Quote from: NotATether on Today at 08:18:07 AM

Well I always like a constructive debate.

Quote from: Antithesis on June 08, 2021, 04:54:32 PM

If bitcoin is a thing that exists, then you don't need a new investor to voluntarily accept quantity next to your address in the exchange for his funds. Rather, you can benefit from the thing behind the quantity, which you claim exists. However, if Bitcoin doesn't exist then you are left only with quantity next to your address. Since quantity by itself is just a mathematical concept you are left with nothing.

Going back to your analogy about bitcoin and MS Office licenses, you are right that there is something behind the quantity of MS office licenses - the MS office programs.

In bitcoin you can't benefit from the transaction outputs behind the quantity of bitcoin. That's because MS office licenses are goods, and not financial assets.

Gold, cash, Tesla stock, futures, these are all financial assets because they are backed by something that doesn't have a tangible benefit to people (ownership of debt). Same reason why sneakers, phones etc. are not financial assets because there's no ownership of debt backing them, it's some physical benefit backing them.

Now let's prove that bitcoin does have an ownership of debt:

When some country mints new banknotes (the US did that in 2013 if my memory's correct), they must find something to back this quantity of banknotes. So they take a ton of foreign exchange reserves (such as cash or precious metals) and use that as the basis of the debt - ownership debt relative to these foreign assets.

In Bitcoin, the "foreign exchange reserves" are investors' fiat currency. So you can view the quantity of bitcoin backed by ownership of investors fiat reserves and this is precicesly why the price is able to go up and why it was originally zero: The more fiat that investors bring, the more reserves that can be repurposed as debt.

Combine that with the bitcoin supply being fixed, and you have a constant total quantity versus an ever increasing asset reserve.

Quote from: Antithesis on June 08, 2021, 04:54:32 PM

Now the question: can you benefit from the quantity next to your address without a new investor voluntarily accepting this quantity?

You can't. That's precisely what my last two paragraphs were about.

When we say "financial assets" what we actually mean is claims and liabilities. When you own goods, no subject exists with the liability to provide you something that has tangible benefit, nor you have claim towards the subject, because this benefit exists in the goods themselves. But when you own a financial asset, which in itself is no good such subjects exist. And you own a claim towards them. In my OP I gave the examples of liabilities in the case of fiat, stocks or bonds and subjects (borrowers, company, bond issuer) that have these liabilities. In case of newly issued banknotes by the central banks, subjects are commercial banks or governments. That's because new banknotes are issued as loans to said subjects. So, the bases for financial assets are liabilities of actual subjects. And every holder of the financial assets has clam towards theses subjects.

On the other hand, holders of blockchain quantities have no claims to actual subjects, given that no subjects with liabilities exists when new quantity is put into the blockchain. So no financial asset exists behind blockchain quantities. That's why without new investors voluntarily accepting the quantity holders have nothing.

What you are actually saying is that my investment in blockchain quantity is backed by my own investment(my fiat reserves), which is obviously nonsensical. All that I and prior investors did, was paying off the existing members of blockchain. Our funds didn't end up as reserves for blockchain quantities that we hold, but as spending for old investors.