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by graeme
1888 days ago
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Those all have some kind of use value, and a story attached. Gold makes beautiful jewelry, collector’s cards remind people of childhood and baseball flory, art is lovely to look at and a way to flaunt wealth or feel a connection through the ages. You can look at all three and feel a fuzzy glow of happiness as you ponder the attached narrative. My point was that, if the author’s argument is true, bitcoin will only have value as a pure collectible if people maintain some wider narrative that opposes the argument in the essay. No one would collect a sterile piece of cardboard devoid of any story, just as no one would collect “Digital token #385839, definitively devoid of use”. I’m not saying Bitcoin needs to become a useful currency to maintain a value. I’m saying it needs to have people believe it will, or to believe some other narrative about it which makes them consider it as more than a collectible. |
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Gold's current value is not related to its function as a material for jewelry, but from a myth that it is a store of value. If people would stop believing the myth, the cost of gold would plummet and stabilize around the value it provides as a material for jewelry.
Similarly, "art is lovely" is a really stretched argument. If you want, you could print your transaction block hash and consider it pretty as a math-art concept.
So yes, bitcoin needs people to believe in its value to remain valuable, much like everything else that is not a raw utility - nations, religions, money, corporations, gold, baseball cards, and so on.
Heck, even Ferraris would become much cheaper if people only valued them for their function. They cost a lot primarily because we value them highly due to myths and scarcity.