• henrikx@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    Governments guarantee that their currency is worth something in various ways. Bitcoin is backed by the energy usage it costs to mine

    • TimeSquirrel@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      It’s not backed by energy usage. It’s backed by pure, empty, meaningless market speculation. It’s a digital baseball card. People use it in the exact same way. It has value because it’s “rare”, limited, and a bunch of people think so.

      • henrikx@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        8 months ago

        It also has the additional property of being able to easily transfer that asserted value anywhere in the world, free of censorship.

      • Krauerking@lemy.lol
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        8 months ago

        Yup. And prices go up from a combination of more idiots throwing money into it which is great for investing if you got into the game early and sure you can grab a chair before the music stops on this high energy use game of musical chairs and also because running those farms are getting so expensive the price had to go up to justify it.

        Dude when it halves again and it’s suddenly taking the same amount of energy to do half the work I truly don’t know what’s gonna happen. I guess it depends how strong the sunk cost fallacy is in their heads for if it survives another round.