Oddbean

If I buy one if your paintings and hang it on my wall. If Bitcoin goes up it doesn't mean your painting is worth more. Let's say I paid 500USD in Bitcoin for a painting and Bitcoin goes up. Your painting doesn't go up with it. The value of your painting will stay at 500USD. Depending on who wants to buy it. I might not even be able to sell it at 500USD if there is no demand from anyone to buy it. Why would anyone buy your paintings from me, a lot more than what I paid.

You are right, my paintings are worthless, the people who bought them so far don't like my art, they just felt like throwing away their Bitcoins... 🙄 nostr:nevent1qqsr40w4whzx29wmdf65xv3gpmx427y9p3ujm70qkyw0rwfv4puxy7qpzemhxue69uhkummnw3ex2mrfw3jhxtn0wfnj7q3qc7k2hu076gq62vv9unw9urrt4c4utkce6uatlpq9xhestk8s2xqqxpqqqqqqz8zs4kw

I didn't say they are worthless. I said your paintings don't gain value after being purchased. In fact your paintings probably lose value over time. Bitcoin on the other hand will continue to gain value.

Not everyone is buying art as an investment. I might just like to look at a particular picture on my wall. Buying everything based on the value it might give someone else in the future seems like a pretty pointless life. Art should be bought based on the value it brings to your life. I don't think art is necessarily a good investment anyway unless you plan on outliving the artist (or they are already dead) AND a lot of people like their work or you have reason to believe they will. The problem with art is that it could be low value now but priceless in a museum two hundred years from now. It's also super niche. Money isn't. Everyone uses it.

So why would you hold fiat in your account? You are saving in a currency that a guaranteed to lose purchasing power. And you don't even have anything to show for it? You just have a pile of currency that are less valuable. So with your logic you babe to buy everything right now with your currency. So you're left with 0 savings. And a bunch of goods you probably can't sell for more than you purchased them for.

In terms of USD, the obvious negation to this whole debate is to buy the 500USD worth of Bitcoin and immediately send it to the artist just like you would if you were paying in fiat. Your point only makes any sense if you aren't spending and replacing or earning income from some value you provide in a market. You could argue this for any money you spend on anything. I just spent $260USD on Yeti products. Could I have invested that instead? Of course. Will someone pay me more than that in the future? Probably not. But we have to separate our investment pile from our spending pile and decide how much we want to put into each based on individual values. Otherwise, there is little point to life. Delaying gratification can be good, but that doesn't mean everyone will have the same idea of what that means (I buy new underwear and don't sell my chairs and go into debt for Bitcoin). I value my happiness and wellbeing right now to some degree more than future potential earnings, but I do have my own lines (I don't buy brand new vehicles or the latest electronics, etc). It's also worth considering that the major levels of volatility in Bitcoin come from it being an emerging technology. There would come a time when "going up" doesn't mean what it does now. It's value would only increase with population an economic growth, which probably won't be anywhere close to the levels we see as early adopters.