[rafaelero]

Bitcoin is wealth in the cloud. There's immense utility in being able to digitalize your wealth, including higher mobility and, since it is a decentralized network, assurance that it won't be inflated, confiscated and that you will have the freedom to transact it with whoever you want.

[vasilipupkin]

What does that mean ? Most wealth is in the cloud, you don’t need Bitcoin for this. I don’t have any paper stock certificates.

[TimJRobinson]

And yet if you were to visit Iran and attempt to access that wealth you'd quickly discover how little of that wealth is actually yours.

It's not just that it's in the cloud, it's the only form of wealth you can keep digitally AND only you have access and control over it.

Maybe that's fine because you're a good citizen who follows the rules, but some people are born into places where they don't get the privilege of a fair financial system, or the system changes on them.

[vasilipupkin]

But all this is circular logic. You can’t say something is valuable because it’s digital. Why is it wealth in the first place is the question. Wealth is something that represents concrete value.

[rafaelero]

Not really. Most wealth is based on physical stuff like houses, factories and offices.

[epolanski]

Cool.

Going on GitHub and downloading core code and deploying a new coin based on Bitcoin or some other crypto.

I'll call it HackerNewsCoin.

Didn't know it was that simple to create "wealth".

What a foolishness to think that something that has no intrinsic value can constitute wealth. Don't confuse price with value.

It really is true crypto combines all that people don't understand about economy with all that people don't understand about technology.

[WXLCKNO]

Plenty of people have done that and captured some value. Bitcoin has the most secure network of its type and that has inherent value, it's also perceived to have value by millions of people around the world as opposed to your random fork.

Not sure if you see that it's your understanding of the world that's off here.

[epolanski]

You're simply describing consensus, which was the point you missed in my previous post.

Currencies are not wealth, none of them, cryptocurrencies even less.

Money is worthless, rich people don't have money. They have art, companies, land, bonds, cars, boats, airplanes, but very little money.

The financial illiteracy of crypto cultists really has no end.

[jonkho]

Money is a social construct. Other social constructs are countries and borders. They only exist due to social consensus and is a pure social construct. Social constructs do have real impact on your individual well-being though and should not be trivialized.

[mxsjoberg]

art is also worthless. crypto and art is basically the same thing

[rafaelero]

> What a foolishness to think that something that has no intrinsic value can constitute wealth.

Honestly, I am also amazed that humans make something like that happen. But we do. Otherwise gold wouldn't have so much value.

[epolanski]

Gold is crucial in electronics, jewellery, biochemistry.

Also, can't be forked, cloned or replaced by some gold 2.0 with smart contracts or bigger block size.

Seriously, imagine comparing a currency, let alone a cryptocurrency to gold.

Foolishness never ends.

[rafaelero]

Gold was a currency and a store of wealth for a long time for multiple societies (even when most of those use cases you listed didn't exist). If only they had the knowledge and wisdom of epolanski from 2024 they wouldn't have made this mistake...

[lmm]

Pretty sure that every society that unilaterally adopted gold used it for jewellery first, and only started using it as a currency and store of wealth once its value had already been established.

[rafaelero]

Sure, that's because a good piece of jewelry shares the same property of a good money: its scarcity. Gold was introduced to humanity as an ornament, but eventually humans discovered a better use for it.

[cesarvarela]

You can also print dollar bills, and they will have no value either.

[ericd]

BTC's value is the massive network securing it, and the trust in the brand's security and resistance to debasement. Its value lives in peoples' head, similar to many other assets.

[mistercheph]

> combines all that people don't understand about economy with all that people don't understand about technology

I agree 100% with this but it is describing you.

[epolanski]

And you've done an amazing job educating me on where I'm wrong or debating any of my points, haven't you?

[gknapp]

These are some interesting points around its value, but it can absolutely be inflated, no? Given that most of our standards of value are tied to fiats, and that Bitcoin's exchange with said fiats is highly variable, the value of your crypto wealth can totally be out of your control.

Fortunately for most bitcoiners who got in early, it's been variable in a positive direction... But not for everyone.

[rafaelero]

Value fluctuation is not the same as asset inflation. The first relates to how much confidence people have on using BTC to represent their wealth in a given moment. The second is a decreasing of the asset's value keeping overall confidence constant.