They requested me what makes bitcoin worthwhile. I mentioned the truth that it is restricted to 21 million and the liquid provide would proceed to shrink on account of misplaced cash.
They mentioned that the restrict was “purposely set” so the finite-ness is “pretend”.
What do you guys consider this?
Additionally, my buddy mentioned that gold has an underlying use case: you may make bodily objects with gold.
Is that this even an excellent argument? What do you make with gold in addition to chains and rings?
I’ll just remark that based on the gold argument, your friend has no idea wtf he is talking about. Gold has no substantial value other than that of a monetary premium. ~10% of the price of gold lies in its industrial use, and it is actually a negative property of gold as a monetary vehicle. You don’t want your money’s value to be subject to industrial supply&demand, you want it as stable as possible. Bitcoin is “mined”, and doesn’t have an industrial usecase, it can’t be used for making transistors, and it can’t be used as jewelry, which means bitcoin is only useable as money.
Electronics, and dental fillings. Gold isn’t just shiney. It has other cool properties like being ductile, conductive, non-irritating to skin, doesn’t rust away, doesn’t spontaneously ignite, and is difficult to obtain, i.e. scarce. Scarcity, real or “fake” is not the only factor. My collection of hand painted figurines is scarce. It’s 1 of a kind in the world. But unless there is demand for it, it isn’t going to be very valuable. Bitcoins have demand for one reason or another. People are willing to pay 16.9K or whatever for it, and not entirely because of scarcity. 2.1 quadrillion sats would be difficult to promote as “scarce” so rolling them up into 100 million per one arbitrary unit was a slick move.
Ah the famous “Bitcoins finiteness is fake because I said so” argument. It’s not an argument and so I think nothing of it.
Referring to gold’s “use case”. Gold is a natural resource with uses. It’s not man-made. Bitcoin is a purpose-built decentralised digital currency, being an alternative to centralised currencies.
As for it being an “argument”, you need to ask why it is a Bitcoin vs Gold argument. Gold having physical uses does not invalidate Bitcoin.
Be mindful of red herrings.
everything is getting dematerialized: mail, books, music and now money. your friend is losing the bigger picture.
in terms of bitcoin’s scarcity being purposely set, he doesn’t understand that no one can change the set number which is why it’s so valuable: a digital asset that cost real world resources to create (electricity) and yet can’t be copied. nothing like this has existed before. money is just the first application of an unforgeable digital asset.
Whether it was purposely set or not has no relevance to the finite nature of a fixed numerical supply. BTC can’t up it self at random to 42M or any other number.
21M BTC, period.
Of course it’s all made up. That’s what these systems are, useful made up things. The numbers in his bank account are made up, too. I bet he values those. And they’re not backed by gold.
Interesting write up of why gold has been money for tens of thousands of years across so many civilizations:
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/02/15/131430755/a-chemist-explains-why-gold-beat-out-lithium-osmium-einsteinium
The limit isnt fake. Its defended by everyone running their node and not wanting their money to be diluted.
These are just remarks, things that were said in the past, regurgitated and lost its meaning over time as it got passed from ear to ear.
The idea that Gold has “intrinsic value” because it has an underlying purpose is false. EVERYTHING is subjective. Gold CAN be used as jewellery, CAN be used for electronics, but it is not it’s base use case. If we were aliens, we may have completely different base uses of Gold.
The idea that something has use other than its finite supply is not completely misled however. It is a bias that tells us that even if speculation was taken away forever, Gold would still have some sort of value. That said, it says nothing about the valuation of Gold. If the price of Gold is 1000 times more than its “intrinsic” value, then why would you buy it at its price now? You are over paying. Unless of course you believe that more people are bound to speculate and the price of Gold is still on an upward trajectory. This of course has nothing to do with its intrinsic value.
It’s a weird narrative, chicken and egg. Gold would not be speculated on if it had no intrinsic value, but its current price is based on speculation and there is nothing supporting its CURRENT price, only that it has a price.
RE: the fake exclusivity, It has a limit. Who cares what it was, or how it was determined. You could argue that God created the exact scarcity of Gold including that which we have not yet mined.
What matters is whether that limit can be CHANGED. The proof of why it cannot be changed is long winded and there are plenty of studies and articles online that prove that it is probabilistically impossible to change.
