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#2497·Benjamin Davies, 12 days agoDurability, Portability, Divisibility, Fungibility, and Stability
These are all secondary values.
The durability of something is irrelevant if the thing itself is useless.
The portability of something is irrelevant if the thing itself is useless.
The divisibility of something is irrelevant if the thing itself is useless.
Etcetera, etcetera.The only demand for something like this comes from either a mistaken understanding of what ‘value’ is/means (e.g. believing that the ‘durability’ of something otherwise useless makes it valuable), or from the Keynesian Beauty Contest linked above.
This dynamic makes cryptos wonderful as instruments of speculation, but they will never be money unless they are backed by some independently useful commodity (which IIRC some actually are), or are made legal tender by some government (which defeats the point).
Value comes from solving a problem.
Money solves (among other things) the problem of barter by being a medium of exchange. Different media solve this problem better than others. That determines its value.
I still don't see why there has to be a price floor set by the commodity's utility (for other things than being money)? Also, the value could still go to zero if that utility was no longer needed: Gold isn't guaranteed to be valued in industry or jewellry in the future.