Bitcoin Forum

1. Carrington type event
2. no intrinsic value

comments?

Why does something have to have intrinsic value? And I don't know what the first one is.

1. I think in the event of a solar flare large enough to take out the whole internet, we will have bigger things to worry about than bitcoin being unavailable for a little bit. Credit card processing, telephones, money transmitting, the stock market, cell phones, television, and radio would all be unavailable.

2. So? You need to provide a better explanation as to why this is a problem.

The "No intrinsic" value argument has been discussed to death.

I believe the "Carrington event" relates to a solar storm that would knock out most electronic means of communication. How is the current banking system protected from the same event? If anything Bitcoin is more resilient as the blockchain (public ledger) is replicated across 1000s of PCs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859

Thinking about this...Maybe we should go back to using an abacus??

LOL .. some people ...

Bitcoin is going to face challenges. Those two are not very high on the list.  ;)

so if a carrington event happens bitcoin = 0

people wake up to the tulip mania and realize bitcoin has no intrinstic value = 0


it was a nice experiment.  but not real money, by defintion.


this WoW of warcraft, linden buck, facebook coin experiment will end badly.

Oh, then in that case I think everything would be fucked not just Bitcoin.

Looks like ya'll are posting in a troll thread.

nope, land wont disappear, gold wont go poof, cows wont disappear, just btc.

no trolling, just making some hard to hear points.

1. More of the bitcoin network would survive than the existing financial network due to it's widespread verification process. A few Faraday cages can protect and backup the entire blockchain. The servers can be rebuilt and the transmission cables would be unharmed in such an event. How do you protect the electronic verification of your fiat?

2.

Definitions:

in·trin·sic
inˈtrinzik,-sik/Submit
adjective

belonging naturally; essential.

val·ue
ˈvalyo͞o/Submit
verb

estimate the monetary worth of (something).

Placing those two words together is actually an oxymoron. How can you have a guaranteed and yet simultaneously estimated value?

Please tell me what in the world has actual intrinsic value with the exception of your body and mind? Nothing else on the planet has a guaranteed value. I've decided that people who ask about intrinsic value are repeating a popular "buzz phrase" like "that's cool" or "awesome dude!"

1) I also suppose if a giant meteor hits the earth and the human race is wiped out, then bitcoin = 0, too.

2) What definition of money are you using?? Obviously not one the rest of us are using.

you guys hate the idea of intrinstic value because btc has none and its a requirement of real money.


you guys have created your own fiat, way to go, we already had fiat.

the correct one, look it up.

Neither will BTC. The way BTC works is better than the incumbent system because of the internet. I have no idea how even a Carrington event would cause this the permanent loss of any internet-like global communications network -- science is vast, and necessity is the mother of all invention; I'd bet we can quickly find a means of at least relativistic communication that is not interrupted by solar activity... give me ten minutes and I'll propose at least three, one of which will be viable. Similarly, I already have an EMP-case solution for mining, so all that remains is the actual propagation to be solved. Perhaps I'll spend a few minutes, but I suspect you won't be satisfied unless someone goes, "shit! so, BTC is dead then! Thank god for that new fellow for telling us. Can't believe we didn't think of this in the last five years. Good try, gents..."

Stop crying because you didn't get in on time, that's why most people talk about it not having real value..

Since I already answered your questions and you didn't reply you either didn't understand my post or chose not to respond. I'll simply ask a series of questions...

1. With the exception of your body and mind; what do you believe has actual intrinsic value?

2. Do you believe the current fiat is perfect?

3. Do you align more with the political beliefs of capitalism or communism? Which has more benefits in your opinion?

Has already been discussed countless times, I suggest you learn to use the forum search function in the future.

yeah you discussed it, but no answers. sorry, but you got none.

What intrinsic value does paper money have? It's a bit of paper.

1. not btc
2.  current fiat, no. but why replace it with yours. how about real money, 1792 coinage act.
3.  free markets, adam smith ,consitution, yadda yadda

i agree, why i started this topic, finally someone gets it.

What intrinsic value does gold have?

