[Asdfbla]

At least traditional modern financial instruments still have some connection to an underlying real-world market, even if they are 10 layers of financial abstraction removed from reality. They can also always sort of justify it by saying that it provides liquidity and so on.

Harder to justify what the point of Bitcoin financial instruments is though, since it can't really be used for much at all in its current state. Maybe if it stabilized and became a proper store of value (whether the incentives to keep a cryptocurrency stable are even there remains another question), but now it's just so hype driven.

I guess ultimately 'the point' of it all it doesn't matter, people can trade in imaginary goods no problem. Still exposes the strangeness of modern financial markets.

[sametmax]

> At least traditional modern financial instruments still have some connection to an underlying real-world market

In 2012, 50% of of US trading was considered "automated high-frequency trading".

[pedrocr]

The same will hold for Bitcoin almost surely. The fraction of transactions that are speculation and the fraction of holdings that are speculations are very different things. Most stock market transactions are speculation but they don't hold capital for very long. But most stock holdings are not speculation, they're just boring holdings of assets by pension funds, retail investors, etc.