

Ask HN: Are all Bitcoins of equal value? - will_brown

I put in a fair amount of <i>research</i> without finding an answer, though bitcoin.org says price is determined by supply&#x2F;demand, I am wondering can supply&#x2F;demand be hacked increasing&#x2F;decreasing the value of only certain bitcoin.  For example,<p>1. Hack demand: What if a certain Bitcoin (or fraction thereof) were owned by a celebrity, I would think there would be greater demand for that specific bitcoin maybe even greater demand for the transaction should it be purchased direct from the celebrity versus additional degrees of separation from the original transaction.<p>2. Hack Supply:  Lets say I create a new startup, and instead of paper shares&#x2F;stock I purchase 1 Bitcoin to be representative of the ownership of the company.  While that Bitcoin and its units would maintain its market value they would additionally contain the respective value of the company.<p>3.  There are also things that are currently being done that in my opinion decrease the value of certain bitcoins.  For example, buying bitcoin from an exchange that is not properly licensed&#x2F;registered opens the door to the potential liability that a government may freeze accounts or confiscate any and all bitcoins that flowed through that exchange. Or for example, the 144,000 bitcoins that the FBI seized from Ulbricht, what if he sold those bitcoins to various buyers well below the market rate and next thing you know the FBI confiscates those bitcoins from the buyers and now the buyers are out their USD and bitcoin.  Are these bitcoins inherently tainted?
======
fsniper
Bitcoins can not be distinguished between each other. Actually there are no
bitcoins. There is only a "quantity" you have and this quantity is refered as
"Bitcoin". You do not have any control over how you sent/spend bitcoin
quantities. So If you have 2 bitcoins you can not number these as first
bitcoin and second bitcoin.

But if you look into the minted bitcoins, yes these are possible. But they are
not the currency in flow. They are special things.

------
jolan
Colored coins is what you're looking for:

[http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/5695/what-are-
col...](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/5695/what-are-colored-
coins)

------
edwardy20
This is an interesting concept. I suppose you could do similar things with USD
as well. You could declare, "Anyone with a dollar bill with this specific
serial number now has control of my company." I would argue that the dollar
bill still has a value of $1 by itself, but you can assign arbitrary value to
it by making it representative of another thing.

~~~
acjohnson55
That's sort of an inverse Gresham's Law [1] scenario

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law)

