Quote from: iamnotback on March 01, 2017, 02:39:15 PM

Quote from: dinofelis on March 01, 2017, 04:26:48 AM

I consider that it is not an investment as such, because there's no economic value produced by the investment - well, there is the ultra-small economic value produced by the utility of the crypto currency, which is essentially zilch: almost no consumer good, in the end, has seen the daylight that wouldn't have seen the daylight if crypto currencies didn't exist, and consumer goods/services are the bottom line of economic value of course.

It is difficult for me the fathom how you can be so myopic.

Incredible value has already been created by the degrees-of-freedom of being able to move funds globally without permission. (I had already mentioned my personal examples to you in another thread, yet you cling your myopic viewpoint, so can see Monero and anonymity as the only feature of interest)

What value ? The actual consumer-happiness value (the ultimate source of all value) by the existence of bitcoin is essentially nothing. It is that economic creation of value that would not have existed if bitcoin didn't exist. What is that value ? What better cars are running because of bitcoin ? What better food is being eaten because of bitcoin ? What better education is sold because of bitcoin ? What markets became more efficient and allocated their resources better than bitcoin ? I mean, outside of the little crypto world itself ? Yes, probably a few people are "creating value" by earning salaries when setting up coindesk.com and so on.
But apart from a self-serving little world, what value creation did bitcoin allow that fiat didn't ?
There is, at the moment, only one true application: dark markets. There is true value creation in dark markets, especially of drugs. People (consumers) really value drugs a lot. The value creation for these consumers is huge. But because of the legal barriers to that value creation, dark markets are risky to do with fiat. So, yes, value creation happens on dark markets thanks to crypto in general, and bitcoin in particular.

There's another utility, which is related. Privacy-related services on the internet. VPN for instance. This is value creation that is facilitated by the existence of crypto.

However, on these two aspects, bitcoin is dangerous, because not private enough. Only crypto with privacy-related features can, in the end, deliver on this.

But how much is this in terms of value creation, as compared to everything done with fiat ? Crypto has enabled WAY WAY WAY less than 1/30000 of the world's value creation, because essentially all of the market cap of crypto (bitcoin included) is NOT by Fisher's formula for its demand as a use as a currency, but just by greater-fool speculation. The *REAL* currency market cap of bitcoin is ridiculously small, probably less than 1% of its official market cap. Remove all hope for "greater fools", let bitcoin's price crash to its level of demand as a currency (its only "value creation enabling" feature) and you end up with the true economic value of bitcoin, which is essentially insignificant.