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Re:Crypto dominoes fall in the wake of FTX's collapse by zapdrive on Thursday November 17, 2022 @11:07AM (#33640908)
> The coin has no intrinsic value

This is pretty debatable. Bitcoin does have some intrinsic value as a medium of exchange and store of value.

Re:Crypto dominoes fall in the wake of FTX's collapse by chadash on Thursday November 17, 2022 @11:16AM (#33641048)
I would say that bitcoin has extrinsic value. The value it has is because people agree it has value. Imagine I started a blockchain using the exact same code as bitcoin and called it Bitcoin9890812894. It would have the same functionality as bitcoin but a value of $0 since virtually no one else would agree that it has any value.

On the opposite end, a can of Cambell's soup has intrinsic value, because it's worth something to someone regardless of what anyone else thinks. The can of soup that Andy Warhol as the basic for his famous paintings has a mixture of both types of value (surely someone will pay significantly more for that can over any other identical can).

Re:Crypto dominoes fall in the wake of FTX's collapse by tshaddox on Thursday November 17, 2022 @12:35PM (#33642475)
> The value it has is because people agree it has value. Imagine I started a blockchain using the exact same code as bitcoin and called it Bitcoin9890812894. It would have the same functionality as bitcoin but a value of $0 since virtually no one else would agree that it has any value.

That doesn’t seem like a contradiction at all, right? If your fork somehow became well known and replaced the original, then yeah, your fork would have some intrinsic value as a medium of exchange and a store of value.

Re:Crypto dominoes fall in the wake of FTX's collapse by jboy55 on Thursday November 17, 2022 @01:31PM (#33643406)
> If your fork somehow became well known and replaced the original, then yeah, your fork would have some intrinsic value as a medium of exchange and a store of value.

Intrinsic value is a value outside of perceived value. A can of soup is calories, which we need to survive, as long as it is edible, it will always be worth something to a human. Farm land has intrinsic value because it can produce food. Diesel has intrinsic value because farmers need this to produce food. Bitcoin9890812895, my fork of Bitcoin9890812894 has no intrinsic value to anyone.

Re:Crypto dominoes fall in the wake of FTX's collapse by tshaddox on Thursday November 17, 2022 @02:54PM (#33644668)
> Intrinsic value is a value outside of perceived value.

Yes, and we're not talking about perceived value. We're talking about intrinsic value from a peer-to-peer network that's used by many people.

Re:Crypto dominoes fall in the wake of FTX's collapse by throwaheyy on Thursday November 17, 2022 @10:03PM (#33649465)
It has value only from being accepted by a network of people. That’s not intrinsic value. That’s the very definition of perceived value.
Re:Crypto dominoes fall in the wake of FTX's collapse by tshaddox on Thursday November 17, 2022 @11:21PM (#33650243)
No, I'm not saying that the current market price of bitcoin is the same as its intrinsic value. I'm saying that you can calculate a value of bitcoin using objective measures rather than the current market price of bitcoin. Those objective measures can include things like the capabilities of the bitcoin network, the number of types of people using it, etc.
Re:Crypto dominoes fall in the wake of FTX's collapse by throwaheyy on Friday November 18, 2022 @05:13PM (#33663136)
The value of Bitcoin is the sum of its intrinsic and perceived value.

Consider a hypothetical Bitcoin, without the objective measures you describe. Without the capabilities of the network, people willing to accept it as payment for goods/services —- it is a coin that nobody has a use or want for, i.e. an unadopted shitcoin.

The value of unadopted shitcoins approaches zero as fewer and fewer people use it. Therefore, the value of Bitcoin is entirely comprised of perceived, and not intrinsic value.

Another way:

Compare a Bitcoin with a banknote. A banknote has perceived value (it represents one, or several, dollars, which have a stable value and are accepted universally) and intrinsic value (it is piece of paper that you could burn to provide a small amount of heat, in a pinch). The Bitcoin doesn’t even have that tiny amount of intrinsic value that the banknote has.

During the Weimar Republic, people burned paper money because it was cheaper than wood. In that situation hyperinflation led to the perceived value falling so low that it was below the paper money’s intrinsic value. If everyone stopped accepting Bitcoin and its perceived value evaporated, that Bitcoin would not even have the intrinsic value remaining, of heat from a single burning banknote.

Re:Crypto dominoes fall in the wake of FTX's collapse by tshaddox on Friday November 18, 2022 @08:24PM (#33665642)
But you're using a far too narrow definition of "intrinsic value" that is not at all the definition used in economics in finance. It doesn't just mean something like "the value it would have to me if I were the only person alive on Earth." Computer networks, protocols, and other technological systems can still have intrinsic value even when they require many people to use them.
Re:Crypto dominoes fall in the wake of FTX's collapse by bmacho on Thursday November 17, 2022 @11:19AM (#33641096)
About the amount of work to make a toy banking system. I never tried, but there are some download and next next finish coin generators, right? So the bitcoin system is worth about a buck or so. (.. if I want to be very generous, we can add the value of the bitcoin brand, and that el salvador accepts it, some apps already can handle it, but really that's it. It's still negligible.)
Re:Crypto dominoes fall in the wake of FTX's collapse by pirate787 on Thursday November 17, 2022 @11:19AM (#33641092)
I'll debate that- the intrinsic value from exchange is less than the cost to pay the miners to run the network, therefore a negative net present value -- bitcoin is not a store of value, but fundamentally destroys value and relies on greater fools to buy for any price increase.
Re:Crypto dominoes fall in the wake of FTX's collapse by clavalle on Thursday November 17, 2022 @11:14AM (#33641017)
With all of the options these days, I'd wonder about the characterization of 'intrensic'.
Re:Crypto dominoes fall in the wake of FTX's collapse by blowski on Thursday November 17, 2022 @11:13AM (#33641008)
What can you do with the bits that make up your Bitcoin, other than trade them for something else?
Re:Crypto dominoes fall in the wake of FTX's collapse by vntok on Thursday November 17, 2022 @12:27PM (#33642350)
You can prove you actually own how much you want to prove you actually own, without leaking any other information on your identity or current wealth. You can sign documents. You can mount complex escrow processes with it. You can send it worldwide to anybody without even knowing where they live (phone numbers fail), or what their bank is (IBANs fail) or what their email is (gift cards fail) or whether they are allowed by someone else to receive money (paypal fails). You can pool it with friends and set up conditions for safe withdrawal reliant on multiple people agreeing at the same time. And you can receive money from anyone, anywhere around the world, without anyone else's permission.
Re:Crypto dominoes fall in the wake of FTX's collapse by blowski on Thursday November 17, 2022 @12:57PM (#33642874)
Só if you send it to someone, what can they do with it?
Re:Crypto dominoes fall in the wake of FTX's collapse by jboy55 on Thursday November 17, 2022 @01:35PM (#33643455)
Yes, but how many coins fulfill those basic requirements? Why is btc special? Why would any of these coins be worth anything besides some fee to convert-to from fiat and convert-from to fiat?
Re:Crypto dominoes fall in the wake of FTX's collapse by none_to_remain on Thursday November 17, 2022 @01:19PM (#33643207)
You can pay Bitcoin (and only Bitcoin) to embed messages, typically transaction messages, in the global Bitcoin blockchain.

I was hoping years back that all of this would have taken off for payments rather than silliness. I was wondering if we'd see a (low) Bitcoin value determined by the need to pay BTC transaction fees and those fees being effectively locked up until the next block comes