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by theklub 3147 days ago
It's not really scarce though because you can divide up bitcoins into tiny pieces. It's more of a mental scarcity.
3 comments

Dividing is not same as 'printing' for regular currencies. It won't drive the inflation.
I don't think that means it isn't scarce: if there was a supply of water (and you could buy it in any amount) and people were buying it up and selling it on a secondary market, it would still cause the price to go up.
Water isn't bitcoin though.. you can meaningfully divide a bitcoin down to .0001 and give it to someone. You can't really trade drops of water.
Why can't you trade drops of water? If people were interested (for eye drops it aerosols, for example), why not?
Yes, but that still means that the price _per bitcoin_ will keep increasing.
That's fine, I'm not talking about the price. I just mean its not really scarce when you can divide it up so much and trade it. The scarcity is fake. It's like saying there is only 10 trillion dollars in a bank so the trillions are scarce if I'm only going to trade 1 trillion at a time.
i don't understand your reasoning.

it seems like you're saying potato chips aren't scarce, because I can break the chips in my bag up until everyone in the world has a piece of potato chip, and thereby feed the world.

in economic terms, scarcity means that the supply is fixed. and bitcoin supply, by definition and network consensus, is fixed.

Potato chips have some intrinsic utility. Coins (digital or otherwise) generally do not.

I think this is what makes 'breaking up potato chips' into a million pieces to solve hunger seem ridiculous. Where-as splitting a coin into values seems natural. To me at least.