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Comment by vasilipupkin | Hacker News Reader

Sure, I am not saying it will be worth zero ever. I am saying it can become worth a lot less than today in a matter of days. Part of the problem that I have is I have no idea how to value bitcoin. I can sort of understand how to roughly value a company. But bitcoin I have no idea.

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There's something of a practical floor on price at the cost of the electricity to mine a coin times the lowest rate of electricity available at the moment. (Somewhere in the realm of $500 AFAIK)

Now, since the difficulty changes over time I could imagine that not being as high as people think (e.g. if mining companies abandon bitcoin for other currencies), but there is a real world equivalent to book value.

that argument makes no sense to me personally. For example, if I rented a warehouse, filled up that warehouse with iphones and hired workers to systematically destroy those iphones with hammers, there would be a cost to that activity. but it wouldn't a price floor on anything. The thing itself has to have value, the cost of the thing is not a price floor

You should make a blockchain based on smashing an iPhone taking a picture of it and then hashing the picture. You could probably make a lot of money and drive up the value of old iPhones. Revolutionary new proof of work algorithm.

Call it Instachain or something.

On a completely serious note, I am happy to pay 1 or more developers to help me create a bitcoin fork. why not?

It's like gold, it's an asset (technically a ledger) not a currency, it's an asset because people want it, and like gold has practically no uses other than being shiny.

If the history of technology is any indication it will become obsolete before becoming devalued as cryptofinance people move on to better scams / technology.

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