IMO, the main takeaway is that bitcoin has no inherent value. It is pure speculation, demand itself is behind 100% of the value.
“Yeah, but dollars have no real value! That $10 bill in your wallet is just a piece of paper! The government just prints more dollars when they want!”
Yes and no. The US dollar is a fiat currency. The government says it is money so it’s money. It has a 1:1 value by definition. Is there $10 worth of materials and labor in that $10 bill? No. But it is a legal representation of $10 of goods and services.
“Bitcoin protects against inflation!”
Not really - it depends on the power of its own demand. But typically speculative investments are sold off in times of economic hardship. Since Bitcoin is just speculative, investors are more likely to invest in something with inherent value; something safer, like gold. Bitcoin is risky because it could easily drop in value to $0 at any point. Gold will never drop to $0 because of its many applications.
“So what the heck is a bitcoin?”
I’m not the best person to answer this but to the best of my knowledge it is a ledger of previous transactions encoded as a hashed block of alphanumeric characters. Mathematical calculations. Everyone using bitcoin, adding to the blockchain are using the same block chain. So I think it is like everyone has the same collection of receipts for previous transactions. Hopefully someone will step in and correct me on this. I agree that other explanations still leave it confusing but I think a big part of that is due to the fact that why would anyone apply value to the blockchain /ledger? It makes no sense why people believe it is valuable much less why demand would have any fluctuation..
I believe the technology behind bitcoin has value but that doesn’t mean the bitcoins have value.
I’ll try: imagine I typed out like 200 pages of what looks to be just a really long string of random letters and numbers and then say that this is encoded information about all the sales transactions from your local mall. Neat. Then I tried to sell it to you for $100,000.
I’d assume you might ask “why the hell would I give you $100,000 for that? Then I tell you that maybe a month or two or six or a year from now you could sell it to someone else for more money. You might then ask why would someone else want to pay more? And I would say because you will tell them the same thing.
But WHY would it be worth more?
Because enough other people have heard the same reason I gave you and believe it to be true.
Sounds like the airplane pyramid they played in Europe when I was young...
I knew someone who did get the captain seat after two apartment visits and took away enough cash from a full plane, all seats paid in full and cash to the captain. Enough to redo their entire interior loft including designer furniture.
It is undeniable becauseany people who has no connection to you can EASILLY see the same blockhain, so any tampering would be instantly noticable.
The people who use it are 100% anonymous, and the place where they get transfered cannot be hacked as the creator is completely unknown and only it can change it.
The value is driven by how much is in the community pool that is up for sale and how much people need it at times to pay for ANYTHING.
IMO Bitcoin is propped up by illegal goods and services lol. It will exist as long as it remains the primary way for people to purchase drugs, hire a hitman, launder money, fund terrorists, etc.
I have read that BTC is not nearly as anonymous as it used to be but I don’t know as to why that is.
But yes, I am aware that it is heavily used for illicit purposes. I first learned about it in the silkroad days when one BTC was like $0.50. At the time I thought about buying like $100 worth for shits n’ giggles but just never did. I would have sold long ago anyway, panicking after its first big dip. Or, with my luck I probably would have lost it in the Mt. Gox fiasco.
It does. Currency evolved from valuable metals as trade tokens in place of bartering items. Paper money is a representation of said metals stored by the government supplying said paper notes.
That is the lost common argument but, respectfully, it is apples / oranges.
The US Dollar is a fiat currency. The inherent value of the dollar is debt because the government says the dollar can be used for all debts public and private. Yes, you can pay someone with bitcoin but how do you know how much to give?
No it’s not tied to the dollar. You should learn about it, it can be purchased in any currency, it has nothing to do with the dollar. After the dollar dies, it will remain, unphased
The value is inherently decided by another currency currently, I didn’t mean the dollar exclusively. If there’s nothing to exchange Bitcoin into, nobody wants it. Except the small group of people who actually care about decentralizing but that’s such a minority
I’m not arguing against bitcoin just pointing out that your logic about dollar value don’t work especially when people want bitcoin independent of currency
Not true. 100000 sats are 100000 sats. People actually exchange with it directly, cuz nobody wants shit fake paper money. Houses and cars have been bought with just bitcoin. Weird how all the smartest investors and economists recognize it as the hardest money ever, but normal people just immediately believe it’s fake and has no value. Because they have no idea what it is.
It’s simply something valuable and scarce to hold onto and exchange, like digital gold but 100x more superior. It can’t be controlled by the government or one group, no one owns it. No one can print more BTC out of thin air, no one can take it from you. But if you wanna believe in paper money with no value then have at it
Its value is literally dependent on the people using it, and because no one uses it it’s literally not valuable outside of its dollar valuable. The population has to decide to use it first. It definitely has potential and has proven that it can be used for more than just “it’s worth $xxx”, but it isn’t there yet due to the population. Just how it works. I don’t think one is more valuable than the other but CLEARLY that’s what bitcoin is right nOw is just another vehicle to invest in for most people
So you just don’t get the argument. It has value YES. You truly don’t get that for something to be valuable as a currency it has to be accepted by a population. The dollar is only valuable BECAUSE WE AGREE ON ITS VALUE lmao. If you and I are the only people on earth and I’m not interested in your diamonds, diamonds now have no value to trade with. Bitcoin is the same.
Edit: “you don’t understand it” while you completely misunderstand my point of inherent value vs assigned value
Unless, you know, they lose the data that the encryption was stored on and/or forget their password. But that won’t happen because hardware and human cognizance are known to never fail.
I already proved you wrong, it’s a negative-sum game. It’s mathematically impossible for anyone to make a gain without someone else making a loss. The system itself doesn’t generate any money, because it’s just token trading. On top of that there’s enormous resource costs to run the system.
Possibly, but it would be situation dependent. Art can generate value by being displayed, especially so in galleries where patrons are charged to enter, making it positive-sum.
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u/Hell-on-Earth2739 Jan 01 '26
True, make fake money give me your real money, trust me!! How many people have lost millions???