A Simple Reason Why Bitcoin is not Money

[btc78]

If Bitcoin is not money, then what is it? Well, it is a means of recording membership in some kind of decentralized and self-governing pyramid scheme.

Just to be clear, Bitcoin is Money in El Salvador, they consider BTC as money in a legal way, but there are not many countries that follow this practice.

Additionally central african republic joined el salvador as the countries to acknowledge bitcoin as a currency even with only these two countries that recognize bitcoin as their country’s currency there’s still a lot of countries that recognize bitcoin legally such as the us, canada, eu, france, and australia.

[Fara Chan]

Additionally central african republic joined el salvador as the countries to acknowledge bitcoin as a currency even with only these two countries that recognize bitcoin as their country’s currency there’s still a lot of countries that recognize bitcoin legally such as the us, canada, eu, france, and australia.

In the future there will also be more countries that will follow in the footsteps of all these countries in entrusting Bitcoin as a legal currency in their respective countries. Because the interest of many countries really depends on the progress of countries that have already adopted Bitcoin, such as the Central African Republic and El Salvador. This will be very possible because I am sure there are many people from different countries who are very interested in Bitcoin and hope that Bitcoin can become a legal currency in all countries in the world.

[Solosanz]

And still, nothing changes. Ad hominem attacks, red herrings, opinions, theories, irrelevant points, and the usual crypto propaganda. But not a single responder addressed the argument.

It is really fascinating how everyone vehemently refuses to discuss about the reality so simple and so obvious.

If you can't accept other user arguments it means you need to grow your skin thicker. Most of users are correct, you're the one who understand it incorrectly.

1 BTC = 1 BTC similar to 1 USD = 1 USD.

Additionally central african republic joined el salvador as the countries to acknowledge bitcoin as a currency even with only these two countries that recognize bitcoin as their country’s currency there’s still a lot of countries that recognize bitcoin legally such as the us, canada, eu, france, and australia.

Seems you're still not aware, Central African Republic is no longer accepting Bitcoin as legal tender.

For a complete list, you can check this site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cryptocurrency_by_country_or_territory

[CryptoHeadlineNews]

Money is defined as a commodity that can be used to buy any other commodity. Or as a medium of exchange, a store of value and a unit of account. But these definitions are generic.

Now we finally come to Bitcoin. Bitcoin is said to be money. But is that true? Given the above, we can determine this quite easily. All we need to do is answer the following question: can Bitcoin be used for a concrete, practical purpose besides being traded? And here the answer is resolutely - no.

I have bought smartphone with Bitcoin, I have also bought an LG 32 inches Television with Bitcoin too, and there are many online store who accept the use of Bitcoin for buying goods and paying for services rendered. So what other kind of concrete practical purpose do you need more than what I have just explained above? Because if Bitcoin wasn't money, nobody will be investing in it, Bitcoin is both a money and an asset, which is why it was able to dominate both gold and fiat currencies when it comes to long term investment. So please, if you don't know much about Bitcoin, it's better to ask questions, than floating with your superficial level of knowledge.

However, whichever owner of an address holds the points, cannot do anything with them except send them to another bitcoin address.

Exactly the same way a person who owns fiat can not do any other thing by give it to the next person in exchange of goods and services

For example, they used to give two pizzas for 10 thousand bitcoins, and today they give the equivalent of a whooping 1,000 houses for the same number of bitcoins. This is a nice practical confirmation of the fact that Bitcoin is not money. It works as money because it is exchanged but is not money because it is purposeless.

The same way the value of an item appreciates with time, that's exactly what happened to this Bitcoin, which fiat of not an exception to it, because the number of items $100 could buy for you 10years ago will definitely not be the same today, as the price of goods have skyrocketed (i.e the value of the fiat depreciated), unlike Bitcoin whose value appreciated massively.

[decodx]

<...>
Bitcoin is still purposeless, worthless and useless. It always was and it always will be.

Yep! And the Earth is also flat and the lizard people rule. So, what else is new?

