Bitcoin has fundamentals though. Per the whitepaper it was designed to be just a means for individuals to transfer money to each other digitally without much friction. The further it gets from that the more we're asking the network to stretch to meet demands it was never designed to.

This only works if the value of BTC is pegged to one or more fiat currencies. As it is, people are basically speculating on blockchain address space on BTC.

And looking at this fundamental value, other cryptocurrencies have arguable superceded it in terms of better tech/efficiency, so the value seems incredibly hard to justify.

Just curious, which ones in your opinion are better tech/efficiency?

Look into DASH, it has a fundamentally different architecture than bitcoin. The biggest pros are instantSend, privateSend, and the DAO (A governance system).

In addition to the other response, another example is ethereum's ability to offer smart contracts, which is not possible with bitcoin. Transaction rate limits and power consumption also are more efficiently handled.

They're different, which is why I used the term arguable--there's no clear reason afaik that bitcoin should be so valued relative to others, but I could be wrong.

One reason of bitcoin possibly being more valued would be its cap at 21 million (which AFAIK is not there with Ethereum)

The pedantic response:

- if 1 BTC were $100 trillion, then it's clearly passed the fundamentals of "being a unit of exchange between commercial entities", since it would be way more than what any form of exchange would ever require.

The truth behind the pedantic answer:

- if it's a store of value, then the "fundamental" value is the amount of fiat that's gone into the system so far. If all the exchanges have roughly $100 in USD deposits, the base value of their bitcoin deposits will be at least $100, roughly.

- If it's as a means of transactions, then the fundamentals are linked to how much transaction volume is going on. For example the flow of USD into BTC and vice-versa. BTC <-> BTC exchanges in that universe probably help to define things as well, as it would be used as an alternative to USD.

The dollars don't come from nowhere, so there's at least some base numbers you can think about. Thinking of it as "USD going into the ecosystem" and "USD going out" is a good proxy for now I think. Obviously very fluid, though.

You’re forgetting currency control evasion. If a businessman from a country with tight controls wants to move money out of the country he would buy bitcoin and then sell it the other side of the border. This sort of activity is going on all the time, and it creates demand for crypto currencies.

I don't see how bitcoin can facilitate currency control evasion. The government can simply shut down all local exchanges, and some already did.

With amounts this large they could meet in person to trade.

If you have to do that, it doesn't seem particularly advantageous over existing methods. You're meeting in person, exchanging cash illicitly, etc. If someone is willing to do that, why not just buy USD in a foreign bank account directly? (That's my understanding of the current system; people with clean histories open accounts with varying amounts of money in USD / EUR / JPY jurisdictions, then transfer control of those accounts to someone else, for a small profit margin, who then transfers them again, in exchange for cash at a significant margin, in, say, China.)

Either way, someone ends up with cash CNY and the other person ends up with electronic USD or EUR or whatever.

The immediate limiting factor is the vulnerability of any in-person transaction to traditional law enforcement mechanisms, and the eventual limiting factor is that the exchange rate is going to be impacted by the demand for cash CNY. Eventually nobody is going to want to sell you USD (or whatever) for your cash-in-a-bag CNY, or will only do it at exorbitant rates.

I don't disagree with this, but if true, then it means that the value of cryptocurrency comes at the expense of other currencies. Every time someone in china sells their renminbi to buy bitcoin, bitcoin's value increases while the value of renminbi decreases. If that is the case, then bitcoin does indeed have value, and will reflect the differential of the cost of renminbi vis-a-vis its value on the world market.

Easy enough to rob someone for this amount of money too. As Eric Schmidt said (in the context of a hostile government, but it works here too): no passcode in the world is going to protect you from a man holding a gun to your head and demanding said passcode.

Split your loot into 100 pieces and convert to BC one by one. So you get robbed five time out of a hundred, no big deal. Eventually find a reliable trader and take your business to him.

You don’t have to make it totally safe, just safer compared to other methods of evading control.

Can you lie convincingly enough to someone with a gun to your head (or the head of someone you care about) who demands the other 99 pieces as well?

> You’re forgetting currency control evasion. If a businessman from a country with tight controls wants to move money out of the country

Before you can move it out of the country, you have to get it out of the bank, and your bank will refuse to do that with currency control measures in effect.

What I don’t get is that you can’t buy a car with bitcoin. So surely this should also create a selling pressure, unless they just buy bitcoins with the intent to transfer money at a later stage.

Yes you can: https://i.redd.it/d5wrulv2ndjz.png

Yet you do realize that Bitpay just converts BTC to USD, correct?

It's the equivalent of you selling your BTC holdings at market rate and buying the car with USD.