It is over valued by several orders of magnitude if you just look at its usefulness as an industrial metal.

never had any gold obviously.

Or diamonds. They are even incredibly cheap to make in a lab. It has value because someone somewhere a long time ago decided that a clear stone is "beautiful"?

i enjoy mining, building computers, and such.

Gold has intrinsic value because it's a metal which can be used for other things.

they have intrinsic value, if you saw them on the ground you would pick them up and give them to your lady or probably trade them for peanut butter.

Thank you for answering.

1. I've already expressed that intrinsic value by definition is an oxymoron. There is no such thing as guaranteed value with the exception of your body and mind and only because those are essential to your actual existence and so holds guaranteed personal value to you (Would you accept 1 trillion dollars or a mountain of gold in exchange for your life?). BTC is no exception as intrinsic value is non-existent. Gold has no intrinsic value; value by definition can never be intrinsic. No exceptions...

2. Agree, current fiat is not perfect. Bitcoin is innovation and change in the right direction. 1792 coinage act is not perfect either because of fractional reserve banking.

3. Bitcoin is 100% aligned with your ideological beliefs. Bitcoin is owned by the carrier and always executes a peer to peer transaction while government fiat can never be owned by the user Government fiat is a debt to repay while Bitcoin is an asset which gains equity over time.

Why don't you leave this forum and have a talk with some economists? They will give you standing ovations and throw greenbacks on you :)

Not even that long ago. It was in the last 100 years that the DeBeers diamond cartel was formed and aggressively marketed the diamond as a precious stone.

When compared to other precious stones (eg rubies, emeralds, sapphires), diamonds are even that rare and should be classified as "semi-precious" (like topaz, etc). The only reason why they command a high price is because DeBeers artificially limits the diamond supply.

How often does this actually happen. 1859 was quite a while ago.

I've though about the term "intrinsic value" for several years now. Anyone who is honest with themselves should realize (I hope it doesn't take several years, like it did for me) that "intrinsic value" is bullshit.

Value requires a relationship. You need A to first observe B for value to even exist! B can never have value without something like A to actually assign it value.

Everyone using "intrinsic value" should consider using a more appropriate term, like industrial value, alternative value, multifaceted value, or perhaps onion value (layers).

When it comes to money, these other values are actually a hindrance because they can influence the object's value outside of it's use as money. These forms of money (commodity money) were useful at first, when trade was not global and technology didn't allow man to step outside the role of hunter/gatherer. In today's world, we humans specialize, and we need specialized tools to achieve our goals. Bitcoin was designed from the ground up to be pure money, and that is a feature, not a bug. Bitcoin is money specialized. Arguably, so is today's fiat (specialized money), but fiat has a massive drawback in the fact that it is controlled by a few, to the advantage of those few.

it seems you dont like the idea of intrinsic value and do away with it because you know that bitcoin doesnt have it.

i would hoard gold, silver, diamonds, land, instictively even if society placed no value upon these things.  One only hoards bitcoins when society percieves value upon it.

its nature is fiat, and decidely unintrinsic, mho.

If that is what you take from my post, I must have severe difficulties conveying meaning with the written word.

If you can only come up with 2 problems with Bitcoin, than that's saying something! I can think of LOTS of problems with every other type of currency.

Carrington type event hmm. It's like the possible acute effects on Bitcoin vs the very real chronic effects of the current financial system.

Plus such an event would likely cause a whole host of other issues unrelated to Bitcoin.

no you did fine, was reading between the lines and trying to make my point.

Anything that i give value to, has value.

1 you dont like the idea so it must be wrong, got ya.  i'll gladly carry off all your gold even if it goes to zero.  You can keep your digital bits if btc goes to zero though.  I hope you see a least a glimmer of intrinsic value in there.


2  not my point - a dollar is so many grains of silver - no such thing as fraction reserving a real money system.

3 I'll decide my beliefs, you want to me switch fiat teams, i want real money.

thank you for responding, im having fun talking about these ideas.
 

sure, valued your post.

