But provided a Satoshi has a magical value beyond as a way to make transactions, why not spend 2 millionths of a cent where electricity is less valuable (i.e., before it's been converted in a lossy fashion many times and stored in my pocket where it's worth a lot more) and just transfer that Satoshi to a wallet on the phone?
This play only makes sense if someone is extracting the actual currency value of a Bitcoin somewhere along the line.
If that value is going to me as the consumer, it's a terrible trade because it's taking the electricity that's gone through the most conversion losses from me in the place where it's most valuable. I might as well buy Bitcoin elsewhere. If some of that value is going to the chipset manufacturer or a middleman like 21, it's a straight up scam where somebody is stealing the electricity I put into my phone.
An HSM for Bitcoin wallets in a phone makes a small degree of sense to me, a mining ASIC makes none whatsoever.
> This play only makes sense if someone is extracting the actual currency value of a Bitcoin somewhere along the line.
I would think that's the very point. And it's not like there wasn't a precedence in the physical world already.
Stamps.
I still remember when stamps were occasionally used as a fractional currency. You could order small things over mail and send payment as stamps.
This phenomonenon was even used by Terry Pratchess as a minor plot detail in Going Postal, and subsequently in Making Money. The idea was dead simple: stamps had real value. Eventually, someone would need to spend it to actually mail things, but until then people could use them as a form of microcurrency. So a single unit might be "spent" several times in unofficial transactions before getting used for its intended purpose. The stamps weren't any more valuable as such, but their added utility made them useful in a wider setting.
There's some talk about the history in [0], and slightly better researched in [1].
This play only makes sense if someone is extracting the actual currency value of a Bitcoin somewhere along the line.
If that value is going to me as the consumer, it's a terrible trade because it's taking the electricity that's gone through the most conversion losses from me in the place where it's most valuable. I might as well buy Bitcoin elsewhere. If some of that value is going to the chipset manufacturer or a middleman like 21, it's a straight up scam where somebody is stealing the electricity I put into my phone.
An HSM for Bitcoin wallets in a phone makes a small degree of sense to me, a mining ASIC makes none whatsoever.