> Bitcoins have value because people are willing to trade them for goods and services. If players were unwilling to accept Bitcoins for trade or unwilling to spend Bitcoins for fear of having their payments nullified, the value of Bitcoins would diminish significantly as players lost confidence in the system...
My impression is that right now, and for the last couple of years, this is untrue, with speculative demand vastly exceeding demand from people actually wanting to spend bitcoins on goods and services.
I think bitcoin price will stabalize once most of the bitcoin are mined. Right now its a race to simply collect as much satoshi as possible if you believe in a future where cryto becomes the dominant form of exchange. 1 satoshi is still far less valuable than a single USD. 1 satoshi is 0.0001 USD right now, still a ways to go before it becomes equivalent.
1 USD is worth .87 Euro or 1.3 Euro (at any given time), where 1 feels like a magic number; but 1 USD is worth (right now) 6.6 Yuan or 113 Yen, where it's more obvious 1 is not a magic number.
So I'm confused by the belief that .001 or .00001 is closer or further than where something 'should' be. How do we reach the conclusion that the value should be this thing or not this thing?
Currently buying Bitcoin is a very similar risk profile to buying stock of Facebook, where the value is highly correlated to the network effect, so even as a store of value Bitcoin doesn't work very well because of volatility, we will have to wait what current or future cryptocurrency develops a similar behavior to fiat currencies.
Who do you think you're kidding? It works exceptionally well as a store of value, regardless of volatility. It is approaching an increase of value of 100x in three years.
My impression is that right now, and for the last couple of years, this is untrue, with speculative demand vastly exceeding demand from people actually wanting to spend bitcoins on goods and services.