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Comment by arisAlexis | Hacker News Reader

this is a very misinformed hate article. first of all you can buy a bunch of things with bitcoim even microsoft services. second you can very easily cash out whatever you want unless you are talking of dozens of millions which yes will drive the market down a bit.third it is starting to be recognised as currency in many parts of the world. usa treats it as an asset class too (cboe,cme anyone?). the problem with cryptocurrency is that it created a lot of fanatics against it and that's usually mainly people that hate it that they missed out or sold very early.

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His same argument hold true for stock, everyone cannot cash out at once. So if it is a siren call for bitcoin, then why not for stocks? If everyone wants to convert from stock X to USD and no one wants to exchange USD to stock X is it not the same issue? How does the fundamentals of stock make it different? The bearish on crypto-currencies will argue that the stock has a fundamental value backed by a company but many market crashes have shown us that in reality that is just faith and that when there is a run to the exists the fundamentals of a stock do not matter. The same could be said for futures but even more so.

The point is that in theory when you buy a stock, it doesn't matter if everybody else in the world thinks the stock is worthless. You can hold the stock, collect the dividend and get your value back if you were correct. Even if the stock goes down, if you were right that the time adjusted returns from the stock exceed the price you paid, you made money.

In bitcoin, litterally the only way to get a return is for more people to come in and push the price up more. If bitcoin goes to 1c you cannot get that value back even if you were correct that the "fair value" was above your buy in price.

The fair value is based on the usefulness as a currency, which means other people accepting it. If it is withdrawn so much that the price is so low and there are so few believers left, then this is in fact the fair price, and equal to its utility as money.

Everyone can absolutely cash out at once from a stock. In fact, in many ways, companies would love that to happen. If a totally believable story hit the market tomorrow that the government will prosecute anyone owning apple stock, the stock might tend to be worth 0 because of it, but apple as a company can re-buy all of them for a very cheap price, and then it would increase its revenue enormously.

If bitcoin dropped too much, the network effect could fade to a point it will never be worth mining it again, or used again and some other coin can overtake its role. Much like myspace died after it lost its network effect.

Its completely different. The stock will not go to 0 because 1 cent apple stock would be a bargain.

You get dividends from stock.

It's also a thing you own. Stock in Apple is a stake in a company that sells computers. What is the thing bitcoin produces?

Links to MS stuff you can buy? I thought the vendors all jumped ship because of volatility and fee costs.

> the problem with cryptocurrency is that it created a lot of fanatics against it

bitcoiners 2009: "BANKS ARE A FRAUD"

bankers: (concerned with literally anything else)

bitcoiners 2014: "BANKS ARE A FRAUD"

bankers: let's try marketing this as "blockchain", see if anyone's actually interested or there's a viable use case

bitcoiners 2017: "BANKS LOVE RIPPLE"

banker 2017: "bitcoin is a fraud"

bitcoiners 2017: "HOW DARE YOU SIR"

In the same vein, would you say precious metals are also a Ponzi scheme?

No, because they have intrinsic value as a commodity. That doesn't make them immune to pump-and-dump schemes, but it means you can still trade them on a basis other than their USD market value. For example, you can buy gold to make jewelry that is sold in stores and worn in public. Precious metals also have a very, very long history of being used for currency and as a store of value.

No blockchain-based technology has been able to demonstrate anything close to this sort of intrinsic value. The claims of being an alternative currency have not been fulfilled and show no sign of improving. What they call a "scaling problem" looks unsolvable to me.

Absolutely! The only way you can sell gold is when some other sucker buys it. So when at some moment the price of gold drops to 1 cent per kilogram, all those fools who own it will lose their savings. If you are a smart person, you will immediately sell everything you own for dollars, put them in a bag, and keep it hidden under your bed. Well, maybe you at least shouldn't sell the bed. Or perhaps you could use some of those dollars to make a bed; I'm not sure about these technical details. All I know is that everything is a Ponzi scheme, and that this comment will soon appear at the front page of Hacker News.

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