You might argue that Gold is not probabilistically scarce, it is physically scarce. But what is the probability that we find twice as much Gold that we ever had in the next 5 years? It is MUCH MORE probable than Bitcoin’s limit increasing. We know already of a comet in space that has more Gold on it, we have seen an article already that a place in Africa has discovered a LOT of new gold. (look them up, I don’t have the sources to hand)
So what is the thing that keeps Bitcoin going to 0? It has a use case that will exist even if the speculators went away: It serves the unbanked. If you have no bank, but you have Bitcoin, you run the software and hardware, and your community works with it. Even if the price of Bitcoin plummetted as people just gave your community all the Bitcoin because they don’t want it, your community will use Bitcoin, because they have nothing else. It is an IOU tracker. That’s what a ledger is. But really, it isn’t going to one community, it is being used all over the world by people who can’t use official money because they’ve been blacklisted, abused, live in dictatorships, or are in abusive relationships or families.
Your friend will likely move the bar: But get rid of speculation AND use as money all together… what do you have? Make sure they know they are moving the bar.
At a certain point, we start making impossible predictions like: Bitcoin will go to 0. Well, you can make the same probability prediction: All gold will go to 0 and gold will be undesirable for use as jewellery, electronics or anything else.
At the end of the day, these arguments are not logical. They are feeling based, and the sooner you can really demonstrate this, the faster people can be broken down and brought back up with an open mind.
Who needs “friends” like that?
Start calling your friend boomer cuz he thinks and speaks like one.
Ok… Let them stay away from it with all the rest of the sheeple… And you can laugh at them a few years from now… “What was that you said about BTC again??”
????????????????????
Your friend “doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about”
Money and value are both manmade conceps, so think about it…
Current complex, fast, interconnected society simply can’t function this way without “Money”.
Try to understand that everything can be used as money, just look back in history what has been tried so far..
A final step will be to think of, regarding everything can be used as money, what would be the BEST Money (and thus reason about the properties it should have)?
If you can objectivly anwser that you can start trying to think about value..
If you are there you can really judge on your friend and others opinions regarding those topics, but most likely you will care way less by that time.
Ask him how to pay with gold over the internet.
You can also ask him to create a fake bitcoin since it is “fake exclusivity”.
Honestly don’t waste your time trying to convince people. You can’t teach people with a closed mind. Until somone has an open mind and is willing to learn, it will be a waste of time.
The limit is true and verifiable so how would it possibly matter whether it was by design or not? Absolute non-sequitur of an argument
Advise him to read the Bitcoin Standard, in full, then come back for another discussion with you after he’s done so. If he doesn’t bother to read it, don’t waste your time discussing BTC/Gold with him ever again.
Diamonds are ‘fake scarcity’ because they are not scarce, but their supply is highly controlled to intentionally increase price.
Bitcoin is real scarcity. Nobody can control its supply. Its scarcity is harder than gold’s.
~50% of gold is used for jewelery, ~40% as money. ~10% is used in industry/medicine/anything else.
Gold is used in jewelery because jewelery is a status symbol, and gold has monetary value. Because it is used as money. ~90% of gold is used for its monetary value. Its monetary value is not derived from the ~10% of practical application. That’d be an utterly ridiculous viewpoint.
>They said that the limit was “purposely set” so the finite-ness is “fake”.
Yeah of course it was purposely set… ‘accidentally set’ wouldn’t be any better. It is most definitely real, I wouldn’t even respond to that.
Uh I read that Moses’ brother made a golden calf to worship while Moses was on the mountain, didn’t work out too well for the Israelites.
Plain and simple Bitcoin scarcity is ‘purposely set’ this is true, and the those that own Bitcoin have a say in making sure that it stays that way. There is no financial incentive to inflate the supply, as inflating the supply has the consequence of reducing the value of each Bitcoin that you own. Contrast this with fiat where it is in best interest of the elite few who control the fiat ponzi scheme, that only THEY should have the ability to inflate the supply, it is therefore in their financial interest that they prevent everyone else from inflating the supply. Their ability to increase the money supply has the net effect of transferring wealth from the rest of the holders of the fiat to the elite few that directly gain from this inflating.
It just takes a moment to think about this and realize that Bitcoin is better money than anything else even gold. The problem of course is most are so busy chasing after the almighty shrinking dollar, most don’t stop to think to realize there is a better way.
> What do you make with gold besides chains and rings?
