Post #4051655

2026-07-24 00:48 UTC

@memewarrior@hear-me.social I don't know enough about the field to know exactly what the problems are; I only know that their notion of how to imitate scarcity doesn't make sense to me. That's not why gold is valuable as a currency. The scarcity of gold is a minor issue compared to the chemical suitability of gold: it's got unique physical properties easily double-checked, it doesn't oxidize or degrade quickly, it's very dense so it's a compact store of value, and above all gold is incredibly useful to industry and thus the true nature of the scarcity of gold is that turning it into currency robs every person who wants to use the stuff as something other than money. THAT all makes perfect sense to me. Nothing about crypto "scarcity" makes any sense to me.

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@memewarrior@hear-me.social 2026-07-24 02:04

@mxchara@seattle.pink On gold's value: The fact that gold possesses utility rather than merely value is precisely why I compared cryptocurrency to dollars & rupees but not gold. Also, it is an empirical fact that cryptocurrency does have value. We see it being sold in exchange for other goods. This actually disproves the idea that gold's value as money is solely derived from its use to industry, which was already disproved by fiat money & representative money which both proved that social relations can produce value in useless objects. Fiat money is called "fiat" for a reason. On crypto's scarcity: It does not mimic scarcity, it HAS scarcity under a given set of conditions. Assuming the majority of the hash power is from entities who enforce that the cryptocurrency can only be produced under specific conditions, & these conditions are ones which cause scarcity, than scarcity is enforced. The majority of hash power is typically from people with a vested interest in preventing hyperinflation, which means they enforce scarcity. If the majority of has power falls into the hands of a malicious actor, then they have a vested interest in hoarding the power to produce currency for themselves, & thus are most likely to only produce it for themselves. The conditions surrounding cryptocurrency incentive the maintenance of scarcity, & this even includes cases where 51% of the hash power is malicious. I find it very counterintuitive that non-commodity money has demand, but not that cryptocurrency has scarcity. It is also an empirical fact that non-commodity has demand, however, even if every explanation I have heard feels hand-wavy. Taxation can't explain cryptocurrency's value, so that explanation is out the window for government-issued fiat money also in my view because it clearly is not essential to non-commodity money having value. The "non-commodity money has value because a bunch of people say it does" explanation is very hand-wavy & unsatisfying but is the only one I have seen which doesn't contradict empirical evidence. To conclude: I am not particularly knowledgeable about economics. I am very much reliant on my knowledge of philosophy combined with the 1/3rd of Capital Volume 1 I have finished, Wikipedia I half remember articles on Modern Monetary Theory & some basic, almost certainly wheel-reinventing empirical observations. I am far from the best person to be explaining where cryptocurrency derives value on, but I hope I at least provided something.

Open ##4051654