So while healthy skepticism is always good, anyone who just dismisses Bitcoin as some scheme or fad isn't really looking at the full pictur.  At this point, its clear Bitcoin is here to stay as a legitimate financial asset. Therefore, your personal opinion about its usefulness has no priority over the opinion of millions of other people.

[Rikafip]

And still, nothing changes. Ad hominem attacks, red herrings, opinions, theories, irrelevant points, and the usual crypto propaganda. But not a single responder addressed the argument.

That's because people here are finally realizing that there's no point having a serious discussion with you because you didn't come here to discuss with an open mind but instead to troll and have fun.

You are not without the purpose though as you are helping many members to fill their signature quotas and earn some bitcoin they can spend on some very real things that can be purchased with it. So please continue. 

[Essential10]

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency that does not have a country agreement or government fixed price like fiat currency. Because it's decentralized, every bitcoin holds the same value, you can use it as a stable value.  Need to think deeply Like every currency, Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency or digital currency created using a distributed ledger technology (blockchain). It is the most well-known cryptocurrency and allows transactions between people using a secure and reciprocal exchange. In this situation, it cannot be a currency, since its pass has no physical form and is not regulated by any government or central system.

[adultcrypto]

If Bitcoin is not money, I wonder what then is money. Bitcoin have all the attributes of money and accepted by a large number of people probably bigger than the population of many countries. Every country have their currency that remain a legal tender and medium of exchange within their jurisdiction and to use a countries currency in another country requires it be exchanged via the agencies responsible for this as their business. This is how the cryptocurrency exchanges function for the digital world; they exchange Bitcoin for any other currency.  If I move to Canada, I have to change my currency to the Canadian Dollar that is the accepted currency within Canada.

As long as there are many people that recognise Bitcoin as a means of payment for goods and services, it is indeed money.

Associating Bitcoin to Ponzi scheme seems like one of those fud that will fade away soon.

[philipma1957]

A) Why's Bitcoin not money?
Because it is purposeless. Meaning, when bitcoins are bought they can never be used for anything, and whoever holds them must ultimately sold them - dump them on someone else.

Due to the lack of a purpose whose fulfilment would generate a specific amount of benefit, there's no pivot for estimating how many bitcoins to accept for goods or services and is, thus, impossible to perform a rational trade.

Let me use your words exactly, purposeless means aimless, meaningless but Bitcoin does have aim, its aim is to be used as a decentralized P2P payment method and although it hasn't fully achieved this when it comes to adoption but that doesn't mean people aren't using it as a P2P payment currency. Just because we see more of centralized services dominating the industry doesn't mean we don't have those using Bitcoin as it was intended to be used. What is money if I may ask, according to google; (money is a current medium of exchange in the form of coins and banknotes.) Isn't Bitcoin been used as a medium of exchange or isn't that it's purposes?, the population using Bitcoin as a means of exchange isn't large but that doesn't mean it isn't been used. It has been legally accepted in some countries as a medium of exchange while in other countries although it isn't been legalized but still it's been ued as we have services accepting Bitcoin as a means of payment.

B) Why is Bitcoin a pyramid-style scheme?
Because whoever invested purposeful items in it cannot get such items back without new investors.

That's just your mindset and not the reality, if we're talking about ponzi schemes then fiat is more of a ponzi scheme. Bitcoin is a digital currency and its investment features are just like any other currency trading in the market. People invest in USD and hold it and for you to make profits they have to sell to the new investors coming into the market. People buy stocks and sell to new investors coming into the market. When it's an investment the earlier buyers sells to others coming into the market later and that's just how it works. Currencies can be used as an Investment too so that's what is just happening with Bitcoin. Ponzi scheme businesses don't have any utility but rely on new users to continue operating but Bitcoin don't rely on new users as it can be traded over and over again, new users are just an additional bonus that increase the adoption.

Let's me help you because I see you have problems with understanding the basics concepts of reality. Consider this experiment. Suppose you are an extremely rich person and you pay off all the current participants of the Bitcoin pyramid scheme. Or as you people would say, you buy all the bitcoins in circulation.With the current prices that's 692,167,490,070 USD. After that all the Bitcoin trading stops.