I really wonder what planet people are living on when they suggest Bitcoin has no "instrinsic value". Please consider these 3 things:

[1] - the term "intrinsic value" implies that the thing is of value to itself. It's meaningless. Things either have a utility value or an exchange value, end of story.

Gold has a "generic exchange value" because it was the bitcoin of the day before we had a worldwide electronic trading platform. i.e. was a rare manifestation of something that had a high resistance to counterfeiting, fairly limited supply, was fungible and "worked" as a generic token of wealth. Unfortunately gold is physical, it doesn't travel through wires and so something new has to be found that performs the same function on an electronic network. Numbers alone are not enough because they require a massive amount of counterparty involvement to endorse their value.

[2] - as a technology, Bitcoin has an economic value because is makes a multi-billion dollar counterparty industry known as the banking system theoretically redundant. It has a utility value because it can perform a peer-to-peer monetary function where nothing else can. Until Bitcoin was invented, no such technology had been discovered or invented. Please think about that for a minute - not one single technology existed that was capable of performing this monetary function universally without a counterparty. So it not only has utility value due to the diverse and unprecedented functionality of the Bitcoin network, but it also has exchange value because it works as a generic token.

[3] - Anything that works as a generic token of exchange automatically accrues to multiples of it's utility value because there are just so few things that have satisfactory properties to perform this function. Try going to a funfare and purchasing one of those plastic tokens that let you go on rides. Now compare the price of the plastic token at the funfare and the price an equivalent piece of plastic in the hardware shop. There will be about a 10000% (ten thousand percent)  difference and that difference is the value that the token has while performing a monetary function. It has nothing to do with "intrinsic value", it's to do with whether that thing is performing a monetary, store-of-wealth function or not. The same applies to gold - it has a high value because it's in the role of the plastic token at the funfair. No other reason - not because it's "nice and shiny", not because it's used in Jewellery, teeth, electronics or any other nonsense. Because it's performing a monetary function as a token of exchange and works as such.

People who don't get this are like aliens from space who land on the planet and see gold as "just another bit of useless metal lying in the ground". I don't blame aliens from space for saying that because they are right - until someone decides to start using it as money. That's when everything changes. Same applies to Bitcoin.

So conclusion: things don't get used as money because they have "intrinsic value", it's the other way around. "Intrinsic value" accrues to something through it's ability to be used as a token of exchange.

1. I have no feelings on the matter. I'm only explaining the reality that intrinsic value does not exist outside of the value of your own life. However that value cannot be denominated in any currency... Gold obviously has value. However the reason gold has value is the same reason that Bitcoin has value. People are willing to trade something for it. This associated value is not intrinsic in either gold or Bitcoin.

Again, how much gold would you take in trade for your life? I doubt you would consider the value of your life in terms of any exchangeable value. That's what makes the value of your life "intrinsic."

2. The reason fractional reserve banking was used is due to the sheer weight of coinage. People would literally be over encumbered if they needed to carry enough coinage to make a large transaction. This caused people to accept paper notes. You can't prevent fractional reserve banking under a traditional gold standard unless you force people to actually carry their wealth with them.

3. That's completely understandable that you want real money. However, unless you are willing to fill your pockets with several pounds of coins every time you leave the house; fractional reserve banking will remain a side effect of the gold standard. You can't effectively have one without the other...

4. Try making an online transaction with a silver coin...

With Bitcoin there is no such thing as fractional reserve. You never become over encumbered and you can appreciate all of the same benefits of having real money. It gains equity over time the same as gold or silver and cannot be counterfeit.

I'll be happy to exchange opinion with you and if you can successfully refute my points logically and reasonably I will change my opinion on the subject.

 

That's why I considered 2 types of value in my post above - [1] utility and [2] exchange. Your life falls into category one by definition - it's of value because you are using it and not planning to exchange it. The term "intrinsic" is a philosophical one which means different things to different people. In science and engineering it actually has a proper definition - an intrinsic property of a material is one that is independent of the quantity of material present or it's environment. For example density and heat capacity would be intrinsic whereas weight, volume and kinetic energy would be extrinsic because they all depend on external factors.

