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Re:In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism by ineedasername on Friday April 01, 2022 @10:30AM (#30878406)
Bitcoin is not a physical possession.

My money right now is (mostly) not a physical possession either. It exists as a non-blockchain ledger entry in bank's computer system, and cannot be lost as easily as crypto currency, even if I make a mistake like forgetting my password.

Re:In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism by ekianjo on Friday April 01, 2022 @10:37AM (#30878462)
Dont worry it will be slowly lost to inflation anyway without you doing anything about it
Re:In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism by short_sells_poo on Friday April 01, 2022 @10:47AM (#30878558)
Which is why people are encouraged not to keep their wealth in money. We can get bogged down in endless discussions about the theory of money, but my view is that money is not meant to be an appreciating asset. It is meant to be an easily fungible currency that discourages hoarding so that it's always put to work.
Re:In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism by ineedasername on Friday April 01, 2022 @11:01AM (#30878754)
"Dont" [sic] worry, it's invested, not stagnant.
Re:In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism by stickfigure on Friday April 01, 2022 @10:51AM (#30878603)
You have the luxury of living in a high-trust society with a stable banking system. Even if you assume that current stable banking systems will remain that way in perpetuity, half the world's population does not live under these conditions. Their risk calculations will be different from yours. That alone is enough to sustain the value of cryptocurrencies.
Re:In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism by ineedasername on Friday April 01, 2022 @11:07AM (#30878861)
Yes, I do. I was addressing the issue of losing physical possessions though, not the sociological aspects of how bitcoin might theoretically scale to solve the monetary problems of half the world.
Re:In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism by bluepnume on Friday April 01, 2022 @12:36PM (#30880121)
Bitcoin, just like traditional money, can exist as a non-blockchain ledger entry in bank's computer system. This is how most exchanges and custodial wallets work.

The difference is, you can also self-custody your Bitcoin. Obviously what's in your custody is just a private key; but for all intents and purposes that is self-custody. You are the sole person in control of those coins.

So Bitcoin gives you the choice of how you want to store it. Traditional money does not give you that choice. At a certain point there are physical and practical limits to how much cash you can self-custody (not to mention transport or transfer from one place or person to another).

Re:In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism by ineedasername on Friday April 01, 2022 @06:39PM (#30884042)
Self storage of non crypto assets beyond a certain threshold often end up taking the form of other assets like real estate. Purely from a net worth standpoint it's usually not optimal to have cash (physical or banked) on hand above a certain point.

But I take your meaning and it's a valid point: crypto self storage scales better than traditional cash. If scaling of that sort was an issue for me and self-storage a critical feature I wanted then crypto would fill the need. For the moment I'd still avoid using it for that purpose: I don't consider any coin truly stable at the moment, and if a new one came along tomorrow that appeared to have a rock solid foundation then I'd still want to see a few years of history before trusting it's stability. USDC might come close, but can you have self-custody of it, or trade it outside of the Coinbase ecosystem?

Re:In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism by bluepnume on Saturday April 02, 2022 @12:10AM (#30885790)
You can certainly self-custody USDC -- but unlike Bitcoin, even if you self-custody you still have to trust that the USD backing the coin actually exists somewhere.