Bitcoin Forum

I’ve been in this space since 2014, and the common criticism of Bitcoin is that unlike gold it has no intrinsic value.  I always found this hard to respond to, usually saying things like “they just don’t get it,” etc.

But it finally dawned on me. And the best analogy I can think of is as follows:

Bitcoin is like a brick.
To build a house, you need bricks, and bricks cost money.
To build/utilize the bitcoin network, you need bitcoin (or the bricks of the network).
The more scarce the bricks are, the more they cost.
The greater the network effect, the more demand there is for bricks.

Nothing demonstrated this more than Ethereum during the ICO craze.
ICOs were built on Ether. Ether was the brick.
To participate in ICOs, you needed to buy Ether.
Ether became scarce, and thus the brick became more expensive.
ICOs died, and the bricks became less valuable.

This is the best analogy I can come up with.

By definition it doesn't. What you said about Ethereum is true, however, Ethereum could stop existing at any point or have some weird vulnerability, etc etc and would stop existing and disappear forever, hence no intrinsic value. Gold cannot ever go down to 0$ because someone somewhere will always be buying it, even if it's just at 1$ and it's not only because it has various uses in real life but also because it's a physical object and will exist almost forever.

I’ve been in this space since 2014, and the common criticism of Bitcoin is that unlike gold it has no intrinsic value.  I always found this hard to respond to, usually saying things like “they just don’t get it,” etc.

But it finally dawned on me. And the best analogy I can think of is as follows:

Bitcoin is like a brick.
To build a house, you need bricks, and bricks cost money.
To build/utilize the bitcoin network, you need bitcoin (or the bricks of the network).
The more scarce the bricks are, the more they cost.
The greater the network effect, the more demand there is for bricks.

Nothing demonstrated this more than Ethereum during the ICO craze.
ICOs were built on Ether. Ether was the brick.
To participate in ICOs, you needed to buy Ether.
Ether became scarce, and thus the brick became more expensive.
ICOs died, and the bricks became less valuable.

This is the best analogy I can come up with.

Bitcoin is certainly more valuable than gold. It can do a lot of things gold cant do.

You tried with the brick analogy ... the only problem is that brick increasing in price would mean that:
1. Bricks become costly for  people to use.
2. Nobody would like the increase in price.
3. The number of people using and building with bricks will decrease.


Bitcoin increasing in price:

1. Bitcoin will still be affordable to anyone no matter the price.

2. Most bitcoin owners will like the price increase

3. The number of people using and building on bitcoin/crypto will increase.

You see why the brick analogy is not a perfect one?

^ opposite of real intrinsic value or physical value, it actually is wasting intrinsic/physical value atm.

When people say intrinsic value, they mean actual physical value. Gold has a physical use, actually in the future gold is going to cost a lot more than it does today, it actually will be worth man than bitcoin even tho I am a bitcoin lover, not because the price will be higher, but because in the future we will be a resource biased economy, we will need to be one, it is the only way that we can do proper calculations so we do not get check mated (stuck) onto a planet or stuck in a solar system.

We will need every gram of gold to get to deep space. By then Bitcoin will be replaced by time if we still need a currency and have not figured out that it is a team game we are suppose to be playing. Sorry bitcoin has no physical value, sure you can print it onto something and make it physical but that actually makes more waste that is not needed and is the opposite of physical value or intrinsic value as people like to say.

I cannot build a house with bitcoins, I can with bricks.
I cannot build a rocket or computers with bitcoin, I can with gold.

It`s physical value, if we measure time/duration towards it not fiat , it will be able to stop the $lavery system we have atm, people have physical value and can produce more physical things of value (like food). Actually that physical people value is what keeps everyone alive today, producers. (farmers mostly)
As for now it is the bankers and politicians back door.

The people will catch on, I look forward to it.

https://i0.wp.com/amazingstories.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/MDJ_big_brain_alien_thumb.jpg?fit=275%2C275&ssl=1

Bitcoin will be worth more than gold for about 100 years, Bitcoin will die, Gold will not become the money supply, We won`t need one anymore. We will only need to figure out how much resources we need to get to the next world, and if we do need one, it will be time, But I have faith in my species to understand in 100 years, that we are on a team. We will figure out what causes the greed gene and destroy it in the future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQQYbKT_rMg take it from star trek

All the planets are headed towards the core, not just the planets the galaxies. We will have to achieve going faster than light speed in order to not go through the core. Sure we can go away from the core not at light speed and reach other universes, But in order to dodge the wormhole everything is headed to, we will have to achieve speeds that may even be faster than light speed. No one has a real clue how fast everything is going towards this core.