If we apply that definition to money, then value is an extrinsic property because it depends on markets. The intrinsic properties are things like fungibility, resistance to counterfeiting and so on. So according to that perspective, Bitcoin shares those intrinsic properties with gold.


I think that modern fractional reserve banking owes more to President Nixon needing to get off the gold standard so he could inflate the money base to pay for the Vietnam war amongst other things.

Also, I think you're mixing 2 things - the advent of paper money and fractional reserve banking. You can have a banking system which issues paper money (so people don't have to "carry coinage around") on a 1 to 1 reserve ratio. That wouldn't be a fractional reserve system, just a banking system.

Conversely, there's nothing stopping a fractional reserve banking system springing up around a cryptocurrency economy, in fact the exchanges probably do a bit of that already just to "oil the wheels" of their transaction engines.


I don't see you disagreeing with me on anything. Also, you said you had no feelings on the subject so I'm not even aware if your making a challenge to viability of cryptocurrencies or not  ???  :)

See, I run a forum elsewhere, and I recognize this kind of comment. You're taunting the people here. Goading them, even. For that, you're a fuckwit and a troll and I care not one iota whether you think BTC has intrinsic value or not. I don't need to defend the concept, because there are enough people that value Bitcon such that what you believe is meaningless.

The people who are attempting to actually defend the concept of Bitcoin in this thread are arguably dumber than you are, FWIW -- we both know the effort is futile and that you're not actually here to debate the subject -- you're here to troll. So seriously -- go fuck yourself.

I was responding to the OP, "cryptomining" but I agree with you 100%.

Fractional reserve banking was a problem even before Nixon. After the Bretton Woods agreement the US agreed not to loan out more dollars than could be immediately exchanged for gold. Needless to say, the United States broke that promise quickly and Nixon only suspended the gold exchange ending the gold standard. He did this to "defend the Dollar against the speculators" so to speak, it just so happened the speculators were right.

Fractional reserve was a problem even in the early 1900's. Coinage was deposited to the treasury and the depositor was issued a note to guarantee the availability of the deposit. The banks would guarantee more than they actually had out of greed. In 1929 the banks weren't supposed to run out of silver or gold. Each depositor was guaranteed that the deposit would be available on demand.

With the exchanges, the sum of currency "in" must match the sum of currency "out" unless the exchange is stealing from its customers... That's a little different from fractional reserve but similar enough I suppose. I would avoid an exchange if it operated in this practice.

I believe crypto currency is absolutely viable. No challenge to the contrary.

I had the same thought initially about the reply to my question.

This isn't a debate because there hasn't been any support from the other side of the argument.

I'm defending the concept of Bitcoin to random people who read this. I don't want somebody who types, "bitcoin intrinsic value" into google to pull up this thread and see that nobody in the bitcoin community can explain why Bitcoin has value.

I don't feel dumb for choosing to spend a bit of my time defending something I believe in. I consider it similar to the propagation of a wave form. Even if it's a small push in the right direction it can influence the strength of the collective.

Why would you hoard gold, silver and diamonds if they didn't have value? I wouldn't want stuff just taking up space in my garage.

Be my guest. I still think y'all are just giving the fuckwit troll exactly what he wants.

(And you're probably not going to single-handedly save Bitcoin by defending it against every random fuckwit that wanders in to this forum. "Tilting at windmills" is the term I would use to describe it).

Indeed, it is.  No matter the length of delay, the bitcoin network can pick up right where it left off once the Internet was back up, regardless of whether or not the outage was a local, national or worldwide event.  BTW, the Carrington Event wasn't worldwide, and another similar solar flare event would also be unlikely to be worldwide.  The hardest hit area would be the side of the Earth that leads into the flare, and high latitudes are better defended by nature of the field density of the Earth's magnetic field, so there would be variations in the extent of damage.  Some banks might have their records competely destroyed, others hardly effected.  Bitcoin would be safe somewhere.

A bigger issue with a Carrington type event would, sadly, be clean drinking water.  90%+ of the population of the United States is dependent upon regular electric service to maintain the municipal water utilities, since most don't have water storage that exceeds three days of regular demand.

