What you can do with a bitcoin if the USD exchange price dropped to 0

[goldlyre]

I assure you that ...

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[Stephen Gornick]

That's what I worried, bitcoin does not have any forms of such utility, if the exchange rate drops to 0

If I hold a currency that has been made essentially worthless due to hyperinflation like Germany's Papiermark in 1923, do I really care that it still has some value as a substitute as firewood?    Nearly the entire value is destroyed.  That my worthless currecy is still worth 0.01% of the value that I paid for it means in my mind it was a complete and total loss.  Not a 99.999% loss, but a 100% loss.  What difference is it to me at that point if it were to go from being worth $0.0001 to $0.0000 ?

But since a Bitcoin's worth was greater than zero back before they could be used to buy anything (like back when Laszlo had to nearly beg for someone to take 10,000 of his BTC and in exchange send him a couple of pizzas), I think it is safe to say that bitcoins will always have value above zero, as long as the expectations about the network remain  (i.e., that a 51% attack doesn't happen, and that sha256 and ecsda cryptography are not broken).

[gopher]

@DannyHamilton - the OP is about the use of Bitcoin if the USD exchange price dropped to 0, not about the probability of the USD price dropping to 0. Hence my hypotetical scenario describing what could happen if it dropped to 0

I think most of the posters went on a tangent here, hence IMHO the tread lost its potential to list uses for Bitcoin in this most (albeit highly unrealistic) extreme event

[markm]

Okay, try a related category: what things / processes are useful yet are worth zero dollars?

Air? No, wait, cylinders of air cost more when full than empty, next...

-MarkM-

[gopher]

sure, its a good analogy, it may invoke useful thoughts...

what about this one?

1. what if USD collapses to 0, because the rest of the world (miraculously) decide they head enough of this.

2. At the same time, BTC worth in other currencies sky-rockets.

3. Finally, after week-long deliberation, the US Senate declares that they could willnot be able to hadle this new cliffhanger and are ruling that they will adopt the BTC as a official USD legal tender with immediate effect.

4. Then overnight the BTC=(old)USD=1.32xEU.

5. All BTC users say bullshit, we will not allow US to adopt Bitcoin as their legal money, as such use will hugely devalue the Bitcoin.


I say "that's interesting", then reach for a fresh packet of popcorn and a new ice-cold coke-zero can from the fridge.

[DannyHamilton]

@DannyHamilton - the OP is about the use of Bitcoin if the USD exchange price dropped to 0, not about the probability of the USD price dropping to 0. Hence my hypotetical scenario describing what could happen if it dropped to 0
- snip -

Certainly, and my post pointed out three mistakes and incorrect assumptions in the OP and then went on to provide an additional example of "What you can do with bitcoin if the USD exchange price dropped to 0".

[mobile4ever]

Anyway, as long as this community is here, it won't

If this community is what gives value to bitcoin, what happens if it fails? The time is getting short for a valid explanation to be brought to light on this. I think it needs to be an open source solution.

[markm]

Maybe a really simple algorithm such as always stand ready to buy back any bitcoins you sell, for no less than X% of what you sold them for. ?

-MarkM-

[n8rwJeTt8TrrLKPa55eU]

I assure you that Bitcoin's exchange rate against dollar shall never drop to zero because my fund of 210 bucks shall always be there to hold it. Even there emerged a bad guy in the future who does being able to create another lumpsum of 21 million fresh coins, I'll be very gladly to allocate another 210 bucks to buy them out. So under this calculation, bitcoin's price shall only drop to US$0.00001 at the most under the worst circumstance.    

Right.  At this point, Bitcoin, as the first successful implementation of a decentralized cryptocurrency, has nonzero collectible, historical, and sentimental value.  Personally if all 21 million were to be dumped on the market, I would bid against goldlyre to possess them all, and I'm sure so would several others.  There is definitely a nonzero floor to the price.

Specific coins or private keys (e.g. Genesis block, even if unspendable) might have even higher value as collectibles.  Who here wouldn't bid at least $1 in an auction for the keys to the first Bitcoins ever mined?

[mobile4ever]

What can you do with your  fiat when the government calls a "bank holliday" and devalues your money to 0 ?

If you dont have a card and no checks that happens every Sunday in the Western World.

Cash still works.

Then the bank would not be required.

[dave111223]

When the dollar was worth zero, i'd probably exchange to euros instead

[johnyj]

Anyway, as long as this community is here, it won't

If this community is what gives value to bitcoin, what happens if it fails? The time is getting short for a valid explanation to be brought to light on this. I think it needs to be an open source solution.

This community stands for the spiritual support that believe in the bitcoin's long term success

And this spiritual support will not disappear as long as there are people who do not believe in today's debt based monetary system/infinite growth and do not want their financial freedom to be controlled by FED

[johnyj]

I foresee that in the coming years of hyperinflation (FED has produced 3x times of money in a very short time, they will pour out soon), there will be more merchants claim that "we only accept bitcoin" 

[Merralea]

I don't know about the coin itself, but I imagine one could hang themselves with the cord to their mining rig...

[b!z]

Do you really want a house that has a market price of 0 by the way? A 'house' is not always a house.

If it looks like and acts like a house, then it's a house.

[mobile4ever]

I foresee that in the coming years of hyperinflation (FED has produced 3x times of money in a very short time, they will pour out soon), there will be more merchants claim that "we only accept bitcoin" 

Do you see it happening before 2015?

[FreeMoney]

"What is it good for if it is worth 0" is the same as saying "What is it good for when no one on Earth thinks it's good for anything or has any chance of being worth anything again".

You and/or your friends should instead spend time coming to grips with why people value it in order to see that they aren't all going to stop valuing it randomly at some point in the future.

[yocko06]

If we could find some good use of bitcoin even when the exchange price is 0, then it will flourish for sure

Bitcoins can be sent in very small amounts. I could send a message using bitcoin transactions.

E would be the lowest, at one satoshi, and Z would be twenty-six (based on this https://i.imgur.com/H5yqeKX.png). Spaces and punctuation could be accounted for too, but would cost extra to communicate. I could send a message in this way by a series of transactions in very small denominations. You would pay a few thousand satoshi to have a method of communication that is completely anonymous.

If the two communicating nodes had an agreed upon cipher they could encode messages in the values sent, and nobody watching would know what was being said, or who was saying it.

I would put money into Bitcoins just to be able to do that.

I would pay someone to develop an easy to use anon msg service though bitcoin. this would help bitcoin grow by huge proportions. It would need to work on mobile devices though.
 

[cbeast]

I foresee that in the coming years of hyperinflation (FED has produced 3x times of money in a very short time, they will pour out soon), there will be more merchants claim that "we only accept bitcoin" 

Do you see it happening before 2015?

I could see online merchants switching away from credit card to Bitcoin only transactions starting in 2013. I can see Brick and Mortar start doing so in 2015. Apps will need improvement for online usage, then physical wallet devices will need to roll out before making Brick and Mortar purchases popular with Bitcoin.

[Le Happy Merchant]

I don't know of other instances of this, but here is a message sent through Bitcoin transactions.

yocko06 sent me the satoshi sequence 20,8,1,14,11,1,1,25,15,21

The alphabet goes A=1 -> Z=26
two 1s in a row is a space, AA=28



'THANK YOU' sent through Bitcoin transactions.