By definition it doesn't. What you said about Ethereum is true, however, Ethereum could stop existing at any point or have some weird vulnerability, etc etc and would stop existing and disappear forever, hence no intrinsic value. Gold cannot ever go down to 0$ because someone somewhere will always be buying it, even if it's just at 1$ and it's not only because it has various uses in real life but also because it's a physical object and will exist almost forever.

https://imgur.com/a/2foTHUY Imagine a invisible jet stream in space (like in water) the things the turtles ride in finding nemo

If ETH disappears as you stated, some other cryptocurrency will take its place. Just like gold, someone will always buy crypto no matter what due to which it will always have intrinsic value.

BTC being a completely digital currency does not imply in any way that it does not have any intrinsic value whatsoever.

Bitcoin is like a brick.
To build a house, you need bricks, and bricks cost money.
To build/utilize the bitcoin network, you need bitcoin (or the bricks of the network).
The more scarce the bricks are, the more they cost.
The greater the network effect, the more demand there is for bricks.

the common criticism of Bitcoin is that unlike gold it has no intrinsic value.  I always found this hard to respond to, usually saying things like “they just don’t get it,” etc.

I’ve been in this space since 2014, and the common criticism of Bitcoin is that unlike gold it has no intrinsic value.  I always found this hard to respond to, usually saying things like “they just don’t get it,” etc.

But it finally dawned on me. And the best analogy I can think of is as follows:

Bitcoin is like a brick.
To build a house, you need bricks, and bricks cost money.
To build/utilize the bitcoin network, you need bitcoin (or the bricks of the network).
The more scarce the bricks are, the more they cost.
The greater the network effect, the more demand there is for bricks.

Nothing demonstrated this more than Ethereum during the ICO craze.
ICOs were built on Ether. Ether was the brick.
To participate in ICOs, you needed to buy Ether.
Ether became scarce, and thus the brick became more expensive.
ICOs died, and the bricks became less valuable.

This is the best analogy I can come up with.

No it wouldn't, if ETH disappears people would quickly exit the crypto market because of the uncertainty created by it. It would mean any crypto can disappear at any time and no one would want to use them anymore, that's not intrinsic value at all.

Intrinsic value is deceiving terms.
When we called one thing is “worthless”, the scammer will called it “undervalue”
Rupee is worthless, but the scammer will called rupee is undervalue
Dollar is value able, scammer will call it “overvalue”
They’re good at choosing words, to manipulate you into believing their scams, how gullible are we to simply believe them based on words of mouth.

The intrinsic value of money is attached to it physical form.

I also used to think like that, but capital in this market always shifts to the next best option. People have proven to not care about one coin going bust. 51% attacks on coins have also proven that it won't automatically translate into a shift from POW to POS because people believe it's no longer safe. Heck, 51% attacks don't even result in price dumps anymore, lol.

Most participants in this market are nothing like the OG's we had back in the days. If one thing isn't doing well, or isn't pumping, they hop over to the next coin.

^ opposite of real intrinsic value or physical value, it actually is wasting intrinsic/physical value atm.

When people say intrinsic value, they mean actual physical value.

because it's a physical object and will exist almost forever.

For shitty coins no, for ethereum, however, considering how many tokens depend on it, if it were to die, all of them would die too, no? It's also a huge cryptocurrency, unlike the others, I'm fairly sure if Ethereum were to collapse for whatever reason, people would exit the market, at least the pros would.

it would definitely cause a massive shakeup in the ICO and collectible sectors as companies scramble to relaunch their projects on another blockchain.

i don't see it happening, though. ethereum is very, very firmly entrenched between projects and security tokens being built on top of it and liquid trading pairs on exchanges, etc. if any existential protocol failure happens, i believe the community will quickly align on a fix and the market will quickly recover. the same would happen for bitcoin too.