Comment by somewhereoutth
4 years ago
Ah but a change in the price of BTC does not in fact create any value - it just means that that $100 now corresponds to less BTC. You can profit from that fluctuation, by being on the right side of the cash exchange at two separate points in time. Somebody else will be on the wrong side of that exchange (well, in aggregate anyway - there will be many somebodies on either side) and will suffer a corresponding loss.
Since BTC is intrinsically worthless, any 'price' that might be ascribed to it is meaningless (aside from the profit/loss action described above).
The same (incorrect) reasoning applies to literally anything you don't physically use including USD, equities, gold, land, etc.
USD is useful because you can pay taxes with it, equities represent an income stream as dividends from a (presumably) successful business, gold can make jewellery etc, land can be rented out.
Even the supposed utility of BTC - as a money transfer mechanism - does not require the price to be anything other that not zero.
If I have all the ice cream in the world and it spoils in a week because I cannot eat all of it then it is not that wrong to say that its utility to me is zero.
By the way his argument is that any absolute value ascribed to a currency is arbitrary or rather that there is no correct number.
more that BTC is of course not a currency, because it is not backed by a state entity. I can't pay taxes with it.