the only reason why gold and silver have been regarded as a money is because you can't replicate it. You can only find it. So its scarce. Then they got used as industrial metals in the last 100 years.
You have to understand, the only reason why ANYTHING has value, is because humans say it has value. for 700 years, the British used wood for money and it worked great until they were tricked into switching to paper for currency. It was called the tally stick. The way it worked was simple. They would take a stick and carve notches into it. Each notch represented a certain amount of silver or gold. Then the bank would split the tally stick in two pieces. One for the bank, one for the customer. and the grains on the inside were unique like a finger print. So it couldnt be duplicated.
Then as the customer broke off notches to pay for debts. the person who received the notch would take it to the bank. The bank would match it with there copy. And a ledger would be entered into. And that was how banks operated for 700 years in england.
Its all about the TRUST in the trading pair. Bitcoin has this same feature, where you can not duplicate Bitcoin and put them in with the rest of the bitcoins. Just like you can't grow a tree and carve a branch and expect the bank to accept it. It just doesnt match up. Same with Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is a break through technology. It sovled the Byzantine General's Problem. It allows us to basically email money to each other without creating duplicates. When you send the money, I can be 100% certain that you no longer have that money and there is no third party needed to run the system. No govt. No corporation. No Organization. Just Bitcoin miners to process the transactions. And they get paid in 2 ways. Bitcoin mining rewards and Transaction fees.
the only reason why gold and silver have been regarded as a money is because you can't replicate it.
They were used as currency because of their scarcity and their intrinsic beauty (lustre). They were used as adornment before they were used as currency. That is an intrinsic value.
You have to understand, the only reason why ANYTHING has value, is because humans say it has value.
True, but that is not my argument. My argument is there are other values that we humans give to gold and silver besides their use as an intermediate for barter. Long before they were currencies they were sought after for their beauty. Bitcoin, like the paper dollar or the wooden dollar has no equivalent human given value external to its value as an intermediate to barter.
To put it another way, if Bitcoin did not have the valued property of being an intermediary for barter they would be utterly useless and no one would spend a single resource to create them. Gold and silver however would still be mined (resource expenditure).
I am not saying the idea of Bitcoin is bad. I am saying the implementation, without it being backed (secured) by something with ANOTHER human given value (like silver or gold have), as well as its intrinsic human tracking flaws, not to mention it being primarily owned by the CCP, all make it a very poor choice as a barter intermediate.
"Intrinsic" value is a faulty concept. It's always the case that humans value something based on its usefulness for a specific purpose.
The value is not an inherent property of something but a reflection of people's demand for it. Similarly, something only needs to be "backed" by something else if it is missing the properties that people value.
Bitcoin has many attributes that are fundamentally similar to gold (which humanity values at over $10 trillion), and are often superior precisely because of bitcoin's digital nature.
the only reason why gold and silver have been regarded as a money is because you can't replicate it. You can only find it. So its scarce. Then they got used as industrial metals in the last 100 years.
You have to understand, the only reason why ANYTHING has value, is because humans say it has value. for 700 years, the British used wood for money and it worked great until they were tricked into switching to paper for currency. It was called the tally stick. The way it worked was simple. They would take a stick and carve notches into it. Each notch represented a certain amount of silver or gold. Then the bank would split the tally stick in two pieces. One for the bank, one for the customer. and the grains on the inside were unique like a finger print. So it couldnt be duplicated.
Then as the customer broke off notches to pay for debts. the person who received the notch would take it to the bank. The bank would match it with there copy. And a ledger would be entered into. And that was how banks operated for 700 years in england.
Its all about the TRUST in the trading pair. Bitcoin has this same feature, where you can not duplicate Bitcoin and put them in with the rest of the bitcoins. Just like you can't grow a tree and carve a branch and expect the bank to accept it. It just doesnt match up. Same with Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is a break through technology. It sovled the Byzantine General's Problem. It allows us to basically email money to each other without creating duplicates. When you send the money, I can be 100% certain that you no longer have that money and there is no third party needed to run the system. No govt. No corporation. No Organization. Just Bitcoin miners to process the transactions. And they get paid in 2 ways. Bitcoin mining rewards and Transaction fees.
Bitcoin is a beatiful money system.
They were used as currency because of their scarcity and their intrinsic beauty (lustre). They were used as adornment before they were used as currency. That is an intrinsic value.
True, but that is not my argument. My argument is there are other values that we humans give to gold and silver besides their use as an intermediate for barter. Long before they were currencies they were sought after for their beauty. Bitcoin, like the paper dollar or the wooden dollar has no equivalent human given value external to its value as an intermediate to barter.
To put it another way, if Bitcoin did not have the valued property of being an intermediary for barter they would be utterly useless and no one would spend a single resource to create them. Gold and silver however would still be mined (resource expenditure).
I am not saying the idea of Bitcoin is bad. I am saying the implementation, without it being backed (secured) by something with ANOTHER human given value (like silver or gold have), as well as its intrinsic human tracking flaws, not to mention it being primarily owned by the CCP, all make it a very poor choice as a barter intermediate.
"Intrinsic" value is a faulty concept. It's always the case that humans value something based on its usefulness for a specific purpose.
The value is not an inherent property of something but a reflection of people's demand for it. Similarly, something only needs to be "backed" by something else if it is missing the properties that people value.
Bitcoin has many attributes that are fundamentally similar to gold (which humanity values at over $10 trillion), and are often superior precisely because of bitcoin's digital nature.