Now, if Bitcoin is purposeful that means you would somehow have to use it to help people or yourself, that is, get some kind of benefit from your bitcoins. So, can you do that? You've just spent a tone of money and now you hold all the bitcoins. What can you do with your purchase? Well, you cannot do a damn thing. You just watch number 19,528,325 on the screen and that's it. Your bitcoins are completely useless and purposeless.

But now let's apply our experiment to something purposeful. Food. Suppose you bought food for $692,167,490,070 USD. With such a purchase you could feed a lot of hungry people for a long time. That's what it means for something to have a purpose in reality - it can benefit people. You see how simple it is? What about euros? What if you bought euros for $692,167,490,070 USD? Well, euros are issued as debt owed to the banks. Their purpose is to be returned to the banks. That means that with your purchase you could make a lot of people happy by paying off their loan debt. You could save them from foreclosures upon their property. That's what it means for something to have a purpose in reality - it can benefit people. Purpose is not something that you can come up with in your imagination. No matter what you say about Bitcoin, no matter think about Bitcoin, in reality, Bitcoin\\

"My own thread"
 is still purposeless, worthless and useless. It always was and it always will be.

Dude your thread "is still purposeless, worthless and useless. It always was and it always will be."

Op please note your own words are a perfect description of your thread. Thanks for writing it up so well.

I just added a small correction.

[HelliumZ]

An important argument that Bitcoin is not money is that if Bitcoin were money, the supply of Bitcoin would increase every year like money. The central bank prints money every year with special permission but can never supply more than the fixed supply of bitcoins. So money has inflation but Bitcoin has no inflation. Bitcoin takes off where money fails. The value of money decreases day by day but the value and popularity of Bitcoin increases with time.

[Tony116]

An important argument that Bitcoin is not money is that if Bitcoin were money, the supply of Bitcoin would increase every year like money. The central bank prints money every year with special permission but can never supply more than the fixed supply of bitcoins. So money has inflation but Bitcoin has no inflation. Bitcoin takes off where money fails. The value of money decreases day by day but the value and popularity of Bitcoin increases with time.

Money is simply understood as a unit of measurement, used to exchange goods, so any asset that performs those functions can be called money. What fiat money can do, bitcoin can do too, so if bitcoin is not money, then what is bitcoin? Just because the government doesn't consider bitcoin a currency doesn't mean bitcoin isn't a currency.

Fiat is a centralized currency and controlled by the government, they use money to maintain the economy but when things get out of control they have no way to deal with it and printing money is the only way they can do it. That causes severe inflation, while bitcoin is a decentralized currency and it was created to overcome the problems that fiat currencies face.

[PepeLapiu]

OP is simply making the argument that money needs to have intrinsic value in order to be money. That the money needs to have some other purpose outside of being used as a means of exchange.

I strongly disagree.

I would argue that apples make a poor means of exchange. I don't want to dump 5 truckloads of apples at the dealership to buy my next car.

By far, in human history, the most popular money has been good and silver. And those basically have had no real purpose other than being money until recently. And I have to stress that wearing gold jewelry is completely useless unless you want to show of how much money you have.

Not to mention fiat which has absolutely no value outside if being money. Unless you run out of toilet paper, I suppose.

All it takes for something to be used as money is for you and me to agree it has value. If you sell your bike to me, and I offer you 100 units of whatever, if you don't recognize that my units have value, than there is no deal.

My Canadian $ is worthless in Honduras. Your US $ is worthless in Russia or North Korea. But Bitcoin has value anywhere you go in the world. If you don't think it has value, you get to keep your bike and I keep my Bitcoin. Simple as that.

[BITCOIN4X]

I can't use bitcoin as money in my country, especially in the real world, but bitcoin is a high-value asset. Bitcoin is money in other countries, it has been legalized and adopted everywhere. Bitcoin is not required to be a legal currency in all of country in the world, but it is more likely to be accepted as the best payment option with various advantages compared to other payments. You don't need to queue for hours at the bank in the middle of rush hour to send more money across borders, bitcoin is a great option to choose.