Thanks Toknormal for your intelligent, well thought out replies.  People really show off their level of understanding and intelligence when they say it has no intrinsic value.   We've never before in our history had a way to store money securely and independently for free and be able to send specific amounts to anyone on the planet quickly with no fees. This is huge.  People keep thinking it's either fiat or bitcoin, no - there are always multiple forms of currency in circulation.

I see some people here are very emotional about Bitcoins! Lol, joking aside, let the facts speak for whether Bitcoins are good are not.

no doubt people are emotional. When I think what I could have done had I got in on the ground floor of bitcoin with all that money it makes me want to cry. I didn't even know of it's existence until it was in the 100's though and by then the truly easy profits had been made.  I do not believe it will hit anywhere close to $10,000 before a better coin will replace it, and I will continue to look and see which one that might be. I don't believe any of the coins right now offer anything unique besides namecoin, which lets you register .bit domain names which in an of itself is not that useful unless DNS servers support it.

A coin that could somehow limit blockchain sizes, or allow fraudulent transactions to be reversed, providing some form of fraud protection, is ultimately what is needed for it to become mainstream. Assuming any big banks ever do this, they will do it with their own crypto currencies probably set at a fixed price, currencies where they can manipulate the supply to prevent huge price fluctuations... then you have to worry about government taxes.... what is so appealing about crypto currencies now is that these 'profits' early adopters made are basically tax free... if you go and use some bitcoin to buy some platinum, gold, or whatever off a site, that's tax free profit you used.

That's HUGE since people who have to slave away for a living like myself lose a third of their income to the government ALWAYS. Tax free money is huge, it has more value than regular money.  I could kick myself because while I was sitting there looking in black friday forums trying to save $50 on a laptop, I was damn close to buying litecoin as it was hovering in the $2.35 range. Had it not been black friday season, and this surge would have occured a month later, I'd be singing a different tune.

cryptomining - welcome to the ignore list. Nice work!

As a number of other posters have correctly pointed out, it seems that most of these people posting topics and ideas like this have completely misunderstood the misnomer that is "intrinsic value"...

What intrinsic value does anything have, save for land, food and water? (and possibly freedom but I dont want to get all U.S.A. or philosophical up in here). Nothing, thats what.

What "intrinsic value" does gold have, apart from being shiny and nice to look at. Nothing. Sure, we can use it for other things, such as electronics, but this is only a value that we can place on gold because of how we can use it. Sure, gold is a conductor, gold does not easily tarnish, etc. etc. but this is still not "intrinsic value", these are simply characteristics or properties. Everything has characteristics and properties. Bitcoin included. It is how people percieve the value of these characteristics which gives something value, not the inherent-ness of the characteristics.

Bitcoin can be used by people in very valuable ways. Whether or not this possiblity has fully come to fruition in the open market yet is another question - the properties are still there.

AAAAnd I can't be bothered to write the rest of my reply, becuase I see what a Troll you are in other threads and dont want to waste my time talking to someone who will not listen and think about what they have heard, only recite rubbish.

Actually all bitcoins(= block chain) are distributed all over the world. If the meteor hits your gold, your gold is gone. But your bitcoins not!

Yeah, ignore list! If he is good at definitions, he might know, what a troll is... Or maybe he really thinks he is the first one with this question? The intrinsic value of gold is little compared to its current price...

Nope.

Intrinsic value ≠ Guaranteed value

Yes, value can be intrinsic.


Wrong and confunsed.

BTC is never is possession of the carrier while anyone can possess banknotes from fiat currencies.

Fiat money is an asset as well and BTC is also used to pay debts.

That is relative.


The intrinsic value of gold is equivalent to the value to obtain that gold.

10$.

I disagree.

The definition of "intrinsic."

in·trin·sic
inˈtrinzik,-sik/Submit
adjective
1.
belonging naturally; essential.

The definition of "value."

val·ue
ˈvalyo͞o/
verb
1.
estimate the monetary worth of (something).

So to put those two words together in an exchange market quite LITERALLY makes no sense.

