Well it dramatically decreases the efficiency of the monetary system (requiring 60 days of electricity and 1 iPad of e-waste to scribble a few bytes into the ledger every 10 minutes), and only one of the other assets you pointed out create value, the others are unproductive.
Real estate is not a monetary asset, it's a productive asset - because people need a place to live and you can either live in a house yourself or you can rent it to others. This demand doesn't go away through the introduction of Bitcoin.
Gold is a commodity, not a monetary asset. While a large amount of its value is attributable to speculation it has myriad industrial uses, and jewelry use. Some of this demand may go away as there's a large overlap between goldbuggery and bitcoin maxis.
Dollars have no intrinsic value, but instead their value is derived from demand which is created for them when they enter circulation. They're created via fractional reserve lending meaning that when a loan is issued, new dollars are created but also a debt is recorded - creating demand for those same dollars. That means dollars are 100% backed by demand for those dollars. This demand doesn't go away through the introduction of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is nothing. It has no intrinsic value, it has no demand, it's simply a speculative number-go-up machine. It's not money, that's for sure. You could try and use it as money but that would be an utter disaster from a macroeconomic perspective.
So yeah, parent is right, its roughly a pyramid shaped MLM with a negative-sum component - the $60,000,000 per day you have to pay to miners to keep the music playing.
[edit] Also note that gold and real estate are not classically defined as "monetary assets" - those are for instance cash, bank deposits, investments in debt capital markets and lease investments. Monetary assets need to have a prescribed value in exact dollar terms.
This post is riddled with misconceptions, but I’m just going to focus on these because they’re probably the most productive places for you to start:
> Real estate is not a monetary asset, it's a productive asset… Gold is a commodity, not a monetary asset.
This is wrong. Any asset with monetary properties can (and will, in the right environments) be monetized. When the primary medium of exchange is inflationary, people will use whatever non-inflationary value stores they can find with sufficient liquidity. Most of the value of gold, and much of the value of real estate, lie in their capacity as a wealth storage mechanism. They are monetized. Bitcoin does a better job of this and will likely subsume their monetization value.
> It has no intrinsic value
Invocation of “intrinsic value” is a 100% surefire sign of a dysfunctional economic mental model.
> This is wrong. Any asset with monetary properties can (and will, in the right environments) be monetized.
That is not the definition of a monetary asset.
"A monetary item is an asset or liability carrying a value in dollars that will not change in the future. These items have a fixed numerical value in dollars, and a dollar is always worth a dollar. The numbers do not change even though the purchasing power of a dollar can potentially change." [1]
Words have meaning, so I guess I'm not 100% sure what you're talking about.
> Invocation of “intrinsic value” is a 100% surefire sign of a dysfunctional economic mental model.
I used the phrase “monetary asset” once to mean “an asset which behaves and is treated like money”, but it would have been less ambiguous for me to use the phrase “monetized asset”.
> citation needed
Give me a minute to find a copy of the Official Rules of Economic Epistemology.
If you’d like to put forward any particular theory that assigns “intrinsic value” to objects I could address it specifically.
> I used the phrase “monetary asset” once to mean “an asset which behaves and is treated like money”, but it would have been less ambiguous for me to use the phrase “monetized asset”.
Real estate is a productive asset and gold is a commodity. I'm not sure in what way they "behave like money" - their prices float with respect to a currency and have roughly zero of the attributes of money [1] - but monetization just means to find ways to make money off an unproductive asset, rather than transmuting it into something that's basically money.
> Give me a minute to find a copy of the Official Rules of Economic Epistemology.
I'll wait. If you're going to accuse someone of a "dysfunctional mental economic model" it's best to have a case made.
I'm referring to intrinsic value in the economic sense not in the epistemological sense. Economic intrinsic value is an independent mathematical derivation of the market value of an asset - based on its qualities and attributes - divorced from the price at which it trades.
For instance, the intrinsic value of a SPAC is the cash on hand, and its extrinsic value is whatever its trading at on the hopes of an acquisition.
> Economic intrinsic value is an independent mathematical derivation of the market value of an asset - based on its qualities and attributes - divorced from the price at which it trades
This doesn’t exist except in the imagination. It has no causal bearing on any economic process except through the influence it has on the person imagining it.
> their prices float with respect to a currency
So does EUR with respect to USD
> and have roughly zero of the attributes of money
Scarcity, fungibility, liquidity, durability, portability - gold’s 5/5 and real estate is 4.5/5. What properties are you thinking about?
> This doesn’t exist except in the imagination. It has no causal bearing on any economic process except through the influence it has on the person imagining it.
No, it exists in math, with addition and subtraction. Like I said, a publicly traded bank account like a SPAC has an intrinsic value equal to its cash on hand. This is the economic definition of intrinsic value, and you're trying to once again substitute your epistemological definition. Same word, different meanings in different contexts, and it's disingenuous to try and substitute your definition as though it's the commonly accepted one in this context.
> So does EUR with respect to USD
This does not follow. Money isn't an asset, it's a currency, and a foreign exchange trade is a pair trade on the relative domestic purchasing power of the two. Currencies do not float with respect to other currencies because they are not priced in terms of each other.
> Scarcity, fungibility, liquidity, durability, portability - gold’s 5/5 and real estate is 4.5/5. What properties are you thinking about?
