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I know that bitcoin is trading over 40k, but is it essentially worthless?
My take is that people are putting money into it, expecting to be able to use it at places that accept it, and then those places expect to use it with suppliers or convert it into the currency of their choice.
As long as that happens - great. But what happens when they don't allow that to happen any more -- or if we enter a major devaluation or hyperinflation scenario. It is nothing but digital air. Worth less than paper. A confidence game.
Will investors in bitcoin become trapped in the trap they set themselves?
Some sharp people are against it, and some sharp people are for it.
As to it being more worthless than paper, may I remind you that most currencies have eventually become worthless over time.
To think it could not happen to the American dollar or other respected currency is shortsighted. Having nothing to do with politics, our current administration is spending more money than ever before in our history, and it is backed up by nothing more than a promise. That is thin air as well.
You cannot print your way out of economic ruin, yet that is not stopping this admin from spending like a drunken sailor. Even if we do not face economic ruin in our lifetime, this will be a ticking time bomb for our future generation.
So Bitcoin and/or other crypto currencies might well be a viable alternative to fiat currencies, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it. Investing 10% might be worth the risk, but these people going all in on crypto are risking far too much.
I really don't understand when will Bitcoin be viable to spend? If the value keeps on going up why would anyone spend their Bitcoin? If the value is going to be at least 100K or even soar to crazy heights like 1M what's the use of this in society if the majority of people are going to HODL?
It will primarily be used as a settlement layer for large batched transactions done on a second layer like Lighting. Say you have a network which streams value among users for some service. When the second layer value hits say $1 million, the smart contract will send it to the main network for ultimate settlement.
Like land, holding doesn't mean you can't use it. This is where defi comes in with the ability to borrow on your crypto, stake it for interest provide liquidity to a decentralized exchange.
1,000 years from now, that BTC billionaire who's coins disappeared with him when he fell off his yacht, divers will get rich collecting them from the sea. Right?
It will primarily be used as a settlement layer for large batched transactions done on a second layer like Lighting. Say you have a network which streams value among users for some service. When the second layer value hits say $1 million, the smart contract will send it to the main network for ultimate settlement.
Like land, holding doesn't mean you can't use it. This is where defi comes in with the ability to borrow on your crypto, stake it for interest provide liquidity to a decentralized exchange.
This is just the beginning.
I have some Pogs to sell you. Beanie Babies too. And some Zimbabwe notes at half face value.
Is Gold worthlss? That's the same subject. What's the value of gold today vs bitcoin. Scarcity of Bitcoin is finite while the supply of gold is much higher.
All the gold ever mined would only fill two Olympic sized swimming pools. There isn't enough gold on the planet to give every human being even a single coin. It's scarcity is the reason why it cannot be used as a currency by itself.
Ever hear of the Bronze Age? It was the first alloy made and used by prehistoric people to make tools. It's made of tin and copper, two metals that aren't particularly expensive -- and never have been. The primary uses of gold and silver in the ancient world was for decoration because they were shiny and because there was very little of either readily available in and around the Mediterranean basin, which was never known for gold and silver mining. The Egyptians, for example, got their gold from the Kingdom of Kush which was located in what is now the Sudan.
FTR, every element, whether a metal like gold or a gas like oxygen, has a set of properties that are unique to it, but the individual properties aren't necessarily unique just to that element. Gold is naturally yellow. So is sulfur. Silver is shiny, but so is copper.
Gold and silver had little "industrial" use in the ancient world because both are too soft to be used for anything but ornamentation. In order for gold and silver to be hard enough for much "utility", they have to be combined with other metals in alloys. Their softness enabled them to be pressed into coins, but it also enabled those coins to be debased over time by unscrupulous people "clipping" tiny particles off them.
The value of gold and silver lies in the demand for them, a demand rooted in the traditions of western civilization. In that, gold and silver are no different than minerals like diamonds, rubies, etc. It's people's desire for something that makes it valuable, nothing else. If the demand for a commodity declines, so does its "value". Think Dutch tulips.
You are not wrong in much of what you say- however, I take issue with your assertion that silver/gold only have value because people want them. It's actually the other way around- people desire silver/gold because they have value- their beauty, corrosion resistance, ductility, malleability, make them unique to every other metal. In the case of silver, you can add unmatched thermal and electrical conductivity, unmatched light reflction, and anti-microbial/anti-bacterial properties. Of course gold and silver aren't going to be used the same way as copper, iron, tin, nickel, and other coarser metals- they're too valuable for that.
Dating back to antiquity, gold was used as a storage of wealth because it can't be destroyed. There were no banks back then, and the primary way to hide wealth was to bury it in the ground. Gold doesn't oxidize, it doesn't rust, you can put it in the ground and dig it up thousands of years later, wipe it off or rinse it, and it will be the exact same product that was hidden before. Almost all the gold ever mined still exists, it is rare enough that even the tiny amounts that are put into electronics are later recycled out of them.
But because there isn't enough gold to use as currency, other metals had to be used that could be exchanged for gold. Due to it's relevant rarity to other lesser metals, silver was a popular choice, as was bronze for lower denomination coins.
Silver is a unique metal in that it is used both as a currency and an industrial commodity. Unlike gold, almost all the silver ever mined has been consumed. It no longer exists. This is why many people believe during hyperinflation silver has a greater upside than gold. Silver is the most conductive of all the metals, so it has important industrial/technological uses that can't be replicated without resorting to expensive superconductive technologies. When gold is used in place of silver in electronics, it's because the engineers have to accept the loss of conductivity in exchange for using a metal that doesn't oxidize.
I didn't fact check this, but a commonly repeated stat is that 98% of the gold EVER mined still exists, and 98% of the silver has been consumed. Gold has been mined for several thousand years, and nearly all of it can be accounted for. Can you say the same about bitcoins? What good is a blockchain, when the asset can be locked away forever by somebody forgetting a password?
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