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Comment by WheelsAtLarge | Hacker News Reader

At this point, saying crypto will go to zero is like saying the internet will go to zero, meaning no one will use it. Yes, crypto can drop wildly but the only way they go to zero is if the energy they use for mining stops. Government intervention is not a threat since there are countries that are actively supporting it. The network effect is hard to overcome. Bitcoin and Ethereum are two that will weather just about everything. Also, both bitcoin and ethereum are development platforms which gives them staying power. The price might collapse but they will be around as long as people are willing to join the network to mine it and use it.

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No- crypto has no intrinsic value. Energy used for mining doesn't give it value. It only has perceived value. If the crypto hype dies, it will drop to 0, even if plenty of people are mining still.

How do you determine value? Ethereum has smart contracts and a large volume of real-life transactions. How do you justify “no intrinsic value”?

No one is using it to do anything other than hoard it hoping that the price goes higher than what they bought it at. That means it has no value outside of generating some hope that the price rises, which is very shallow and hardly valuable.

But that is not true. I end up using crypto to buy things online because some vendors I use give 25%+ discounts for buying using crypto. Saying "no one" uses it for commerce is just wrong.

I think the idea of contracts mindlessly enforced by a piece of silicon is a ill-conceived idea and quite a few people would agree with that. It sounds like a good idea at first glance, but it isn't. Various kinds of mistakes and errors happen all the time, situations change and unexpected events occur. This makes it necessary to deviate from what contracts says all the time and that is just not compatible with what something like Etherum is able to provide. But maybe I am just unaware of a good application of Etherum or a similar technology where setting things in stone is actually a good idea. What is the best existing use of Etherum, how does it benefit from its features and why is it not negatively affected by them?

A system of near instant global communication has no intrinsic value. Calculus has no intrinsic value. A token providing access to a borderless, Permission-less, decentralized, censorship resistant ledger has no intrinsic value. Double entry bookkeeping has no intrinsic value.

Look at anything we call money and you'll see it has 0 value on its own. As an example, we can't eat, seek shelter or get security from gold. You can say the same about just about everything that we call money. The value is in the trust that someone else will eventually give you something you want or need. In essence, money is transferable trust. So given this, we can use anything as long as we can trust it. Cryptocurrencies can certainly be used as liquid trust.

The big question is what will people trade for it.

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