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Comment by inter_netuser | Hacker News Reader

The value of Bitcoin comes from the fact it can provide strong property rights to anyone in the world.

There are many countries where the governments have failed to secure property rights appropriately, mismanage their currencies, embezzle public funds, and abuse their citizens in so many other ways. It's disgusting.

Citizens of those countries can opt-in and benefit from Bitcoin and security guarantees it provides.

Billions, quite literally billions, of such people live in such situation today. They have no economic security. No property rights. Even the land they live on gets confiscated every now and then.

....how is granting strong property rights to the less fortunate of the world is not one of the most valuable things in the world?

Bitcoin is a freedom technology, disguised as get-rich-quick scheme.

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This is the best pro-bitcoin argument I’ve heard in a long time! One big question I have is why bitcoin specifically has the value and not other cryptocurrencies. Others provide the same technical security guarantees. Bitcoin has a lot of hash power, which is nice, but that doesn’t seem to provide much additional security compared to other major cryptos, especially if the government of China can ruin it at any time. Why not Etherium, which has a lot of additional useful features? Or some other crypto with lower fees and a higher transaction capacity? One that’s carbon-neutral? I buy that bitcoin is important (I do own some), but I don’t see why the value should go up, or that it should end up being worth a big proportion of the benefit that cryptocurrency brings to humanity.

Bitcoin is the #1 SoV because:

1) it was launched fairly by a person who uniquely had no reasonable expectation of profit when doing so,

2) it was launched first, giving it first-mover advantage, and

3) its proprietors made the very wise choice from 2015-2017 of censoring their populist opponents pushing for Bitcoin to become PayPal 2.0, and instead euphemistically refering to Bitcoin as “digital gold” — the speculative store of value to end all speculative stores of value

The very fact you’ve asked this question in full knowledge of owning both BTC and altcoins whilst also alluding to altcoins being more valuable, and the fact readers can only possibly act on your narrative by investing in the coins to which you allude — obviously only as a speculative store of value — just goes to show why Bitcoin is #1. Cryptocurrencies are simply nothing more than speculative stores of value, there are no exceptions.

Bitcoin provides literally no property rights. All bitcoin does is say this address has that many bitcoins (in this particular blockchain).

It doesn't provide any property rights? Well then, why don't you go ahead and help yourself with some billions in Bitcoin from Musk's personal holdings? Should be easy, according to you.

I think you'll find that it's much much easier to repossess a house, rather than repossess a bitcoin address with billions.

Here's a detailed analysis by a law professor from a reputable law school on Bitcoin as a property rights system: https://scholarship.shu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1676...

> Well then, why don't you go ahead and help yourself with some billions in Bitcoin from Musk's personal holdings?

Give me a rubber hose and $5 wrench and I'll start working on it:

* https://xkcd.com/538/

Once it's transferred what recourse does he have to revert it?

> Here's a detailed analysis by a law professor from a reputable law school

Ah yes, the William & Mary Law School. The same law school that birthed the idea that the US Second Amendment was an individual right…

What are your thoughts on "United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1876)"?

The mythical land where it is easy to safeguard crypto keys than physical properties while people still haven't learned to safeguard their passwords.

If the govt knows about your properties than they would also know about your digital activities as well.

Bitcoin is only freedom for the oppressors in this scenario since only they are allowed to move unchecked and will use it to get out when they realize their days in their country is numbered.

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