Electronics for one, also i think certain medical devices
Satoshi said:
“As a thought experiment, imagine there was a base metal as scarce as gold but with the following properties:
– boring grey in colour
– not a good conductor of electricity
– not particularly strong, but not ductile or easily malleable either
– not useful for any practical or ornamental purpose
and one special, magical property:
– can be transported over a communications channel
If it somehow acquired any value at all for whatever reason, then anyone wanting to transfer wealth over a long distance could buy some, transmit it, and have the recipient sell it.
Maybe it could get an initial value circularly as you’ve suggested, by people foreseeing its potential usefulness for exchange. (I would definitely want some) Maybe collectors, any random reason could spark it.
I think the traditional qualifications for money were written with the assumption that there are so many competing objects in the world that are scarce, an object with the automatic bootstrap of intrinsic value will surely win out over those without intrinsic value. But if there were nothing in the world with intrinsic value that could be used as money, only scarce but no intrinsic value, I think people would still take up something.
(I’m using the word scarce here to only mean limited potential supply)”
Is your friend Peter Schiff?
your friend sounds like a bit of an ignoramus, no offense intended
also – anyone talking you out of sound money investment at this point is no friend of yours. through ignorance or malice, is irrelevant to the point that the net result is the same
keep friends’ and acquaintances’ unsolicited advice where it belongs, at the pub
having said all that, gold is also used in manufacturing of computer motherboards (not sure if it’s directly on the chip transistors or not but in any case these are trace element amounts that are factored into the price)
along with other rare earth metals which, funnily enough dont make it into the conversation of currency value based off of physical utility (probably because toxicity and ability to work the metal at room temperature also plays a part). i mean, if that is the main argument you can tell your friend they should be stockpiling copper because if it’s about physical utility we really should be looking to the bronze age for value appropriation
the fact of the matter is that when it comes to fungible, durable, portable, and most importantly limited in supply properties of sound money, there is only one form that ticks all those boxes
and gold aint it
Bitcoin is just a ledger that keeps track of which coins belongs to which keys. A ledger does not need an additional use case, it doesn’t become a better ledger if you can also replace a tooth with one of the records, or if you can use a certain part of the ledger to make electronic devices.
The use of gold as money (or a ledger) has made it more difficult for its other use cases, gold is expensive because of its monetary premium, not because of its utility value. If gold wasn’t useful as a money it would be a lot cheaper to use for just its physical properties.
What makes bitcoin a better ledger than others is that the rules of it are simple, clear and can’t be changed by anyone without consent of other participants.
Your friend can call this fake but every 10 minutes there is a new bitcoin block no matter how hard your friend cries.
Tell your friend gold has an infinite supply. What will happen to the value in 100 years when we are bringing it in from asteroids?
Mathematical pure scarcity is forever. Gold is only scarce until we are a little more space faring
>You can think of bitcoin like a stamp in the mail system. Stamps have intrinsic value cause they let you send mail. Bitcoin has intrinsic value cause it is required to pay the fee to send bitcoin. Bitcoin is a lot like a mail system for sending money. And its better than mailing money because mailing money would be slower and the money could be lost or stolen. Or the money could be somehow seized, no one can ever stop the process of sending the bitcoin, and no one necessarily knows the identity of the entity which sent or received the bitcoin. So you can sort of think of bitcoin as stamps which are required to use this special mail system with these unique properties.
Bitcoin doesn’t have value solely because it has limited supply. My shit has limited supply and is worthless.
Bitcoin is a revolutionary payment network that people *demand* to use. Whether you use it or your friend use it or not doesn’t matter. The fact that lots of people do value it and demand to use it is all that matters. Once they demand to use the very valuable (and just technologically cool) services of the Bitcoin payment network, there is now demand for BTC. Now, and only now, is where the finite supply of BTC adds *additional* value to that which it already has. It already had value because it was in demand to use the Bitcoin payment network, and now the limited supply just increases its value via supply and demand dynamics.
My shit, on the other hand, cannot be used as currency on a revolutionary peer-to-peer electronic payment network that provides final settlement faster than ACH or Visa, provides strong security and privacy if used properly, and requires no trusted third party that can censor payments. Therefore, my shit is not valuable to begin with, so its limited supply enhances the value of $0 to even less supply with still zero demand, so it’s still worth $0.
Bitcoin is a decentralized, resistent, permissionless global, monetary network. No more trust needed for storing or sending value. True innovation.
To be fair. Arguing Bitcoin is valuable because it’s limited to 21 million is a bit ridiculous imo. You’re just describing the supply of something. Bitcoin is valuable because it’s the first decentralized and secure rules based sound monetary system. It’s an amazing store of value, it can bank the unbanked, etc.
