Thanks for the search info, I looked for “TV”, the search seems to work on word matching in a more fundamental way.
And I also see that at this moment, bitcoin is worth $675, so if I had actually BOUGHT a TV when I searched before, I’d be pretty pissed off now, since my bitcoin is worth a lot more today.
Which means that the bitcoin economy has experienced a horrible deflationary period over the past two days. Ouch.
You mention that your car could sell for different prices. I agree, and if you tell me bitcoin is a commodity like a car, I’ll totally agree with you. I was arguing that it is not money.
Meanwhile, the TV host learned that, unlike money, bitcoin is an access code to something else online. I can show people money and they can’t steal it unless they actually take it from me.
If you want to argue that bitcoin is like an online bank account, again I might not argue with you — but a bank ACCOUNT is not money.
I don’t find the internet hard, although I clearly didn’t think through the search thing in the 30 seconds I spent searching. on the other hand, money does not require any intelligence, much less training in a specific type of technology.
I don’t know why you think that a cash transaction is irreversible. Except in 3rd-world countries with high levels of inflation or deflation, a money transaction is pretty easily reversible. Two parties agreed on a common value; so if a day later one party needed to reverse the transaction, the second party can do so without experiencing a loss, other than having to find another person to do the same transaction.
In a perfect economy, transactions would be fully symmetric, but no economy is perfect.
Your last point about concern for volatility was correct, but also highlighted what I was trying to note — that if you want a stable value, you should immediately convert your bitcoin into real money. The same would be true if someone paid you in company stock, you’d immediately sell it and take the cash, or if the game show host gave you a free vacation, you might instead ask for the cash equivalent.
But if bitcoin was functioning as “money”, there would be no need to convert it to real money to achieve the goal of money.
Lastly, this is exactly why I included the definition which you agreed with but wondered why I included — because considering the purpose of money, bitcoin does not meet the definition.
Which is really the point. It may be that at some time in the future bitcoin will achieve the stability necessary to be useful as money. But 20% swings in value in 1 day is hardly “stable”. ($571 to $675 is an 18.2% increase). And therefore, at this time bitcoin does not serve as a stable medium to transfer work performed into later value received.
Why would a someone using bitcoin as a store of value be bothered by an increase in the purchasing power of that money?
You mention that your car could sell for different prices. I agree, and if you tell me bitcoin is a commodity like a car, I’ll totally agree with you. I was arguing that it is not money.
I would argue that money is a commodity, the distinction being its elevation by the market to that role in a mostly unique fashion is a consequence to its superior overall utility in the characteristics important to civilization in money.
Meanwhile, the TV host learned that, unlike money, bitcoin is an access code to something else online. I can show people money and they can’t steal it unless they actually take it from me.
If you give them the access codes to an account that has your USD denominated assets held inside, and they transfer those assets to themselves, have they stolen money?
I don’t know why you think that a cash transaction is irreversible.
You're misunderstanding the usage of the term in this context.
I stated in my previous response that a merchandise return for refund isn't a matter of the bitcoin protocol, but a seller choice in the marketplace.
Cash as you understand it is an irreversible transaction in this sense: when you hand me $100 dollars for a car you no longer have the $100 dollars to spend again.
The problem in the past with creating electronic cash is - how do you stop someone spending money from an electronic wallet, then restoring the wallet from backup and 're'spending the money? In essence, how do you stop electronic counterfeiting? The bitcoin protocol is a method for handling that question, by means of a distributed verification network that actually logs and thereby confirms all transactions. Thus, once money is spent from a wallet an entry is made in the ledger and attempts to 're'spend from a restore of that wallet will be rejected by the verification network.
This ability to create electronic 'hard money', free of inflation by governments or reckless fractional reserve banking practices, with a verification system that is also decentralized globally and not subject to government or banking regulation (the regulation is in fact the math and rules underlying the verification and building of the ledger), is the appeal of bitcoin.
Billions of people on this planet have smart phones, but no access to banking.
Bitcoin is a method of payment, a medium of exchange, that allows two parties to make a trade of that medium of exchange, in minutes, without being subject to third party fees that account for billions and billions of dollars.
Your last point about concern for volatility was correct, but also highlighted what I was trying to note — that if you want a stable value, you should immediately convert your bitcoin into real money.
What if you want stable, or appreciating value?
The same would be true if someone paid you in company stock, you’d immediately sell it and take the cash, or if the game show host gave you a free vacation, you might instead ask for the cash equivalent.
Would you be mad if you immediately cashed the stock and it rose 18%?
But if bitcoin was functioning as “money”, there would be no need to convert it to real money to achieve the goal of money.
The only 'need' to convert it is due to the degree of adoption, which is still infant. Pesos work as money in a lot of storefronts, but there are more places they don't work. That bitcoin can and is converted into many local currencies to facilitate additional markets isn't a drawback. That various medium of exchange can be exchanged for one another is a non sequitur for dismissing any of them as money.