How much do you think Bitcoin is worth?

saturnz said:
when I mention on this forum the scam that is fiat currency the pushback is normally immediate
Click to expand...

Ok tell me. What backs crypto? Do you even know?

Definition: "Fiat currency is legal tender whose value is backed by the government that issued it. The U.S. dollar is fiat money, as are the euro and many other major world currencies. This approach differs from money whose value is underpinned by some physical good such as gold or silver, called commodity money."
 
there is nothing physically tangible behind Bitcoin, its value is how much value people want it to have.

Which, is not much different to currency today anyway. Originally money tracked the commodity that backed it for its worth, like Gold. But there's not enough Gold - so instead of cutting a Gold Bar into 1mm piece for R10 they print a "note" that promises the bearer its worth R10 (of Gold, although not stated). Its a promissory note that represents a value promised by the Reserve Bank. The thing is we're so far removed from physical backing of currencies that its all just numbers now.

Its just numbers, and supply vs demand vs people's opinion drives them up and down.
 
Last edited:
The Trutherizer said:
Ok tell me. What backs crypto? Do you even know?

Definition: "Fiat currency is legal tender whose value is backed by the government that issued it. The U.S. dollar is fiat money, as are the euro and many other major world currencies. This approach differs from money whose value is underpinned by some physical good such as gold or silver, called commodity money."
Click to expand...


do you have a point, do you think I have no idea what fiat currency is and thus felt the need to give me the definition?

I talked about pushback in my previous post, and like clock work here you pop up
 
neoprema said:
there is nothing physically tangible behind Bitcoin, its value is how much value people want it to have.

Which, is not much different to currency today anyway. Originally money tracked the commodity that backed it for its worth, like Gold. But there's not enough Gold - so instead of cutting a Gold Bar into 1mm piece for R10 they print a "note" that promises the bearer its worth R10 (of Gold, although not stated)
Click to expand...

this is very far from what is actually happening

this is the actual legislation giving "value" to the rand

s17 of the Reserve Bank Act reads
A tender of a note of the Bank shall be a legal tender of payment of an amount equal to the amount specified on the note
Click to expand...

initially we were on a gold standard, then the US took all the gold in the agreed to Brettons Wood system and issued dollars, then the US effectively said we are keeping the gold in the early 70s and now we are here, in one of the biggest scams ever effected
 
Last edited:
The Trutherizer said:
Does anybody?
Click to expand...

Yes. It's backed by technology and mathematical algorithms.

It's technology will eventually make it the pervasive medium of transacting. Despite all the FUD you see today, this is inevitable. In all cases where a technology has emerged that makes any day to day activity exponentially simpler, it always has ascendance. In this case it will be the cryptocurrency with the most integrated payment ecosystem, a good, low fee, scaling solution and one which is decentralised. Precisely because Bitcoin was first, and most popular, it hit a brick wall scaling, but also because of this reason it is going to be the first to have real solutions - in fact they're already rolling out quite quickly and will leave a lot of the alts behind. And maybe it won't be Bitcoin, maybe it will be one of the others, or a combination - but it will be cryptocurrency. Hence the value of the leading coins.

And the maths makes it scarce. There can mathematically only be 21 million BTC, which means that if a significant chunk of global commerce is replaced with something like Bitcoin, there will be a lot of people needing to use it.

Is it backed by anything in the sense that you can go to the reserve bank and demand your equivalent value of gold? Nope. But neither is fiat money - that's why it's called "fiat" (the Latin word for "let it be done") i.e. it is what it is just because the government said so. To my mind there is a heck of a lot more backing cryptocurrency than arbitrary government decree.

Crypto is money because an irrefutable algorithm said so and thousands of distributed nodes agreed. And only so much can ever be circulated. Fiat money is money, because some (inevitably temporary) government said so. And they can print all they want. Fiat money has value only for as long as you have any faith in whichever government prints it. With cryptocurrency you only need faith in mathematics, and maths isn't really a matter of faith.
 
neoprema said:
so instead of cutting a Gold Bar into 1mm piece for R10 they print a "note" that promises the bearer its worth R10 (of Gold, although not stated)
Click to expand...