Bitcoin is a currency in another country, but you are not required to recognize it as currency. Even without recognizing it as money, I think you can still use it as a means of online payment wherever Bitcoin is accepted. It's just that, if you don't recognize it as money then I have no reason why you should debate it with those who have accepted it as currency.

[NotATether]

Due to the lack of a practical purpose whose fulfilment would generate a specific amount of benefit, there's no pivot for estimating how many bitcoins to accept for goods or services and it is impossible for market participants to perform a rational trade.

Practical purpose => whatever people want to sell to the public.

how many bitcoins to accept for goods or services => defined by the exchange rates. Or, how many coins are being bought at one particular time.


It is meaningless to go around and talk about "buying the entire supply of bitcoins" because nobody has 600 billion dollars in CASH. Hell, the entire Rothschild family doesn't even have 600 billion together.

Some groups have 600 billion dollars if you include illiquid assets that cannot be sold easily like real estate and stocks. You're trying to tell me that somebody can just dump these assets on the market to get enough money? That's not going to happen, ever, because 1) the rich don't want to be taxed on it, 2) it will crash the global economy in the process, for what? Just to buy all bitcoins?

[Blitzboy]

I can't use bitcoin as money in my country, especially in the real world, but bitcoin is a high-value asset. Bitcoin is money in other countries, it has been legalized and adopted everywhere. Bitcoin is not required to be a legal currency in all of country in the world, but it is more likely to be accepted as the best payment option with various advantages compared to other payments. You don't need to queue for hours at the bank in the middle of rush hour to send more money across borders, bitcoin is a great option to choose.

Bitcoin is a currency in another country, but you are not required to recognize it as currency. Even without recognizing it as money, I think you can still use it as a means of online payment wherever Bitcoin is accepted. It's just that, if you don't recognize it as money then I have no reason why you should debate it with those who have accepted it as currency.

It's sad to hear that bitcoin isn't accepted as money in your country. This kind of mistake goes against the very idea of decentralized banking systems being smart. Indeed, Bitcoin gets rid of the need for boring and old-fashioned things like waiting in line at banks. It also has many other perks that traditional payment systems don't have. It's really hard to understand why people don't want to fully embrace it.

But you were smart to see that bitcoin has value as an object and a possible way to pay for things online. No matter how things stand with crypto in your country, the world is steadily moving toward accepting it, which is clearly changing the financial world. People who stubbornly refuse to admit it are only delaying the eventual change in the way money works.

[Mr. Magkaisa]

      -   I don't believe that Bitcoin is not money because I can exchange the bitcoin I earn from stablecoins to fiat here in our country to a local wallet that also accepts exchange via p2p.

If there is any understanding that the OP has in the matter we are talking about, then Bitcoin does not give a guarantee that it will be able to give profit to anyone because it depends on the decision that we will make so that we can have a profit via Bitcoin.

[FatFork]

This dude just won't quit! I've seen him around here for years, posting the same tired nonsense from different accounts. 

He'll make a new profile when he gets banned or tagged, but anyone whos been here a while can tell it's the same person.  His writing style and fixation on certain topics gives him away every time.

We've seen him use fxsurfer, antikvark, Antithesis, Snowshow and probably more and  don't waste your time responding - he just wants the attention.  Better to ignore repetitive trolls and not feed their need for attention and drama.

[Mauser]

Now we finally come to Bitcoin. Bitcoin is said to be money. But is that true? Given the above, we can determine this quite easily. All we need to do is answer the following question: can Bitcoin be used for a concrete, practical purpose besides being traded? And here the answer is resolutely - no. Namely, the way Bitcoin was created, is that its author came up with a protocol that assigns virtual points (bitcoins). Points are assigned to bitcoin addresses and stored in a peer-to-peer database.

Sorry, but I strongly disagree with your assessment of Bitcoins. Why do you think that Bitcoin can't be used for any real-life purposes besides being traded? There are already people who receive their salary in Bitcoins and use it to pay for a lot of things. Many ecommerce shops accept Bitcoin as a form of payment and as long as the number of vendors keeps increasing every year that accept Bitcoin we are on the right track. It might not be comparable to Fiat currencies that everybody is going to accept in a country, but that is just a matter of time to get there. Even some countries like El Salvador now accepts Bitcoin as a legal tender. So, any Bitcoin millionaire could relocate to El Salvador and only live by owning crypto currencies. Being traded is part of any big currency and it's not what defines Bitcoin, it just comes with the size of the market.

