> This is a good metaphor, but it's not perfect. You haven't explained how or why you'll be burying $1000 exactly 21 million times, every 10 minutes until 2140.
That's an engineering problem. ;)
And it's also beside the point. One has intrinsic value, one doesn't.
> Or why it becomes worthless immediately upon decryption...
The reason the number is worth something is because there's real money tied to it. Once the guarantee of value disappears, the value of the number also does.
> The reason the number is worth something is because there's real money tied to it.
That's the reason why Tether and stablecoins like it ostensibly have value. Bitcoin and friends have value because they are fungible and because people assign a value to it. (Much like fiat money.)
There was never any guaranteed value, but many people saw Bitcoin transacting at $0.05 and put it through the paces, understood what they were observing, and saw that it was massively undervalued as a new technology. Since then it's been proven to work on a repeatable basis, with some caveats like the issues that come with increasing popularity scaling up the volume and value per coin, like $50 transaction fees, but that's another engineering problem.
If you told me for some reason that you thought Bitcoin and every cryptocurrency will simultaneously become worth less than that $0.05, overnight, I would assume that you are either a kook, or again, perhaps, that you've discovered another engineering problem... demands further explanation.
We're not talking about Tether though, we're talking about fungible instruments. You wouldn't say that a stock is valueless because its value fluctuates.
> Bitcoin and friends have value because they are fungible and because people assign a value to it. (Much like fiat money.)
The dollar is the official currency of the US, and all transactions the government makes is required to be in the US dollar.
Bitcoin is an optional currency, made fashionable by the likes of Aston Kutchner, and appears to be more akin to a polyester leisure suit of the 1970's than the US Dollar.
Both Bitcoin and a polyester leisure suit at one point had value, and they both got their value based upon fashion and celebrity.
> We're not talking about Tether though, we're talking about fungible instruments.
I can make 1 fashionable number worth $1M. Or, I can also make 1 million fashionable numbers worth $1 each. It doesn't matter that the price is fixed, if I have infinite supply.
Tether claims that it intends to hold all United States dollars in reserve so that it can meet customer withdrawals upon demand, though it was unable to meet all withdrawal requests in 2017.[33] Tether purports to make reserve account holdings transparent via external audit; however, no such audits exist.[8] In January 2018 Tether announced that they no longer had a relationship with their auditor.[34]
You say Polyester leisure suit, I say auditable distributed ledger, let's call the whole thing off...
I really am not an advocate of Tether, or Bitcoin anymore at this point to be honest (it's proven to have on-chain scaling issues, and I still have doubts about lightning network)
I am not a "maximalist" for any one coin, I'm just saying you have to be an absolute luddite to not see the value of the innovation. I'm not one of those who says "all money will be on the blockchain by X date"
But if you honestly think that the technological advancement of cryptographically secured distributed mobile currency is on the level or same plane of value as a 1970's leisure suit, sponsored by Aston Kutcher, then I'm not sure there's anything I can do to help you...
Bitcoin can fail, Bitcoin can go to $0, but Bitcoin was only the first. The ones that follow may not make anyone rich (directly, in the sense of "to the moon"), but I think it's no exaggeration to say they have changed and will continue to change the way we do money forever.
That's an engineering problem. ;)
And it's also beside the point. One has intrinsic value, one doesn't.
> Or why it becomes worthless immediately upon decryption...
The reason the number is worth something is because there's real money tied to it. Once the guarantee of value disappears, the value of the number also does.