Not sure that you understood Atlas Shrugged.

Value is not intrinsic. Value is an extrinsic property which depends upon the value for the owner and for someone who wants to posses something from the owner. It is subjective.

Part of the variable problem for Bitcoin and all fiat currencies is that it depends on trust and demand for value. It has no intrinsic value of its own. Precious metals do.
When you compare golds ability to purchase over a period of time the product becomes more valuable (I'd pay more for a 2023 pickup with A/C, power steering, electric windows, cd player, and many other features that didn't exist in 1955) yet the new one costs fewer ounces of gold than the earlier model. The problem is actually earning power has gone down but it is not realized because the sum total of income has gone up. My dad earned $6000 a year back in the 1950's with his service station. I would have to earn $342,000 a year to match his purchasing power when a new home cost $10,000. The best I ever did was $85,000, didn't make it.

"Value comes because of scarcity."

I don't think that is completely true. Value comes from both, supply and demand. If something is scarce but there is also no demand for it, then the value would be low.

Edit: I think with gold there is demand for it that far outstrips its supply. It doesn't rust, so value of things made from it doesn't depreciate as fast. That makes the value of those things go up, because you are able to get way more use out of those things. Example: jewellery.

I would like to take issue with 'intrinsically valuable'. I don't think there is such a thing. I think things are either valuable or not valuable. The reason why they are valuable does not matter. Value is also a bit subjective, is it not?

"I'll never sell my Bitcoin."

That's what the dumping whales want you to do, keep giving them all your money and never sell.

They might be able to use the crowbar method to get those 12 words, can they not?

If you had Yuan in paper bills on hand, you would have access to them, no? Could you not trade the paper at any time?

It might stop taxation by inflation, but not regular taxation.

I would disagree with that.

Legislation does affect bitcoin demand. If a state outlaws it, a lot of people in that country is going to dump it. This will have an effect on its demand, as has been observed.

It is kind of hard to argue with a gun pointed at your head.

The way to disallow a government is to prevent it from receiving tax revenue. How does bitcoin do that? It might stop taxation by inflation, but not regular taxation.

My two cents:

Fiat (paper) is backed by the demand for it created by:
- the fact that it is accepted everywhere as payment
- the need for it to repay currently existing loans
- the tax system

BTC is backed by the demand for it created by:
- pumps (for later dumps)
- the need to bypass banks
- the need to bypass government controls

Notice that source code is not on that list.

I would take issue with some of the things said in the video.

I like the idea of a decentralized "crypto" currency, however, the current iteration is a no go.

Ayn Rand would likely appreciate the decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies, however, them being entirely digital and not backed by a physical commodity might be a point of contention for her. I believe this would also be the opinion of this community.

So, in order for crypto to be backed by Ayn Rand fans, it would need to be tied to something in the real world.

Sorry I meant to say "with limited supply you get extreme unnatural deflation during adoption, and inflation during abandonment".

The amount of energy used depends on the number of miners. The difficulty is adjusted so that there is a block every 10 minutes. All you need is only a few miners and they will perform the work with the least amount of energy being used. However, with lower amount of miners there is less security.

Anyway, the proof of work thing is only there for security, as I understand. It is there so that nobody cheats. Energy usage is NOT something that makes bitcoin great. Energy usage is necessary for the decentralized security. It is an inconvenient thing. Once you spend the energy, you can't use the resulting work in any other way than to submit a new block. You can't get the energy back. You can't 'store' the result and use it in the future.

So, my point still stands. The extreme amount of energy used isn't REALLY necessary for bitcoin to function. It can do just fine with way lower amount, as was the case in the beginning. The reason why so much energy is used is because there are way too many people mining.

I can speak for myself as an actual legitimate (non-pump-and-dump) user of cryptocurrencies. I don't care which one I use. I've used Ethirium and BitCoin. To me, I don't care which one to use, as long as I can do the transaction. If I use Etherium, I don't use BTC. That is a loss of demand to BTC. That is exactly what supply does, it decreases demand. There is more supply (from my point of view) of crypto than what BTC allows if there are altcoins that provide the same service.

"Golder" would do the same thing. It would decrease demand for gold (if it has similar properties to it), because people would have an alternative. Having alternatives in the business world is called competition. Competition lowers prices, everybody knows that.

Correct me if I am wrong and show why.

1.Wild swings in prices caused by all the speculation and pump and dumps make it impossible to use as money.
2. The 'get rich quick' scheme / wealth transfer mechanism that is built into it is antithetical to the idea of sound money.
3. It isn't very practical due to the limited transaction throughput and slow transaction speed. The lightning network was supposed to fix that but I have doubts about its ability to do this.
4. The 'limited supply' argument is stupid and problematic, you don't want your money to be limited in that way, as I understand it, you want your currency base to match the amount of physical wealth that exists in the real world, with limited supply you get extreme unnatural deflation during abdication, and inflation during abatement.
5. I'm not seeing people accepting bitcoin and using bitcoin, what I am seeing is people buying and selling bitcoin as a way to get rich quick (or lose everything trying). That is a failure of attainment of the original goal.

I have some designs of my own for a cryptocurrency that would solve these problems. Unfortunately, I don't see the cryptocurrency community being interested in that stuff. I think you guys are more about pump and dumps rather than producing actual value to society.

The energy use it what gives value. Proof of work. There has to be something that makes it difficult to produce. If there is nothing required to produce, it is the same as fiat money or ethereum or any of the other proof of stake coins.
The energy usage is what makes Bitcoin great. And the network is already more than 60% renewable and growing.

Sorry but forks and altcoins have zero impact. There can be an infinite amount of forks and it would do nothing.
I could make a new metal and call it "Golder" and it wouldn't change gold in any way.

I think the reason why all the energy is being used is because of all the greedy miners. They are trying to do a get rich quick trick. The thing is, as more miners get into it, the difficulty of mining is increased until they are barely able to break even. So, if everybody would just lay off on the mining, the energy usage would go down. It is only because of the intense greed that the network is using so much energy. Maybe another cryptocurrency can be designed that wouldn't have this problem.

I would argue that the software itself and what it allows is not vaporware. There is some value to it. I've used it for sending payments, it works pretty well for that. There has to be some value in that.

Why do you think Bitcoin has failed? Most people are very excited as it progresses towards the next halving.

I think the 'limited supply' argument is not really sound because one can create infinite amount of BTC forks, blockchains and altcoins. Technically speaking, that would increase the supply of things which have pretty much the same properties as BTC. I guess some might refuse to use the other forks, but not everybody. It would still create some amount of extra supply.

What needs to happen is the crypto coins need to be tied to physical wealth. That way, the price stays stable and there wouldn't be a need for limiting anything. It would be limited by the universe itself.

I appreciate what BitCoin was trying to do, I just think it mostly failed.

BitCoin sucks because it allows pump and dump schemes. You are kicking yourself why? That you didn't buy low and sell high, pumping and dumping and getting rich without earning it?

I was playing around with BitCoin when it was ~$100. I didn't buy into it. You know what? I am not kicking myself, because I understand those that got rich by doing that did so without producing anything of value. They just transferred value from someone else. These kind of schemes are wrong. The only way one should get rich is if they actually produced the equivalent amount of wealth. Everything else is just theft or fraud.

I think you guys are both wrong.

Things have 'value' because of the supply/demand dynamic, not because of any physical properties or the work it takes to produce. Physical properties and the difficulty of production have only an indirect effect on value. Physical properties may be desirable at the current time, so, that creates demand (increasing value). An increase in difficulty to produce decreases supply (increasing value). However, the primary factor is supply and demand, which are affected by multiple things, not just physical properties and the difficulty of production.