Sukrim



Offline



Activity: 2562

Merit: 1002







LegendaryActivity: 2562Merit: 1002

Re: Copy of the talk I presented at Bitcoin 2013 - Role of Bitcoin as Money May 23, 2013, 02:10:06 PM #15 My reasoning with Bitcoin as money is that it is ideal money BECAUSE it's value (in the sense of "backing" maybe or in the sense of "if nobody else sees this as money, I can still use it in my daily life") is exactly 0, but it's usefulness as money is very high, higher than most other money systems I've seen.



There is nothing attached to Bitcoin that can "cloud the view" so to say, as it is unbacked: no government, no economy, no religion, no country, no physical representation, no counter party.

Once you accept Bitcoins, you accept a 100% "bubble" that is 100% backed by it's inherent usefulness, open markets and faith in the underlying mathematical principles.



I personally see this as a strength, not a weakness, Bitcoin is in my view the ultimate "fiat money" (with fiat being translated similar to "fiat lux" - "there shall be light") - created out of nothing and valued at whatever price just because it is useful, not because you have to or because you might want to do something else with it too. All you will ever get with bitcoins is a ledger entry in a distributed database on the internet. Everything beyond that exists only because these ledger entries are as useful or more useful for being used as money than some metals, sea shells, paper notes or ledger entries at banks (or amazon).



As you already said - the only real way for any other system to beat Bitcoin is to become more useful than Bitcoin itself, as it's value comes from within. Another way would be to keep the usefulness of Bitcoin and add additional "real" value to it, something that I personally would be interested to see, but that's very hard for me to wrap my mind around and I don't even see glimming faintly on the horizon. I have heard some good ideas on the forums from time to time, but they either drift into details, completely different directions (Ripple for example tries to be the best way to exchange something of value - IOUs, not to become ideal money) and I again believe as soon as you strip the value component from these ideas, they become even better money systems again with more open markets, less centralization and more trust in the underlying principles than in the backing.