Quote from: jaysabi on November 12, 2015, 06:39:48 PM

Quote from: SebastianJu on November 11, 2015, 08:36:06 PM

Quote from: jaysabi on November 11, 2015, 03:41:21 AM

Quote from: deisik on November 10, 2015, 09:22:06 PM

Quote from: Nemo1024 on November 10, 2015, 08:21:23 PM

Once must understand that halving is an essential part of the Bitcoin protocol, aimed at approximating the natural increase in scarcity, observed in other money systems, like gold (as opposed to currencies, like dollar, which can be printed ad infinitum)

The problem is that Bitcoin itself is not natural. As I have said elsewhere (and been attacked by assclowns of all stripes and denominations, lol), Bitcoin, in this aspect, is no different than any other fiat money out there (or currency, if you please), my point being that mimicking scarcity (or any other quality) of its counterparts such as gold doesn't endow it with the resilience and robustness due to their inherent value (entrenched deep in the minds and nature of people)...

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Scarcity is part of what gives both gold and bitcoin value. The only reason anything has any value at all is that everyone believes it to be true. This is true of bitcoin, gold, and fiat. Confidence in the particular monetary system is what bestows value, and part of the confidence in bitcoin is the built in scarcity of a hard cap and halving block rewards along the way. If that confidence is undermined, then the value/utility of the monetary system is going to fall, and that's true of gold and fiat too.

What you write about the value is not fully true. There is the intrinsic value too. Gold for example has many usecases in electronics and more places. This means it has a value that comes from being gold alone. Not from the value it has from speculation or believe. So gold might crash but there should always be a bottom value. Of course the question is if so much gold can be used at all. But there are other items that are used as a kind of currency that has it's own value. Let's say cigarettes in war times. Some smoke them away, because they are stupid, some sell them for a warm jacket and are allowed to life because of that. But even when no one would want them, their value would be none for others, there is still a value in using it. (If you can say that at all about cigarettes. Cheesy

)

The same can't be said about bitcoin. You have nothing than some virtual flags if the value is crashing and everyone believes it is nothing worth.

Right, but now you're talking about utility as opposed to just perception of value. Using a resource for industrial uses gives it a value, but that value is a smaller subset of the total value which includes perception of the resource as an asset or store of value, which makes it usable as money. There are plenty of resources that are both scarce and have utility for industrial purposes but are not used for storing value or as money, and the only difference there is that they aren't widely perceived to be have a value to someone in the future. Gold is a special case, but its status is also arbitrary. It's just one of the resources that is scarce and that everyone agrees is valuable. It didn't have to be gold, but its ease of finding to early civilizations probably had a lot to do with why it was gold and not something else.

You are right. The value of gold is typically higher than it's value for electronics. Though i wanted to say that gold has an intrinsic value. Even when nobody believes in the value of gold as a currency anymore, it still would have a value. If nobody believes in cryptocurrencies anymore then you have nothing. Rubbish zeros and ones.