Bitcoin's Growing Energy Problems

tetris42 said:

I think it's a bit of a stretch calling stocks "property" as it all exists only as a concept. If a merchant sells you food, or hardware, or any real items, those have value to people and are a cornerstone to society functioning. Everyone needs supplies. A merchant has to make sure he has suppliers, judge what his customers need, establish a store or means to sell them, etc. He profits, and his customers get things they need. That's not what day trading is. Pressing a button to buy some stocks in the morning at a lower price, then pressing another button selling them in the evening at a higher price helps society how?

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I mean it's ownership of assets and liabilities, which have to belong to someone. You're saying stocks can't be a legal claim on something of real value to people?

The point is day trading is just a manifestation of the ability to trade. If you ever want to trade stocks, even infrequently, you're using the same infrastructure as someone who's trading in their bathrobe. That's where the value is, assuming stocks do have value of course.

nomu said:

I mean it's ownership of assets and liabilities, which have to belong to someone. You're saying stocks can't be a legal claim on something of real value to people?

The point is day trading is just a manifestation of the ability to trade. If you ever want to trade stocks, even infrequently, you're using the same infrastructure as someone who's trading in their bathrobe. That's where the value is, assuming stocks do have value of course.

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I'm saying stocks are only as real as long as people believe in them. If people lose faith in a stock, it becomes worthless. If they believe in it, it remains valuable. It's both real and it's not and that reality can be a fragile thing. If you own a hammer, it's still a hammer and remains useful no matter who believes in it or not. It's real.

One person was saying unlike real jobs, bitcoin has no inherent value to society, so I was comparing it to day trading. I personally think day traders contribute basically nothing to society, but they're certainly making money from the process, so it's the same with Bitcoin. Whether you agree with that or not is up to you, but my point is the same logic that applies to Bitcoin's value can also apply to stocks. If you think stocks have inherent value, then so does bitcoin. If you don't, then bitcoin doesn't either. To argue for one and not the other would take some mental gymnastics.