this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2025
87 points (98.9% liked)

politics

19308 readers
2232 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] reev@sh.itjust.works -1 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

What would make Bitcoin NOT a real store of value? Genuine question. There's money/energy spent to mine it, it's increasingly scarce, you can just arbitrarily create more.

One point I'd secede is that satoshi's wallets are sort of a ticking time bomb. Theoretically, if anyone were to access them, it'd break the whole system. Or you'd have to fork but forking for that would also kind of go against the core philosophy of it.

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 7 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

Energy is not spent to mine bitcoin. Bitcoin is created automatically by the underlying algorithm and rewarded to validators in return for acting as validators.

Energy is spent performing arbitrary calculations that, by necessity, perform no useful function in themselves. The purpose of these calculations is to impose a cost on the process of acting as a validator node. The calculations can be discarded in their entirety and - so long as some other system of real world cost is put in their place - the entire system continues to function. Hence why it is even possible to discuss alternatives such as proof of stake.

The energy spent performing the calculations becomes waste heat. It is not stored. It cannot be extracted from the coins later. I cannot take bitcoins and use them to run a power plant.

If I buy power using the bitcoins, that power still has to be created by some means. It does not recover the power that was wasted for me to obtain those coins.

If the government owns shares in a company it can use the company to generate revenue in the form of dividends. If the government owns a bond it can redeem the bond at the completion of its term for interest on the face value. If the government owns gold it can use that gold to build electronics. If the government owns land it can build things on that land, extract resources from it, or use it for agriculture. These things all have value without being traded. Bitcoin only has market value; it has no use value. It cannot produce anything, it cannot be transformed into anything. It can only be bought and sold. It stores nothing, contains nothing, does nothing.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 7 hours ago

What makes gold valuable in this day and age beyond just peoples' willingness to pay for it?

[–] tired_n_bored@lemmy.world 3 points 11 hours ago

Well one thing I can say is that scarcity does not increase the value of something and the energy spent to mine bitcoins is not coming back.

The thing that gives gold and bitcoin value is the willingness of others to accept it.

I'm not an expert and the questions get complicated because also USD dollars have value because others accept it. So to answer your question: I don't know.

I just can say that a store of value by definition has to keep its value in any circumstance. Gold does that whereas bitcoin can do -20% + 20% in a day.