Quote from: the joint on July 24, 2014, 06:13:04 AM

Quote from: Erdogan on July 24, 2014, 12:35:00 AM

Quote from: CoinsCoinsEverywhere on July 23, 2014, 04:12:18 PM

Quote from: Erdogan on July 23, 2014, 03:54:48 PM

Quote from: CoinsCoinsEverywhere on July 23, 2014, 03:32:41 PM

Quote from: Erdogan on July 23, 2014, 03:17:52 PM

Fiat is a store of value, but not a good store, as the value evaporates with time. Other money, with a near stable value, is better. Bitcoin is more risky as it can go down further, but since it can also appreciate, it can be described as stable with volatility, or stable with a risk. But I expect the value to go up as far more likely than to go down, so as a store of value it is far better than stable money.

What you're describing is a good investment, not a good currency. Bitcoin is anything but stable. Stable plus a little volatility is what the price of a bitcoin on Bitstamp has been for the last few days: it's oscillated only a few dollars around $621 or so. For normal currencies, a 1% change is big deal. Look at that article about Venezuela. 60% inflation is insane. Compare that to the 7000% that bitcoin has gone up in the last 2 years. You can't tell me that bitcoin is stable.

I didn't.

Um, yes you did. See the bold text from your previous comment.

Once more. Dollar is perceived as stable, but slowly depreciates at 1.5% to5% per year. That is maybe stable day to day, but it is not at all stable over a decennium.

Bitcoin is designed to be stable over decennia, but is currently not stable day to day. There is a risk of 10 % down at any day, but after 10 years it is either stable or going up. So it is stable over some longer period, but it is volatile day to day. So, it you can stomach the day to day risk, it is stable over 10 years or even 3 years. Better than that for savers, it is expected to go up, even if there is a day to day risk.

I don't care to feed you with a teaspoon on this any more. Take it or leave it.

This doesn't seem like a convincing argument. Here's why:

1) If after 10 years the value of bitcoins is stable or going up, then it's *not* stable and going up.

2) There's no reason why after 10 years the value of BTC can't go down.

3) There's no reason that guarantees the value of bitcoins will be stable in 10 years. It *could* be, but there's no mechanism that ensures this.

4) If the value of bitcoin goes up (i.e. like a good investment might), you run into the problem of currency hoarding, and this conflicts with the importance of liquidity.

5) Expecting BTC to go up doesn't mean it will happen. Ask all the people that bought BTC just before or shortly after the ATH what their expectations were upon buying in.

6) No matter how you spin it, fiat is historically a better store of value as it is less volatile and more predictable. Imagine having $1000 in USD and $1000 in BTC and asking yourself to predict how much purchasing power you will have in one year. I can estimate with great confidence how well my $1000 in USD will hold up over that year, but I can't estimate the same for BTC. Just look at all the predictions on BTC price made on this forum. A year ago, we had some expecting BTC to be $10,000 by now while others expected it to be closer to $10.

7) Stemming from this last thought, it's simply a non-sequitur to conclude bitcoin is a better store of value because of a personal expectation you have that leads you to believe it's more probable that BTC value will increase rather than decrease.

Cool

There are a handful of scenarios which could wreak utter havoc on BTC as a store of value. For example, consider that while the total supply of BTC is known, the market supply is not, and this could be very, very problematic. Many people have stated something to the effect of, "If BTCs/private keys are lost or irretrievable, this decreases the market supply and it just makes the rest of us richer!" Okay, that's great, but let's say that some large number of BTCs that are assumed to be lost or irretrievable actually aren't. It's already been estimated that the total number of lost or irretrievable BTCs already tallies into the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. The problem is there's really no way to make a good estimate.

To illustrate with an extreme example, let's say that all but 1 BTC are considered lost or irretrievable. Since BTC can be divided infinitesimally, this shouldn't be an issue since the global economy could still function with only 1 BTC in existence, right? Can't you just shift a few decimal places? Theoretically this could work, but then imagine what would happen if those BTCs assumed to be lost/irretrievable are discovered to be found and active? What if the ~1 million BTC that Satoshi mined started moving when all that was assumed to remain was 1 measly BTC? What do you think about BTC as a store of value then? Don't you think that it's realistic to expect that, if BTC value continues to rise for many years as you expect it to, there *will* be many BTC hoarders who will also wait years before making their own personal supply known to the markets (i.e. by moving them)?

TL;DR: You might want to reconsider your position...

Good points. I don't think I can improve on this response to what Erdogan said.

Something else to consider about those "irretrievable" coins: they may not be permanently irretrievable. As technology progresses, it may eventually become feasible to brute force the keys in a reasonable amount of time (although I'm not exactly sure how this would work, so I could be wrong).