Bitcoin value based mostly on belief | Hacker News Reader

Bitcoin value based mostly on belief

sociable.co

3 pointsegusa4 comments

These ideas are very, very old - Adam Smith and John Locke were writing about the difference between an item's "use value" (how useful it is) and its "exchange value" (what you can trade for it) in the 1700's, and Karl Marx spent a lot of time on this in his book Capital, first published in 1867.

I guess it's worth restating this stuff (because obviously everyone didn't get the memo) but it's misleading to present these insights as if they were new. It may be that the ideas have never occurred to some people before - but while it's nice to think up smart things all by yourself, it's even nicer to begin with an education about what's already been figured out, so one can work on new problems instead of centuries' old problems.

This is such a hilarious non-article. Just a bunch of people being quoted repeating Econ-101 truisms, and even those presented in a shaky manner.

> "Kardashian is only famous for being famous, as she enjoys no other intrinsic, artistic value as a performer or entertainer."

Even if she did have artistic talent, the 'value' of that talent would still be based on whether people wanted to listen to her or watch her perform, so it's still fundamentally linked to her desirability and people's belief in it or valuation of it.

As opposed to which fiat currency?

I think that Bitcoin has done one thing really well and that is to make people understand more about money and how it works. This argument that it has no intrinsic value can be applied to every fiat currency used the world over. Whenever someone asks this I ask them what intrinsic value EUR, GBP or USD has, some people genuinely think/thought that the bank of England will exchange you £10 worth of gold for a £10 note. Explaining to them that not only is this not true but that there is nothing that gives a £10 note any value other than other people believe it to be worth £10 is a real eye opener for them. Explaining then that bitcoin is worth $x because people think it is worth $x makes so much more sense after that.

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