Sorry, it's not insurance against the world falling apart because cryptocurrencies (Ccs) have no intrinsic worth. With no internet access, no internet or no miners, you can't conduct trades (unless you give wallet PK, but then it still doesn't have worth beyond what you can actually buy with it in a post-internet world).
OTOH, vital, scarce commodities and property have intrinsic worth because they can be used or are valued. Gold, silver, platinum, diesel fuel, guns, knives, equipment, huge tracks o' land
From the begging and until now, Ccs only make sense as a transactional money analog, not an investment other than an extremely speculative (volatile) one that could lose most/all of its value anytime.
If you want to hide money for a couple of days, do some money laundering (j/k), buy some drugs (j/k^2) or send money anonymously, Ccs are great. Please don't put the bulk/large amount of your savings into Cc unless you're leaving a repressive regime or want to give it all to me to avoid taxes. }:D
Nothing has intrinsic value. When you say something can be used or has value, you are speaking subjectively.
To be valuable economically, something just needs to be both scarce and sought after. Just because they are valuable to a specific set of persons does not mean they have intrinsic value.
Pricing of goods and services is emergent in nature, based on demand, scarcity and rate of consumption.
The 'bitcoin hype' is exactly what you are describing when you say:
> Ccs only make sense as a transactional money analog
Bitcoin was designed to just be a general accounting ledger that can't be forged. It is supposed to be a transactional money analog.
The 'value' that you should be investing in when talking about bitcoin is not its price in dollars, but rather that the idea:
The 'value' in bitcoin is that non-mutable accounting ledgers will be more reliable and provide a better account of economic activity over some duration than its pre-existing counterpart. The only way it will lose this is if the security of the system breaks.
You're not making an honest argument while making a sweeping generalization and a strawman about something else. Money has value if you can buy things with it. Gasoline has value if you need it. Bitcoin has no value if no one will accept it or trade it. That's reality, not hypotheticals.
I believe you are missing the point I was trying to make.
I was stating that nothing, not even bitcoin or money or gold or water has intrinsic value. Anything can have value to a person who is in need of a seller's goods. That was not my argument. Things have subjective value. Things do not have some mystic intrinsic property that makes them inherently valuable.
OTOH, vital, scarce commodities and property have intrinsic worth because they can be used or are valued. Gold, silver, platinum, diesel fuel, guns, knives, equipment, huge tracks o' land
From the begging and until now, Ccs only make sense as a transactional money analog, not an investment other than an extremely speculative (volatile) one that could lose most/all of its value anytime.
If you want to hide money for a couple of days, do some money laundering (j/k), buy some drugs (j/k^2) or send money anonymously, Ccs are great. Please don't put the bulk/large amount of your savings into Cc unless you're leaving a repressive regime or want to give it all to me to avoid taxes. }:D