[tomlagier]

Here's mine: it doesn't seem socially useful if everyone holds a small amount of bitcoin and does nothing with it, particularly if all of those holdings are centralized on a small number of exchanges. I have no idea whether that is the true use for most BTC, but (mod exchanges vs private wallets) it's been the case for every single person I've talked to that owns some.

I just don't get it - we're all holding pieces of this stuff because it keeps going up in value because we're all holding pieces of it? And that's somehow worth the enormous computing cost to maintain the network?

Yeah, I'm sure that BTC is great if you're a Syrian refugee or a billionaire evading capital controls but it feels like the majority of the stuff is just... sitting there...

I'm actually really thankful that exchanges are in the picture because ledger-only transactions aren't nearly as wasteful as on-chain transactions, but still don't understand why people want it. A cryptocurrency seems useful to me, inflationary crypto-assets seem like their only use is to reward early adopters?

The value proposition of BTC seems more-or-less like "there is a limited supply and more people will want some in the future because it has made some people rich".

[rawtxapp]

> but it feels like the majority of the stuff is just... sitting there...

It gives you the ability to actually save your money for a future use. If you need liquidity, you can borrow against it to spend money in other endavors.

Nobody wants to bring their coins to their grave, but whatever you spend it on needs to bring more value than this just sitting there, which means you would expect a lot of unprofitable or very low profit investments to go away (ex: empty housing used as real estate investment in Vancouver).

[tomlagier]

Isn't that true of any asset? Why is BTC better than, say, a bunch of emeralds?

[rawtxapp]

Many people believe it to be the future global reserve currency. Whether you agree with that or not, there's a non-zero probability of that becoming true. And the scarcity means that a central entity can't dilute your holdings as they please, so you can actually save it.

Emeralds are not digital, they are not that fungible, you can't easily divide them, no guarantees on supply, etc, etc.

Also if you look at it historically, it has been the best performing asset in 10 years out of it's 12 year existence which kind of reinforces people's beliefs.

[tomlagier]

> Many people believe it to be the future global reserve currency. Whether you agree with that or not, there's a non-zero probability of that becoming true.

Mayyyybe. I don't think that's why most people are buying it, though. I think it's your last point.

> Also if you look at it historically, it has been the best performing asset in 10 years out of it's 12 year existence which kind of reinforces people's beliefs.

Yeah, this is what gets me. BTC is valuable because BTC is valuable. I don't understand why that loop doesn't unroll, and it breaks my brain a bit. I can't think of anything else that has value _only_ because it has made other people wealthy, and that has so consistently appreciated off of that fact.

The idea that an asset needs _no_ intrinsic value in order to be valuable, or that the intrinsic value may have been defined a long time ago and is now irrelevant to its current value just doesn't compute to me.

[rawtxapp]

> The idea that an asset needs _no_ intrinsic value in order to be valuable, or that the intrinsic value may have been defined a long time ago and is now irrelevant to its current value just doesn't compute to me.

If you want to, you could argue that the energy spent in mining the coin is the intrinsic value.

Intrinsic value isn't as important in my opinion, what matters is what other people think and agree on.

[hanniabu]

Portability. You can't carry emeralds, golds, etc with you. You also can't encrypt them to prevent theft.