This matters. Even gold, at least I can wear it and display my wealth. You can’t even display your crypto wealth like that. It is entirely lacking in any “real” value.
Idea: luxury tshirt made out of a $5 white tee with a wallet QR code slapped on the front showing off the balance of the shirt. Or a ring. Crypto fine jewelry.
I understand cash has this same issue. Assets do not - they provide an actual value to the physical world - which is what my point was in the above statement. A crypto t shirt can still provide value as a t shirt, regardless of the value of the coins it holds. I’ll admit it’s a reach, but just to illustrate the point.
What gives money its value? Well it depends on the money. Fraud, violence, trust, in the case of Bitcoin: cryptography and game theory.
> Breathable air and drinkable water have the greatest real value of anything, but their marginal values are zero and near zero respectively for a number of reasons
Case in point. Sure, abundant now. But when they are not, which we know is actually happening, that “0 marginal value” will quickly become “whatever we can afford so we can survive”.
The original QE decision by the fed was taken during a meeting that has meeting notes that can be downloaded. I highly advise you to do so if you are under the illusion that the decision was made by highly competent experts basing their decisions on hard data and well-made, objective models.
I'd feel much safer displaying large sums of wealth online by posting a wallet than by wearing luxury goods in public.
I wonder if there's an argument to be made that nothing is of any real value unless there's also some risk of losing it.
e.g. you drop your apple in a gutter, or someone takes it from you, or it turns out to have a nice fat worm inside it
If you're looking for a commodity to have trade or exchange value, then it must be tradeable or exchangeable. That's the notion of "inalienable" as used in the US Declaration of Independence: rights which cannot be alienated (separated) from the individual posessing them. Life, liberty, happiness being the three used in that document.
This doesn't mean undeniable, and there might be some value which can be extracted through threats of denial: "your money or your life".
And there are aspects of value which can be exchanged though the good itself doesn't move: title, copyright, and patent rights might be three such of these. If I transer you land title, the land itself doesn't move, but the claim to usefruct from it does.
A hypothetically nontransferable, non-appropriable technical asset is still subject to claims if a superior right or denial of access to that asset may still be claimed.
And in general, a currency which is used to facilitate trade should in general be portable, readily recognisable, divisible, durable, and homogeneous, all attributes William Stanley Jevons proposed in 1875:
https://archive.org/details/moneyexchange00jevorich/page/30/...
(He also claimed money required intrinsic value, which appears to be an error. Rather, intrinsic value exchanges for trust within the financial system.)
That said, an interesting suggestion.
Life, for example, is extremely valuable. Everyone loses it, but there’s no getting it back. If you lose the apple, you can probably get another relatively easily, unless we’re talking a post-apocalypse situation…
It's the web3 version - in web 2 I'd be instagramming my knockoff Rolex I bought in Tijuana
Would you show off real SOL tokens of that qty?
Bitcoin is a 0 calorie apple, today you can exchange it for 1 banana, people who hold it think tomorrow they'll be able to get 2 bananas for it.
At the end of the day we are biological entities, value is what survival and reproduction benefits we think something can provide, and if enough people are paying that price then its value is that price in dollars.