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Why would someone accept it in a trade if it has no value? What you claim is ridiculous on its face

Yeah he’s got it backwards. Nick Szabo is the one to read on this but the Austrians he mentioned all agree it’s SoV first followed by MoE.

The idea is basically something of value would be stored in surplus and traded for other things of value someone had stored in surplus - the best of these stores gravitated towards money in different areas and contexts.

Seashells which is his first mention weren’t collected to simply become a Medium of Exchange - they were first a collectable and because they were durable and portable, later became proto-money.

It doesn’t make any sense for a MoE of exchange to emerge unless people value it enough that they’re willing to hold it for a period because they believe it will hold its value sufficiently to be traded over time.

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Discussion

rare 1y ago

Collectable is utility.

StackSats.IO 1y ago

Bitcoin was first a collectible. The first time it was used in exchange someone sent 10,000 of them for 2 pizzas because they had a surplus of them and wanted to trade them for something else of value and the other party to the transaction was happy to take 10,000 of those collectible items in exchange for 2 pizzas.

rare 1y ago

Correct. He had to trade with someone who wanted them or had similar values.

StackSats.IO 1y ago

Right, and the only reason he COULD trade them was because he had amassed a sufficient number that another party took the other side of the trade and also thought holding the 10,000 Bitcoin would be worthwhile - they weren’t being traded to flip because there was no market for that.

Laszlo had stored up the collectibles in surplus - notice the transaction wasn’t 1 Bitcoin, or 20,000 Sats as the case might be today..

The guy who bought the pizzas was willing to hold a large amount of what was still a collectible at the time because he thought he would be able to also trade them on future - that they would hold value over time… A store of value if you will..

Szabo is the one you need to be reading/listening to:

https://fountain.fm/episode/x8tdmijTWRqQwNkwLyL4

rare 1y ago

I agree with Szabo, but I think his word choice is poor.

Collecting isn't essentially "storing value," considering person A is the only one who finds value in it. Trade requires at least two people. Person B needs to find some interest in A's asset to have value outside of their own preference.

People want to say "collecting is storing value," but that's just speculation again.

As I wrote earlier, if the idea is that because of bitcoins early use as a currency from 2009-2015 was enough to build trust in the asset to store value in it, makes sense and let's use THAT position, using proper phrasing, than the current narrative which is misleading and technically incorrect.