Uhhh, its not a debt because that company would have had to agree to issue a debt, usually with terms and an interest rate. After you get slapped with a fine there is no requirement for the company to accept legal tender from you as repayment, I think.

I feel like there's a happy medium here, I've taken custody of my moms keys, and expressed that bitcoin isn't ready for her yet.

I've had a critique of the idea that the covid hysteria is a social experiments the elites ran on us. I don't disagree with it, but any data would be flawed because society changes in unpredictable ways. Let's see if that bears out.

Right, the self is subjective and the nonself is unprovable, so real is a quality of the self/subjective, and the objective may or may not conform, but also doesn't care. Though, if something is objective but not real it may be reinterpreted as real at a later date, I would think, and that may come back to the point about subjective experience and degrees of trust. In this sense, we can't know if bitcoin is objective, but it can be real depending on your perspective.

Hmmm, well many eastern religions would dispute a distinction between the self and the non-self, I think it has to do with either of those being undefinable without the other. I don't know how to plug realness into that, but its worth bearing in mind.

Zap reward, I'd like to find a universizable definition of "real". Let's set aside our bias of bitcoin being real for a minute. I'll zap anyone with an actual response or thoughts on , and I'll boost it en Mañana so I can collect as much insight as possible.

In the physical realm, you know something is real because you can touch it, but is that inadequate? You could say this is Tiger woods PGA winning golf club, but that requires some context in which you know that its real; a famous painting might be based off a chain of custody, appraisers, certificates of authenticity which are equally flawed; I know that this is wine, but is it really a Wenzlau pinot noir 2017, or a forgery; this looks like a golf club, it feels like a golf club, but when I hit a ball the head snaps off, that's not real right? Its not impossible perse, but it might depend on degrees of trust and your subjective experience.

In the digital realm, I could say this movie is real because I can watch it; I could say this video of matt Odell is real; I can know a picture of a politician with 17 fingers getting arrested is fake; a pirated copy of a movie is still the real movie. So what's the defining characteristic? Again maybe the degrees of trust and subjective experience are what makes a thing real.

Maybe I'm mixing up some metaphysical layers, committing a logical fallacy, or linguistic mess. It seems like a universizable definition of realness at least depends on degrees of trust and subjective experience, what do you guys think?

Money is half of every transaction, funny how that works out.

Huh, damn I should lead with that next time I'm debating a shitcoiner, "how do you define when a digital item is real?".

I think that's an excellent question, if a digital item was to be considered real then we certainly would need a different definition than a physical item where you can touch it. So could a digital item be considered real in the first place? Is it worth creating a definition of realness for something that isn't possible? This really is the heart of what bitcoin is intended to represent, the very first (and foreseeable only) instantiation of digital scarcity, could that be extended to a new definition of realness fit for the digital realm? I think so, but I'll have to spend some time tonight thinking about the metaphysics of what it means for something to be real.

As in I know this is an actual and precise fraction of all bitcoin on the one and only bitcoin network, that no one can steal or diminish my share given the relevant assumptions hold true (like seeds were generated with the appropriate amount of entropy, and I maintain physical custody of my keys at all times). By contrast, the same cannot be said for any other digital item unless your assumption is that the trusted can be trusted.

Oh I sure wish there were some, I'd throw it on a kiln and forge it into a family crest, or maybe use it as a near infinite battery for all the energy required to create it. Unfortunately there are none, I just don't think a thing requires a physical presence to be "real" or a commodity.

I don't exactly know what it is, something about me committing to this as my digital identity for general use, not wanting to make myself seem like a bafoon before people I respect, the platform not amplifying "engaging" content, but I find myself very interested in good conversations here. You guys are also willing to debate it out and we all come from the same school of thought so that helps.

Well, maybe I should have been more precise with my language, its not based *solely* on its industrial use cases. It will always have value for the reasons you outlined, that seems like a guarantee. Though, how much faster is it extracted today than it is used in those industrial use cases? (I acknowledge that gold production would slow and gold use would increase in that hypothetical, but the value would still be far lower than today)

Claims, yes, which require trust, who's currency is BRICS going to trade in, seems like a big basket of bad deals. Maybe they'll follow through on using gold, maybe the CIA sinks a tanker carrying a pallet of it.

Do I see a problem with it ultimately being based on speculation? I do on something of a risk adjusted basis, I did more so before it had any trading value, less when it entered common sentiment, less when countries started using it as a currency, and less now that its in contention as an option for international trade in a world where countries can't trust each other and the world reserve currency hangs in the balance. I'll be evermore satisfied as further developments come, be it geopolitical or code.

Except this theorem depends on the asset in question being a commodity. The question is what a commodity is. Based on our last discussion you called into question whether bitcoin was real or not, which seems to be a key factor in determining whether its a commodity; you seem to believe that the absolute scarcity of bitcoin is fictitious, and I'm happy to continue that conversation whenever you feel up to it. That seems to be the basic predisposition you base your case on, so that might be best to root out. I promise the next step after where we last left off is very fun, what happens when nodes start trying to change the code? Heck it, I'll buy you an audio book that covers it in deeper detail if you are interested.

The same goes for gold, your store of value depends on someone wanting to actually buy it from you for something else. If we could send gold through an Ethernet cable that would be absolutely magic, imagine how wonderful the world would be if gold could teleport over the internet, hide it behind a VPN, divide it up into a billion bite sized chunks and transact with it at the speed of light. If that's the fate of bitcoin then I'll happily concede that I chose wrong and join the new sound money world, I just highly doubt that will happen.

It will indeed never be used in production, but the value of gold isn't supported by its industrial use cases either.

There's no such thing as inherent value, mises and rothbard proved out that value is subjective. What value is gold to a man lost in the desert?

Bitcoins utility is in your ability to receive and transact with it without a trusted third party, regardless of amount or geographic distance, and store it in a secure medium like a sheet of steel or even your own memory. Its fair to point out it has no industrial use case, of course, we hope that its superior monetary qualities are the utility in it of itself.

I'll try that for my next one, I can hardly get into the bios on this POS.

Your guess is probably better than mine, just something I thought worth considering.