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Bitcoin is missing a major property of money. Fungibility. Unique histories can't be fungible.

Most Bitcoiners brush this aside. Or just insist it is fungible despite NFTs being made on it's chain.

Gold has a virtually limitless supply and was considered money by civilization for many millennia. So, I'm not sure if your argument is consistent.

Delta Charlie 1y ago

I believe THE major property is the store of value...both over a short period of time, and a very, very long period of time. On to the point...

Fungible basically means that one satoshi in a store can buy you a stick of gum, and another satoshi in another store can buy you a stick of gum as well. Equal units can purchase equal value of goods and services.

Unfortunately, we are on a dollar standard, so the fungibility of bitcoin only works if the store owners prices the items in bitcoin, not dollars. Because the dollar price of bitcoin fluctuates, each satoshi isn't exactly fungible.

Gold is not limitless. All the gold has already been created by nature. Humans just haven't discovered it all...yet. This discovery process is very slow, and does make a bit of inflation, but historically gold inflation has not affected the average person.

Gold is money. Gold is not considered legal tender anymore by some countries, but that is starting to change again right now.

My points are consistent with the historical definitions of money. If you would like to continue the discussion, we can do that. I am also working on a money series similar to the bitcoin series.

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Discussion

Saberhagen The Nameless 1y ago

Ok, I don't disagree with you about store of value. But we are talking about money as a whole. And you said yourself that all those properties were important. By your own metric, if Bitcoin is missing some or weak in them, it isn't money. If you said Bitcoin and Monero were not money, that would sound consistent to me. But saying Bitcoin is money and Monero is not seems not correct especially with Moneros closer similarities with gold (private, fungible, low inflation, limitless supply).

And that is exactly why Bitcoin isn't fungible. Bitcoin is fungible in theory, on a protocol level. In the real world, 1 BTC =/= 1 BTC because of unique/distinguishable/non-uniform histories. If my coin is tainted by some past criminal activity or coinjoining, and others are able to see that, they will value it less than a freshly mined coin or one with no dirty past. Even if they don't care, they know others might care. A coin could even be overvalued if it belonged to a celebrity. We already have many examples of all this and Bitcoin isn't even widespread yet.

"You don't ask nicely that everyone else not spend your coins; You just protect them using a cryptographic key.

Similarly, you don't ask nicely everyone else not distinguish your monetary units; You just make them *technically* indistinguishable AKA fungible." -BinaryFate

Gold is virtually limitless.

Even if we mine all the gold on earth in some distant future there is a whole universe out there (which could also be endless or so vast it is virtually endless). Access to it is only limited by time, technology, and profit.

Yes, I don't mind this discussion. "Hidden Secrets of Money" is great. Monero users were actually the ones that showed me it. Just let me know if you want to agree to disagree.

Delta Charlie 1y ago

We can agree to disagree. Civilized conversations like this benefit everyone.

The idea of tainted bitcoin not being fungible is a very strong point because it considers the fiat currency system we already live in, and the fact that human nature can disturb even the most precise mechanical and technical operations.

So it is a valid point because no matter what an individual wants, and how perfect they want bitcoin to be, we live in the real world, and it is the way it is.

I agree that there might be more gold in the future, on some planet we will discover, or on asteroids passing by. But currently, this is what we have, and gold and silver are still good to study, and store instead of cash.