next guy does not give BTC value.
2) if there is no value, BTC can not function as a store of value.
3) price is not an indication of value. Over the long term the market will price value correctly. Over the short term wild fluctuations can lead to high prices for things with little (tulips) or no value (BTC).
4) Scarcity is a word describing the availability/ quantity of something. It cant be equated with value (deadly insects are not valuable to you but scarce).
5) False you have to pay capital gains taxes on bitcoin gains in dollars. If you dont sell them for dollars but trade them for a good this counts as a sell.
6) I dont share this opinion (I do think fiat will collapse, but bitcoin will collapse as well).

What can you do with Bitcoin? Conduct trade with others and/or hold onto them as a store of value. What is Bitcoin's value? The value is determined by market demand.

There will only ever be 21,000,000 Bitcoins, so their value can never be diminished by inflation of the supply. Trade conducted exclusively in Bitcoin isn't subjected to taxes. What is it worth to have a medium of exchange that can't be devalued and that some 3rd party doesn't feel entitled to help themselves to whatever share of that they want? The day is coming when it's going to take a LOT of government fiat to convince anyone to part with their BTC.

Yes.

And my question to bitcoiners is still unanswered: What can I do with bitcoin? What is its value?

In before: I can dump it on the next guy.

The bitcoin protocol and bitcoins per se cannot be seperated when you talk about intrinsic value. Bitcoins cannot exist outside the protocol and the protocol has no meaning without bitcoins.

Even if it IS a pyramid, this doesn't change a thing. At the moment of the exchange he who buys bitcoin values it higher than what he gives in exchange for it, otherwise the exchange simply wouldn't happen. You just can't get away from this fact, whether you like it or not. It is subjective value that matters here. Why it is valued I have already explained earlier...

Because they value it higher than what they exchange for it. Why should I repeat this again and again and how many times will this take till you finally get it?

Have you ever heard about the law of marginal utility? If you are thirsty and hungry at the same time, then a bottle of water will be more valuable to you than any food, but once you have satisfied your thirst, you would be happy to exchange a second bottle of water for some food. How can this ever be possible if our value judgments were hard to change? If you had a million bottles of water, then what value would they be to you?

No. Exchanging it for something does not make bitcoin valuable. I am asking why somebody would exchange a bitcoin for something?

Why has the bitcoin value.  "Because I can dump it on the next guy" does not address the question. That sounds like a pyramid. Nobody actually wants bitcoin. They all just want to dump it on the next guy.

The guy who you want to dump it on asks the question: Why should I take it? What can I do with it? If your answer is: Bitcoin has 0 value, but you can get others to exchange something valuable for it hopefully is the same as admitting that it is a pyramid.

You can exchange it for something you value from those who value it higher than what they exchange for it (provided you have it in the first place). Does it really require so much effort to understand this?

Don't repeat your posts and stop shouting

Stop with the intrinsic value bullshit. Cant you see it? Our value judgements are to a certain extend unalterable. We always want water and we always want food as we depend on these things for survival. Again for every thing I can list some use case.

I WANT YOUR SUBJECTIVE VALUE STATEMENT. WHAT CAN I DO WITH A BITCOIN? WHY IS THE BITCOIN VALUABLE FOR YOU?

Why cant you answer this question. Why do you continue to talk about intrinsic value. I dont care about intrinsic value. I want to know WHY you think 1 Bitcoin is valuable?

Thousands of people have all answered the question about gold value: They all think its pretty and thus they want to make jewelry out of it or they like to look at a gold bar. SIMPLE.

Again: What is your personal value judgement about bitcoin? What can I do with it? Why do you think it has value?

Where? Show that piece now. I think you can't even fancy what real refutation looks like...

As far as modern economics is concerned there is no such notion as intrinsic value. It does really exist in finances but it has very specific usage which has nothing do with what is being discussed here. To say that Bitcoin as a currency doesn't have intrinsic value would automatically imply there is something which has such value. This is false

1) What is the value of the bitcoin protocol? To what extend does the bitcoin protocol give bitcoin value? 2) no disagreement here.

repeating the tired arguments of a bitcoiner I have refuted up thread already.

Yes value is subjective, but you cant explain to me what I CAN DO WITH BITCOIN. Get that?

Water has value as I can quench my thirst. Food has value as so I dont starve to death. Nobody will say: Ohh needing to drink water (any form of liquid) to survive is subjective. Some people dont need to drink. You just hide behind this subjective value theory (which is correct insofar as it says that value judgements change from individual to individual) but can not state 1 thing I can DO with bitcoin.

I can state one thing I can do with gold (jewelry, its nice to look at for most people). What can anybody do with bitcoin in any situation? Say 1 thing?