[ultrloa]

Now we finally come to Bitcoin. Bitcoin is said to be money. But is that true? Given the above, we can determine this quite easily. All we need to do is answer the following question: can Bitcoin be used for a concrete, practical purpose besides being traded? And here the answer is resolutely - no. Namely, the way Bitcoin was created, is that its author came up with a protocol that assigns virtual points (bitcoins). Points are assigned to bitcoin addresses and stored in a peer-to-peer database.

Sorry, but I strongly disagree with your assessment of Bitcoins. Why do you think that Bitcoin can't be used for any real-life purposes besides being traded? There are already people who receive their salary in Bitcoins and use it to pay for a lot of things. Many ecommerce shops accept Bitcoin as a form of payment and as long as the number of vendors keeps increasing every year that accept Bitcoin we are on the right track. It might not be comparable to Fiat currencies that everybody is going to accept in a country, but that is just a matter of time to get there. Even some countries like El Salvador now accepts Bitcoin as a legal tender. So, any Bitcoin millionaire could relocate to El Salvador and only live by owning crypto currencies. Being traded is part of any big currency and it's not what defines Bitcoin, it just comes with the size of the market.

Hard to explain something to close minded people so better let them believe what they think about bitcoin since maybe they are not doing a good research about it that's the reason why that statement always come up on their mind. If some people telling me like bitcoin is scam, not a currency and other more they negatively call it I will just simply ignore them since at the end of the day they are the one who miss the opportunity to gain with bitcoins and for sure they will get jealous with us especially if there's a big change happened to our life on financial state by the help of bitcoin which they called scam. For sure this type of guys will realize the importance of bitcoin so no need to explain something since they are the only one who can answer those questions in their minds.

[JamesNZ]

<...>
Bitcoin is still purposeless, worthless and useless. It always was and it always will be.

Yep! And the Earth is also flat and the lizard people rule. So, what else is new?

So while healthy skepticism is always good, anyone who just dismisses Bitcoin as some scheme or fad isn't really looking at the full pictur.  At this point, its clear Bitcoin is here to stay as a legitimate financial asset. Therefore, your personal opinion about its usefulness has no priority over the opinion of millions of other people.

It's not an asset, it's not money because it cannot fullfil a purpose to generate a specific amount of benefit to holders. It's a modern-day investment pyramid where you can get your investment of useful items back only from new investors. Regardless of how nicely you portray Bitcoin to attract new investors that fact won't change.

Now we finally come to Bitcoin. Bitcoin is said to be money. But is that true? Given the above, we can determine this quite easily. All we need to do is answer the following question: can Bitcoin be used for a concrete, practical purpose besides being traded? And here the answer is resolutely - no. Namely, the way Bitcoin was created, is that its author came up with a protocol that assigns virtual points (bitcoins). Points are assigned to bitcoin addresses and stored in a peer-to-peer database.

Sorry, but I strongly disagree with your assessment of Bitcoins. Why do you think that Bitcoin can't be used for any real-life purposes besides being traded? There are already people who receive their salary in Bitcoins and use it to pay for a lot of things. Many ecommerce shops accept Bitcoin as a form of payment and as long as the number of vendors keeps increasing every year that accept Bitcoin we are on the right track. It might not be comparable to Fiat currencies that everybody is going to accept in a country, but that is just a matter of time to get there. Even some countries like El Salvador now accepts Bitcoin as a legal tender. So, any Bitcoin millionaire could relocate to El Salvador and only live by owning crypto currencies. Being traded is part of any big currency and it's not what defines Bitcoin, it just comes with the size of the market.

I don't think that. You don't think that. We both know that virtual points that a protocol assigned to online addresses cannot fullfil a purpose. That's why they have to be dumped on someone else.