Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by qyv 1943 days ago
Scarcity itself does not imply value, something can be scarce but if no one wants it it still has no value. So the question needs to be what really drives the value of something like Bitcoin?

In my opinion, I think that Bitcoin derives its value from the idea that one day it will become a widely used currency that can be exchanged universally for real-world goods and services. This has what has driven it to become a speculation tool; because at the end of the day when Bitcoin finally becomes a "universal" currency, everyone wants to be left holding a lot of it. But what if Bitcoin never becomes a currency, what happens to it's value then?

2 comments

This doesn’t really make any sense. Bitcoins wild fluctuations make it terrible for a currency and its fluctuations have only gotten worse over time. It’s just a speculators game. If it became a universal currency, you would just convert whatever you have to it. There’s really no path for bitcoin to become a universal currency, because that would require stability. And there’s no path to stability with the current speculation interest. If the speculation interest dries up it would plummet, but that would just continue the cycle. It won’t ever stabilize unless it crashes and people stop caring about it.
What drives the valuation is pure speculation, partly by massive vested interests, and then of course by the masses of cultish believers who own a couple coins and are in on the Ponzi mania. The same things that excites people in Amway.