Quote from: d5000 on May 24, 2024, 10:23:23 PM

Quote from: Medusah on May 24, 2024, 08:10:19 AM

There's no such thing as "real value" in this world.

I actually disagree here a bit. "Value of use" is indeed a category in different schools of economics. And I actually think there is such a thing, even if it is, as you wrote correctly, influenced by subjective valuation.

The error JamesNZ commits instead (probably deliberately, just to troll, as one can see in his despective tone, typical for trolls who want to impress by simple rhetoric tactics, not by arguments) is that he compares Bitcoin to a "good" in the sense of a "material good" or "physical good". It is instead a platform or service, like I explained to him above (and he chose to ignore that because he knows I'm right

), and thus its economics are similar to the one of the "postal service", not the "packages". Or even better, to a social networking service.

Thus, the "value of use" is the value the platform is delivering to the users, not the "value of use" of the empty boxes themselves. I actually think if Bitcoin wasn't "useful" it would be indeed potentially valueless. I actually do criticise many "tokens" because of a similar reason JamesNZ applies incorrectly to Bitcoin. Examples include BRC-20 and most Runes. They are not platforms because they don't have blockchains, they only "exist" on a blockchain. They have no "value of use" at all. They can have still a market value tied to some future expectations. For example, one could expect that the creator of a succesful token may launch a platform in the future and thus "have value of use like a platform". Or that it could be transformed into an "utility token", and "utility tokens" do normally have a "value of use" because they're tied to a concrete service of a company. But I think this is wishful thinking in 99% of all cases, and the remaining cases are almost all things like in-game currencies which have a very limited "value of use" and only in a specific group of often limited size. In-game currencies can have market caps of a few millions but not billions like some BRC-20's had in their heyday.

Another error one could commit is to think that the value is the one which can be extracted by the company of the postal service, because such a company doesn't exist in the case of BTC (it exists in the case of many altcoins though). It is instead a sum of a lot of different types of "values of use" which people can achieve with the Bitcoin platform. Platform economics is complex, and I think even JamesNZ should know its basic assumptions, but he's too lazy to adjust his house of cards a bit.

So essentially, you're frustrated because you don't have a rational response to my simple logical syllogisms. And that's why you engage in these ad hominems and red herrings. Gotcha.