Asklemmy

TL;DR: It's worth whatever a greater fool is willing to pay for it.

Bitcoin is a cult, therefore it's invaluable to the cult members. In reality they're all multi-level marketing pyramid schemes which is what the stock market has degenerated into as well. The former just has more overtly obnoxious shady unethical proponents. It's easier to succumb to greed, selfishness, and seclude oneself from the rest of society by simply buying something that confirms one's fallacy riddled beliefs than it is to question oneself and actively improving society with all of Earths inhabitants, ecosystems, and posterity in mind. Technologically humankind has made great strides, but mentally the majority still thinks like cavemen.

Crypto Cult Science

“Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely. Disregarding all of bitcoin's shortcomings, a financial instrument that brings out the worst in people—greed—won't change the world for the better.” —https://www.arscyni.cc/file/crypto_cult_science.html

My views on it are the same as the DPRK. A tool used by capitalists that can help fight against capitalism.

I don't think bitcoin provides much value in itself. Its basically an asset that is hard to make more of, like money or gold, which are also valuable because of this and that gold and specific currencies are relatively widely used.

bitcoin's supposed added value over money is private digital transactions across the globe in a private way, so that you can send money whoever you want, but it's not practically private, and has so large operating costs (even just the transaction fee) that it's not really better than bank transactions.

so in short: its value is in its scarcity, and that you can speculate on it. the other possible advantages are not realized.

since the value is in speculation, the dollar limit is when investors start selling enough of it so that others will do the same out of fear. which is who knows how much. but it's probably more related to other factors than the dollar value.

It's value is in remittance if nothing else. It's cheaper than western union. But the network is only "cheaper" in that way because it has distributed the costs of running the network to the speculating miners who solve pointless puzzles with monsterously greedy processing farms hoping to win the lottery and get back more than they put in. It's a ponzi scheme, it takes more from everyone who came later and gives the value to early adopters who were there when you could solo mine coins with whatever hardware and a bitcoin was worth 7 dollars in exchange. Look up how many coins Satoshi is supposedly holding. If they were to cash out even a small fraction the whole market would crash. So use it as a remittance service but not an asset if you must. This from someone who mined 27k worth of it back when it was 7$ and spent it all on illicit medical cannabis before it inflated to 50k

Cryptocurrencies don't rely on a central entity and is the Lemmy equivalent to Reddit compared to the fiat currency. I like it and I like the technology but

• Good luck at having a proper stable economy using only crypto. Cryptobros hate central banks but their policies ensure that a loaf of bread doesn't cost 3 times as much the next day. I'd rather have a central trusted authority than not having one
• Bitcoin by itself sucks. It was the first crypto so it's the most common but it's slow, heavy and costly to operate and to transact on

In the same way that MLM and Ponzi schemes are worth something.

How profitable it is is directly proportional to how willing you are to fuck over everyone around you. To how much of an asshole you are.

Bitcoin doesn't even attract criminals as it's traceable. You can easily tell who bought what and traded what. Since all the exchanges are KYC, no criminal worth their salt would use Bitcoin. Instead, they would rather use Monero. The only people buying and selling Bitcoin are people who want to gamble on it getting higher

There is a limited amount of Bitcoin, and some of it is lost in forgotten wallets, so the total volume is constantly falling. This may partially increase the price.

But in reality, as in any speculative market, the price of bitcoin depends mainly on faith in it and speculation about world events (some kind of cataclysms, regular statements of this or that person about cryptocurrency, etc.)

The main real value can only be found in countries that are disconnected from SWIFT. However, almost no one appreciates this because there are only 5 officially disconnected countries. However, if this list continues to grow, cryptocurrencies (including Bitcoin) will become more prevalent in international transactions.

Crypto is as valuable as you want it to be because it is not real. Not being real is a big problem for a currency.

Paper money isn't worth anything innately. Gold isn't either. Not diamonds. Nothing has innate worth except food, air, drinking water, and possibly shelter.