Nope, that's exactly what fiat money isn't. It's money by decree, with no promise of gold. All they do is guarantee that R10 = R10.
 
garp said:
Yes. It's backed by technology and mathematical algorithms.
Click to expand...

this is Peter Schiff's view on money vs currency, which I agree with

If you look up the words “currency” and “money” in a thesaurus, each word will probably be listed as a suitable linguistic substitution for the other; however, their economic function is almost completely opposite.
Click to expand...

simply having a currency that is limited in supply is not sufficient, and the backing by equations and technology also has very little value
 
Last edited:
neoprema said:
there is nothing physically tangible behind Bitcoin, its value is how much value people want it to have.

Which, is not much different to currency today anyway. Originally money tracked the commodity that backed it for its worth, like Gold. But there's not enough Gold - so instead of cutting a Gold Bar into 1mm piece for R10 they print a "note" that promises the bearer its worth R10 (of Gold, although not stated). Its a promissory note that represents a value promised by the Reserve Bank. The thing is we're so far removed from physical backing of currencies that its all just numbers now.

Its just numbers, and supply vs demand vs people's opinion drives them up and down.
Click to expand...

You're a few decades behind on financial systems. The rand (and almost every currency in the world) is no longer backed by gold.

As for Bitcoin's value, what are the current mining costs? That plus a small margin.
 
epah said:
As much as people are willing to pay for it!
Click to expand...

^THIS

Why do I pay R10 for Coke knowing full well it didn't cost Coca-cola that much to make or market and that it will probably kill me if I drink too much of it in the long run (ok, ok, over-exaggerating here, but just making a point)?
 
garp said:
Nope, that's exactly what fiat money isn't. It's money by decree, with no promise of gold. All they do is guarantee that R10 = R10.
Click to expand...

Technically, the government cannot even do that. Take what happened in Zim as an example.
Any so-called monetary tokens you might have, including what your bank statement shows you, can be reduced to zero value at the issuing of a decree.

Governments own you, as do the bankers. You can be made insolvent overnight.

Any one who pays attention to the currency fluctuations knows that each day, the value of their so-called money fluctuates along with it. One day the Rand in your pocket is worth X amount, the next, it could be X minus 10%. In fact, the value of your rand depreciated to roughly one third of it's value between 1994 and now. With very few exceptions, income did not match that at all.
 
30k but only in conjunction with the trading pairs, especially with Euthereum, Euthereum is undervalued and should at least be at 10k
 
0

If it was accepted at the petrol station for coke and a pie the value would be much higher.

How much are the calculations your GPU makes worth when you play minesweeper? Why should bitcoin be different?
 
Last edited:
garp said:
Yes. It's backed by technology and mathematical algorithms.

It's technology will eventually make it the pervasive medium of transacting. Despite all the FUD you see today, this is inevitable. In all cases where a technology has emerged that makes any day to day activity exponentially simpler, it always has ascendance. In this case it will be the cryptocurrency with the most integrated payment ecosystem, a good, low fee, scaling solution and one which is decentralised. Precisely because Bitcoin was first, and most popular, it hit a brick wall scaling, but also because of this reason it is going to be the first to have real solutions - in fact they're already rolling out quite quickly and will leave a lot of the alts behind. And maybe it won't be Bitcoin, maybe it will be one of the others, or a combination - but it will be cryptocurrency. Hence the value of the leading coins.

And the maths makes it scarce. There can mathematically only be 21 million BTC, which means that if a significant chunk of global commerce is replaced with something like Bitcoin, there will be a lot of people needing to use it.

Is it backed by anything in the sense that you can go to the reserve bank and demand your equivalent value of gold? Nope. But neither is fiat money - that's why it's called "fiat" (the Latin word for "let it be done") i.e. it is what it is just because the government said so. To my mind there is a heck of a lot more backing cryptocurrency than arbitrary government decree.

Crypto is money because an irrefutable algorithm said so and thousands of distributed nodes agreed. And only so much can ever be circulated. Fiat money is money, because some (inevitably temporary) government said so. And they can print all they want. Fiat money has value only for as long as you have any faith in whichever government prints it. With cryptocurrency you only need faith in mathematics, and maths isn't really a matter of faith.
Click to expand...

Do you perhaps have an interest to declare?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X