Quote from: justusranvier on August 13, 2015, 04:17:35 PM

The problem is that the explanations for those observations are not correct, because they are tautological. They show up in conversations with goldbugs all the time.

Where do you live? Strawman City?

Quote from: justusranvier on August 13, 2015, 04:17:35 PM

Q: What is a store of value?
A: Anything that has the properties of gold.
...

Actually, Bitcoin is something I consider a 'store of value' for a close reason. Neither Bitcoin nor gold have counter-party risk, and that is actually fairly unusual characteristic these days and one I value highly because I consider one of most acute risks associated with wealth preservation to be an economic crisis where one can kiss almost anything with counter-party (or theft) risk bye-bye.

What gold has over Bitcoin is that it does not require a free and high capacity internet to function. The only 'bandwidth' that gold needs is a ticker signal and that could be accomplished even with fairly low latency without a functional internet at all. Even then, this need is a nicety more than a necessity.

Under conditions of economic crisis I believe it almost certain that there will be a significant clamp-down on the free flow of information. Unfortunately this is termed an 'internet kill switch' which is misleading. I expect it to be implemented as a shift from simply monitoring internet traffic to actively blocking that of it which is potentially damaging to those seeking to maintain control and shape society. IOW, we will still have access to our porn and mainstream movies from an authorized intellectual property owner through large corporate providers, but it will be to 'dangerous to society' for unauthorized people to communicate directly with one another or to allow subversive ideas and data to be disseminated.

Bitcoin used in certain sophisticated ways which force multiply the bandwidth still has 'store of value' potential to me which is why I am still a hodler. The simple reason for this is that it can at least in theory function in a world which is much different than we see today but is very likely to exist at the time when it actually matters.

That, in a nutshell, is why I am so opposed to growing Bitcoin in simplistic ways which box us in to a reliance on assumptions about the global internet based on the common experiences of today and most people's expectations for tomorrow. 'Dumb growth' hacks off what many people consider to be a vestigial appendage but to me it represents a very big part of the 'store of value' proposition for Bitcoin and one that makes it somewhat competitive with gold.