People who just say “there can only be 21 million Bitcoin and therefore it must go up in price and make me rich” are the ones that give Bitcoin a bad name.
everyone buys bitcoin at the price they deserve
Not entirely wrong argument, gold will always have certain demand, jewelry and in technology.
Scarcity of BTC is simply well designed monetary policy
, but ultimately BTC is build on trust and network effect, the ones and zeros of BTC aren’t inherently much different than in most of its endless forks, the community is.
The scarcity is also not set in stone, it can be changed etc. Therefore, I treat it as well designed tokenomics for current needs, I don’t believe in the ideological narratives about deflationary BTC coming from uneducated people . Besides, BTC isn’t even currently deflationary, and this is good the way it is.
Yes, Bitcoin’s scarcity is a deliberate design choice. You could say it is “artificial”. However, the important distinction is how its scarcity is enforced. It trivial to create “fake” scarcity in a centralised system, but it relies on trust in this third party. Scarcity arising from consensus within a truly decentralised system has much, much stronger assurances. When you [buy bitcoin](https://www.coincorner.com/), you have that fraction of the total supply for as long as you control the private keys.
As to the second point, look into the concept of a “monetary premium”. Yes, Gold makes excellent jewellery, but it seems odd to insist that a good money needs also to have an alternative use case. Bitcoin is pure monetary premium. No distractions.
if you have a finite number of a thing that no one wants, that thing will have no value.
The stronger proposition for bitcoin is that it is a useful instrument that has no substitute in the traditional finance world. That’s why it attracts people and why it increases in value over time.
I guess he thinks computer software has no value either while software is highly sought after and expensive.
>They asked me what makes bitcoin valuable. I said the fact that it’s limited to 21 million and the liquid supply would continue to shrink due to lost coins.
If that is your main reason why you think Bitcoin is valuable, you need to keep learning. And for the love of all things, stop trying to “orange pill” people who do not want to be.
The exact limit is pretty much arbitrary, however, the effects of having a hard limit are intended. As are the mechanisms to enforce that.
Start there and do your own research. Orange pill yourself with knowledge, facts, and do not shy away from asking yourself questions that may go against what you want to believe about Bitcoin.
The amount of grains of sand on earth is finite and strictly limited. Once all the sand grains have been spent, there will be no more of them.
The idea that some exclusivity might be more significant than others is not completely insane. For example altcoins exclusivity truly is like saying that.. some drawing you made of stick figure is exclusive. Nothing can stop you from making more stick figures. But bitcoin is somewhat different due to the unique process it underwent during its inception which can no longer be replicated due to the current market conditions that didnt exist back when it was created. For example when bitcoin was created it had no marketing budget (and still doesnt). Today if you tried to create a coin with no marketing budget, no one would ever hear of it.
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Its significant that it has no marketing budget because that is fundamental that no one controls it. Theres no marketing budget cause theres no one to pay for it, cause no one is in charge. You really cant do that anymore, those days are over, so to speak.
Where did your friend get his PhD?
I’ll be sure to write them a letter and tell them they made a mistake
If gold is valuable because you can make stuff with it, then aluminum is even more valuable.
We are talking monetary goods here. Yes gold has non-monetary utility, but so do many other things that we don’t store our wealth in. Aluminum is very useful, but it has no scarcity and it’s not durable enough.
Bitcoin does actually have a non-monetary utility as well, to the extent that a tamper proof global record keeping device is valuable to anyone. So if your friend wants to figure out the “yeah, but like *what is it*” question, he should start there.
Because people value the ability to access this sort of open, immutable ledger, they will acquire the asset needed to use it. Because the asset is scarce, it has a market value. Simple as that. It’s irrelevant that it was made scarce on purpose. Your friend is just butthurt he’s not a bleeding edge early adopter. People make restaurants on purpose too, but that doesn’t mean their food should be free.
So yeah. If Bitcoin **the network** provides value to people, then Bitcoin **the asset** will be desirable. If Bitcoin **the asset** is desirable to people and it is scarce, it will have a market price. If people resent this and try to make their own Bitcoin, they are putting the cart before the horse, since their fake altcoin doesn’t give you access to the Bitcoin **network**, which is the thing people want in the first place. Sure, you could just buy clowncoin and say you’re doing the same thing as Bitcoin, except way cheaper, but your network is shit and nobody is interested in using it.