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191 points aorloff | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.31s | source
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andy99 ◴[] No.44467803[source]
Most interesting to me is that people are worried about a $2B transaction moving the market.

How does that compare to the market depth of actual currencies or commodities? BTC, being objectively worthless, must be much more sensitive to people wanting to sell I'd expect.

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bboygravity ◴[] No.44467823[source]
How is BTC objectively worthless (I'm guessing you mean "intrinsicly worthlesss"?) as opposed to USD or other major currencies?
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anothernewdude ◴[] No.44467871[source]
Other currencies get their value because the governments that provide them make people pay taxes. If you want to pay the tax the US government charges you, you're going to need some USD - so there's guaranteed demand, and hence intrinsic worth.

There's also other debt that the US government provides in USD - which provides value as well, in the form of bonds.

BTC has no such driver of wealth. Except perhaps money laundering/transfers without AML provisions.

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logicchains ◴[] No.44467911[source]
>Other currencies get their value because the governments that provide them make people pay taxes

That's demonstrably false, because countries like Zimbabwe and Venezuela experienced hyperinflation (the complete devaluation of a currency) in spite of the fact that their governments were still forcing people to pay taxes with those currencies. So clearly that alone is not enough to provide intrinsic worth to a currency.

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1. notahacker ◴[] No.44471549[source]
Countries like Zimbabwe and Venezuela printed those currencies in vast quantities to pay bills instead of raising [most of] that money through taxes. Taxes owed in previous quarters were worthless compared with the new trillion dollar notes Zimbabwe's central bank issues to pay government officials, and most private transactions were black market so they weren't seeing them returned in taxes. Zimbabwe and Venezuela are the defining example of how a currency which isn't backed by mountains of debt and taxes is reliant entirely on speculators' confidence...