Bitcoin: The Idea That Eats Smart People

When articles get basic, easily verifiable facts wrong, I immediately start to doubt the quality of the whole article. Here it says:<p>&gt; &quot; By comparison, there are just under 50 billion Swiss Francs in circulation today, which are worth around $56bn USD.&quot;<p>There are about 90 billion Swiss Francs in circularion in cash alone. If you add to that all the Swiss Francs in accounts with the Swiss National Bank, we are at 722 billion, which is in the same ballpark as the Bitcoin market cap with about 800 billion Swiss Francs.<p>Source: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;data.snb.ch&#x2F;de&#x2F;topics&#x2F;snb#!&#x2F;chart&#x2F;snbmobalech" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;data.snb.ch&#x2F;de&#x2F;topics&#x2F;snb#!&#x2F;chart&#x2F;snbmobalech</a>

YC&#x27;s best investment to date will likely be Coinbase when the IPO lands, if the price ranges are correct.<p>The very first Hacker News comment on Bitcoin was jdoliner&#x27;s &quot;while this is exceptionally cute, no one is ever going to take it seriously&quot; - perhaps it&#x27;s time to admit that yes, maybe, there is something going on here.

Bitcoin has two incredible properties. Most critics downplay the first, and never even mention the second.<p>One is that amounts, tiny or astronomical can be safely transferred and settled without trusted 3rd parties, in a matter of minutes. I think people know this.<p>The other property is that it is completely impossible to counterfeit it. There is no possible way to fake bitcoin. You can try claiming you own bitcoin that doesn&#x27;t exist, but if someone wants proof, there is no way for you to fake it. There is no way to counterfeit it with clever artistic skill, specialized machinery, nothing that can do this. This also means that if you own bitcoin (meaning you control the keys), you really own it. You don&#x27;t own some promise of future bitcoin payment, an entry in a volatile database at your bank or brokerage, an IOU, or some faked certificate. You own real, trivially verifiable, bitcoin. Also, no trusted 3rd party is needed to ensure this.<p>That is the value of bitcoin.

One thing I&#x27;ve noticed with bitcoin related threads is that people who have bitcoin tend to be much more defensive when there&#x27;s any anti-coin criticism, which is kind of amusing.<p>Another thing I wonder with bitcoin in particular is if everyone had bitcoin and no other currency, and something like COVID happened, what entity would provide liquidity in order to help those affected by a disaster?<p>disclaimer: I do not hold any crypto.

Regardless of where you stand as far as the ideological&#x2F;financial&#x2F;economic&#x2F;technological goals of Bitcoin as described in Satoshi’s original paper, it’s definitely a real nerd-snipe, and before you know it, you are intellectually and financially invested in it. And then there’s no avoiding the natural human tendency to rationalize that decision. :)<p>Of course, rationalizing works both ways with sour grapes! But I still think greed is a stronger motivator than envy. :)

Why do cryptocurrency discussions go from 0 to foaming at the mouth so fast? I&#x27;ve never seen more unconditional confidence.

I wonder if we will ever see a pro-Bitcoin article on HN

Ahhh, the old &quot;i was there when it started but was above it and happy I didn&#x27;t buy in and make 100000% gains&quot; argument.<p>Yes, I&#x27;m sure he&#x27;s really savoring that one.

&gt; What GME demonstrated was the power of the meme in the stock market, and that an asset price could increase its value by over 20x for no fundamental reason.<p>He has never heard of bubbles before GME?<p>&gt; People point to the rising price of bitcoin as evidence of the truth in their narratives, but the reality is that bitcoin could be rising for no reason at all.<p>Could be? It&#x27;s blindingly obvious to everyone (except the author?) that it&#x27;s all speculation.<p>Also he failed to mention the most plausible ways that Bitcoin loses value. Governments ban it, or some other cryptocurrency comes along that solves the technical issues with Bitcoin.

Not sure I understand hype complaint - isn&#x27;t any value of goods in economy based on what people think they are worth and not their &quot;objective&quot; value ?

Hello BTC, let me introduce you to Eth.

Gold has a market cap 10X+ bigger than Bitcoin, why can&#x27;t I buy beer with my gold coins?