Ok let's talk about real estate. It's not fungible, each house is different. It's not liquid, in fact, sales take a substantial period of time. It's not necessarily durable, it decays without constant upkeep. It's totally not portable. And it's not broadly accepted as money. That's 0. Try bringing your deed to the Apple store to buy a MacBook. How is that 4.5 out of 5?
Gold of course isn't broadly accepted either, so that's a critical one. Try bringing a gold brick to the Apple store and see if you can buy an iPhone. Yes it could be money, it was at some point, but we replaced it because it was bad at being money, and these days it definitely is not.
> No, it exists in math, with addition and subtraction.
I’m sure you can imagine a formula. If you’d like to share a particular formula that works for determining the “intrinsic value” of any arbitrary asset I can explain why it’s wrong or meaningless.
> This does not follow
EUR literally floats wrt USD. There is no coherent way to disagree with this.
> Currencies do not float with respect to other currencies because they are not priced in terms of each other.
Yes they are, any time someone does an FX trade.
> Ok let's talk about real estate.
Typo, meant 3.5/5. Durable - yes, it persists better over arbitrary timescales than the dollar, especially raw land. Scarce - yes. Fungible - 0.5. Liquid - long settlement times don’t mean illiquid (although I probably should apply a penalty here) - yes. Portable - 0. I think you meant “1” since you didn’t disagree with scarcity.
> Try bringing your deed to the Apple store to buy a MacBook… Try bringing a gold brick to the Apple store and see if you can buy an iPhone
Try bringing EUR to a US Apple store.
> we replaced it because it was bad at being money
Do you really think that’s why Nixon suspended gold convertibility? That’s a… very charitable explanation
> I’m sure you can imagine a formula. If you’d like to share a particular formula that works for determining the “intrinsic value” of any arbitrary asset I can explain why it’s wrong or meaningless.
Sure. Net of assets minus liabilities. Book value.
> EUR literally floats wrt USD. There is no coherent way to disagree with this.
They both change value with respect to eachother but neither is priced in the other. Goods in the US are priced in dollars. Goods in Europe are priced in Euros. Euros are not priced in dollars, and dollars are not priced in euros. They're independent and exchangeable at a market rate based on relative purchasing power and demand.
The price of a euro is not determined by the dollar - although a rate of exchange exists. The price of an apple in the US is determined by the dollar. The price of a dollar isn't determined by the euro. The price of an apple in the EU is determined by the euro. I'm sure there's a name for this.
> Yes they are, any time someone does an FX trade.
I see what you mean, and yes the rate of exchange floats.
> I think you meant “1” since you didn’t disagree with scarcity.
It's not scarce, you can just build up. We impose artificial scarcity with zoning considerations, but it's not inherently scarce.
> Try bringing EUR to a US Apple store.
Why would I do that? I don't live in Europe, I don't participate in the European economy. I can exchange one for the other, or have Visa do it free of charge, as they participate in both. Currencies only apply within their boundaries of acceptance. The euro is not a currency in America which is kind of the point I'm making about acceptance. It's a currency somewhere but real estate is a currency nowhere like gold.
So given it carries few (or IMO very few) attributes of money and is not used as money anywhere and its price fluctuates with respect to a currency, it's not a monetary asset. It's not monetized. It's totally independent.
> Do you really think that’s why Nixon suspended gold convertibility? That’s a… very charitable explanation
I don't really care why we got where we got - the result is better. FDR really took the US off the gold standard in 1933 - following the UK ending the gold standard in 1931 "abruptly and unilaterally." [1] Nixon simply killed off the last vestiges.
Uh huh… and how do you calculate the values of these subterms? You told me you could calculate a number, not an expression with free variables doing all the work.
> It's not scarce, you can just build up.
Building land is not cost effective. Economists say land has an “essentially fixed supply”, cf analysis of Georgism.
> It's a currency somewhere but real estate is a currency nowhere like gold.
Bitcoin is a currency in El Salvador. More to come.
> I don't really care why we got where we got - the result is better
Real estate is not a monetary asset, it's a productive asset - because people need a place to live and you can either live in a house yourself or you can rent it to others. This demand doesn't go away through the introduction of Bitcoin.
Gold is a commodity, not a monetary asset. While a large amount of its value is attributable to speculation it has myriad industrial uses, and jewelry use. Some of this demand may go away as there's a large overlap between goldbuggery and bitcoin maxis.
Dollars have no intrinsic value, but instead their value is derived from demand which is created for them when they enter circulation. They're created via fractional reserve lending meaning that when a loan is issued, new dollars are created but also a debt is recorded - creating demand for those same dollars. That means dollars are 100% backed by demand for those dollars. This demand doesn't go away through the introduction of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is nothing. It has no intrinsic value, it has no demand, it's simply a speculative number-go-up machine. It's not money, that's for sure. You could try and use it as money but that would be an utter disaster from a macroeconomic perspective.
So yeah, parent is right, its roughly a pyramid shaped MLM with a negative-sum component - the $60,000,000 per day you have to pay to miners to keep the music playing.
[edit] Also note that gold and real estate are not classically defined as "monetary assets" - those are for instance cash, bank deposits, investments in debt capital markets and lease investments. Monetary assets need to have a prescribed value in exact dollar terms.