US selling 69K seized bitcoins could mess with Trump plans for crypto reserve
US selling 69K seized bitcoins could mess with Trump plans for crypto reserve
US could get about $6.4 billion from the sale at bitcoin’s current price.
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Imagine a crypto reserve. Reserved for WHAT???
Reserved to inflate the price to make cryptobros more money.
This is probably the most succinct example of why rich weirdos and “libertarians” actually don’t hate the government and taxation and instead love it, to make them more money using the unwasheds’ taxes.
What else would a giant organization exist for?
Reserved for the memes.
Same idea as a gold reserve, which we also have.
Reserved for getting money when it's needed.
Edit: idk, I'm wrong then
There was a gold standard. Current fiat money in the US is based on an imaginary "base" that the Federal Reserve (itself, an institution notoriously based on an imaginary base). There is a reserve of gold, but it no longer matches the amount of minted coins/printed bills.
Edit: reserve->standard as noted in a reply
You might be confusing gold standard with gold reserve. Fort Knox is definitely a thing. We have a gold reserve.
Yes, thanks for clarifying. I typed it out that way because "reserve" was in my head for the remaining sentences. As we both noted, there is a reserve, but it doesn't back all the minted fiat.
Reserved for the plot of James Bond movies
The thing is: is Bitcoin a real store of value?
And are Trump's intentions to have a store of value genuine or is he doing that in order to gain something?
Trump has never done anything that he has not perceived as being in Trump's interest. Often he's wrong, but that's because he's not very intelligent. He is incapable of altruism or working for the good of the public.
What would make Bitcoin NOT a real store of value? Genuine question. There's money/energy spent to mine it, it's increasingly scarce, you can just arbitrarily create more.
One point I'd secede is that satoshi's wallets are sort of a ticking time bomb. Theoretically, if anyone were to access them, it'd break the whole system. Or you'd have to fork but forking for that would also kind of go against the core philosophy of it.
Energy is not spent to mine bitcoin. Bitcoin is created automatically by the underlying algorithm and rewarded to validators in return for acting as validators.
Energy is spent performing arbitrary calculations that, by necessity, perform no useful function in themselves. The purpose of these calculations is to impose a cost on the process of acting as a validator node. The calculations can be discarded in their entirety and - so long as some other system of real world cost is put in their place - the entire system continues to function. Hence why it is even possible to discuss alternatives such as proof of stake.
The energy spent performing the calculations becomes waste heat. It is not stored. It cannot be extracted from the coins later. I cannot take bitcoins and use them to run a power plant.
If I buy power using the bitcoins, that power still has to be created by some means. It does not recover the power that was wasted for me to obtain those coins.
If the government owns shares in a company it can use the company to generate revenue in the form of dividends. If the government owns a bond it can redeem the bond at the completion of its term for interest on the face value. If the government owns gold it can use that gold to build electronics. If the government owns land it can build things on that land, extract resources from it, or use it for agriculture. These things all have value without being traded. Bitcoin only has market value; it has no use value. It cannot produce anything, it cannot be transformed into anything. It can only be bought and sold. It stores nothing, contains nothing, does nothing.
What makes gold valuable in this day and age beyond just peoples' willingness to pay for it?
It's very commonly used in, e.g., electronics.
Yes, but the value of gold is not determine solely by its industrial use. It would be far cheaper if it was... It is valuable because people believe that it is valuable. That's literally it.
lack of inherit value. Gold for instance is a substance that can be utilized in the real world and has unique properties. Granted though its value is most in theoretical money uses. It does have a floor value though in its physical nature.
I'm no Bitcoin fan, but the notion that currency has to have inherent value has been dead for almost a century.
Currency as used by any modern state has no connection to any particular commodity, including gold. And gold's "inherent" value, rather tautologically, is whatever the market might pay for it right now. When the Spaniards looted America in the 1500s, the value of Spain's gold-based currency crashed due to oversupply and left Spain in a state of hyperinflation. There was (and is) no floor value for gold, or for anything else.
The whole idea of intrinsic value is flawed. In economic terms, the only value anything has is what someone will pay for it.
this is not talking about currency though but as a reserve. Anything your collecting into a reserve be it grain, gas, oil, or gold ; should have inherent value. So I get what your saying but if you look back at the thread the whole thing is about creation of a reserve and we are not talking in terms of currency.
I'm pretty sure if you are going to hold something in reserve you for sure want it to have inherent value though, right?
Well one thing I can say is that scarcity does not increase the value of something and the energy spent to mine bitcoins is not coming back.
The thing that gives gold and bitcoin value is the willingness of others to accept it.
I'm not an expert and the questions get complicated because also USD dollars have value because others accept it. So to answer your question: I don't know.
I just can say that a store of value by definition has to keep its value in any circumstance. Gold does that whereas bitcoin can do -20% + 20% in a day.