Trade value is purely speculative and estimated, always. Otherwise the value would remain constant regardless of the quantity available and would always be invariable.

If something had intrinsic value then the price would never change. Take for instance your life... You will never place a monetary value on your life. This is intrinsic value and as such is invariable.


Also, in regard to number 3. Every dollar you might one day hold in your hand is a loan from the Federal Reserve which will be repaid with interest. You can spend it but you can never own it and you will pay interest by means of your Federal income tax which is 100% used to pay for the interest on the dollar. That's why some people get a tax refund at the end of each year. It isn't used for any other purpose and so the excess is returned.

There should be no income tax on Bitcoin as it has no interest debt to require such a tax. This is the foundation of the income tax in the first place!

If someone produces a loaf of bread, the INTRINSIC value of that loaf of bread is the exactly cost to produce that loaf of bread. But since the baker needs to produce profits to stay in business and feed himself (and perhaps his family) with more than a loaf of bread, he adds value at the moment he sells that loaf of bread in the market (and thus the reason the government tax over the added value - a.k.a. VAT). So when the customers gossip with each other about how much they paid the baker ("OMG, I paid ... for a loaf of bread, can you believe?"), they refer to the MARKET value of the loaf of bread and not the INTRINSIC value.

Got it?

But the baker has to buy all the ingredients for the bread (milk, flour, eggs, etc.), which also were bought at market value. So, which would be the real intrinsic value of that loaf of bread?

That doesn't make the value intrinsic at all. There is no law of economics that guarantees you will sell something for no less than your cost. If such a rule existed the value would be intrinsic.

The baker might go out of business and sell everything he has for far less than he paid. Perhaps the baker stole all of his ingredients and could sell for far less than his competitors. I still see no intrinsic value here.

What I posted wasn't an interpretation of the words it was the actual definitions of the words. I posted exactly what they are defined to mean.

If value was an intrinsic property of matter it would be invariable by definition.

The value is the exactly cost to produce the loaf of bread. Whatever the baker paid the market value for the ingredients or he produced himself the ingredients, the loaf of bread will have an intrinsic value.

Actually the Carrington event itself only affected parts of the world, Bitcoin being distributed would be the last network to collapse.

By the time internet connectivity returned so would Bitcoin from other parts of the world.

It is also very likely that the normal banking system would NOT make such a swift recovery.

Of course my example explain what is intrinsic value. Your wilful ignorance and incredulity will not change how intrinsic value is defined.


Sell a loaf of bread for a lower value than it cost to produce is called loss (which can lead to a balance sheet where the liability is higher than the revenue). The definition of intrinsic value is independent of the loss or the profit generated when the loaf of bread is traded.


Do not really matter if the baker stole the ingredients or he was forced to bankrupt his business, the production of the broad of leaf will incur a cost. Human labour, source of heat and tools will be necessary to produce the loaf of bread.


It was a complete misinterpretation of the concept that both words means.


Nonsense. The discussion is about intrinsic value, not intrinsic property of matter.

Hmmm. Let us picture two bakers. Their production processes are such that one is drastically more efficient than the other. However, the respective loaves of bread they produce are indistinguishable from each other.

By your assertion, these seemingly identical loaves have drastically different intrinsic values.

I don't think I can agree with this.

More efficiency it not necessarily means less incurred cost. However, if is that what you mean, then two indistinguishable loafs of bread will have different intrinsic value. Since the incurred costs for the production of both loaf of breads are different, the intrinsic value will be different as well.

Such a definition of 'intrinsic value' -- one where seemingly identical objects have drastically different 'intrinsic value' -- is useless.

Just useless if you persist to ignore the fact that intrinsic value is not absolute in two identical objects. We are not discussing physics here, were are discussing economics.

No I think this is wrong. If the two loaves are indistinguishable then their intrinsic values are the same even though the market value of their inputs may be different.

Two indistinguishable gold coins have the same intrinsic value regardless of their input costs.

(I think you may be confusing input costs with intrinsic value, it might be a language thing.)

I always laugh when people say that Bitcoin has no intrinsic value because it shows that they don't understand bitcoin. The intrinsic value in bitcoin is in the blockchain and the network.

Some people also say that bitcoin can be easily copied because it is open source, but the clone would also have to convince enough miners to jump on board or else it would get destroyed in its infancy.

There are currently hundreds of bitcoin miners that possess enough hashing power to destroy a new ssh-256 coin if they choose.  

Miners have invested millions in hardware to secure the bitcoin network, and have powerful economic incentives in ensuring that it succeeds.

Also, the network effect associated with bitcoin is powerful and will be very hard for a competitor to copy.

I guess we will have to agree to disagree.

You associate "intrinsic value" as being the cost of making, producing, or otherwise acquiring an item. I suppose you will have to define "intrinsic value" because your definition is surely different from mine. I'm having a difficult time understanding how one could ever have a loss when trading an item possessing "intrinsic value." This would be impossible by my definition of intrinsic value.

I understand the concept of value quite well. It's nothing but a mutual belief that an object of trade is worth a certain amount in exchange for another object of trade... The word which throws everything off is "intrinsic" which would mean that the item of value is due a "Minimum" value without regard to the people trading... I don't think intrinsic value exists in a market of trade. I keep comparing intrinsic value to human life because it has a fixed value to the owner and it's non negotiable allowing the "intrinsic" property to be claimed.

You misunderstood what I wrote in the last part. When I said, "If value was an intrinsic property of matter it would be invariable by definition." What I intended was to mean that to classify any value as "intrinsic" you would first have to prove that the value was in fact "intrinsic." Intrinsic properties are those that remain constant like mass, thermal conductivity, etc...

How is "value" not an extrinsic property of an item?

I fundamentally disagree with your points that the random and completely dis-associated costs give an object "intrinsic value."

In accordance with what?

Well gold derives it's main intrinsic value from it's efficacy as a medium of exchange - as a money. But to keep it simple, most commodities have an obvious intrinsic value. Lumber can be used to build houses and furniture, grain can be used as food, and oil for energy and a variety of industrial purposes.

For the loaves example, bread's intrinsic value is obviously as a food source.

So it doesn't matter what the input costs were for both loaves of bread. If both loaves are indistinguishable when finished then they have the same intrinsic value as a source of food.

I have an idea...

Let's ask 1,000 people what they believe the intrinsic value of 1 ton of gold is worth in USD. Then what the intrinsic value of 1 ton of diamonds in USD. Then 1 ton of prepackaged MRE's (meals ready to eat) in USD.

The last question should be to ask them the intrinsic value of their very life in USD... How much of any of the aforementioned goods would they accept in trade for being killed at the time of trade?

This should make it crystal clear what intrinsic value actually is. Intrinsic value is the property of something that makes the value absolute and any offer less isn't worth the price.

If such be the definition, then surely you are able to provide a citation of such definition?

Yeah, but we are discussing the economic value of goods and not its utility. Your example is consistent, but it not demonstrate that intrinsic (economic) value are absolute for two identical loaf of breads.


Of course it matter, we are discussing economy here.

I think the intrinsic value is all the mining hardware connected to the network.

It had an incredible amount of Intrinsic value until Dogecoin, now it's playing second fiddle.

Our definitions of intrinsic value are clearly different and we'll have to agree to disagree.

On another subject Bitcoin certainly has some unique values

- Largest global digital payment system capable of operating even if the current financial system seizes up.
- Decentralised, verifiable unit of account which removes the need to trust banks/governments/3rd Parties.
- Currently cheapest form of international remittance.

I'm sure there's a few more.

it's fun just to be able to trade and mess with these currencies without having to worry about taxes on each transaction. US government tax code is so obnoxious it makes me not want to do anything recordable (frequent trading of stocks) but bitcoin.. I can just buy and sell, no paper trail.

As for mt gox having higher bitcoin prices... because it takes forever to withdraw funds, higher risk means a built in premium. Only an idiot would buy bitcoins from mt gox at those prices. I'd trust BTC-E's spot price far more... most are in line with that. Mt Gox can be ignored.

The OP is long gone... why is this thread still active?