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It only needs to be valued by one person to develop an exchange rate.
Personally, I think the Regression Theorem (applied to money) is a pretty weak theory.
Indeed. One person. I wish Mises, and Hayek at least were taught in school. I exposed my sons to them because we did homeschool them for part of their education.
On that topic. People often fail to recognize how much influence they have on their kids. Even if you can't afford to homeschool you can augment their education. It just takes effort and time. We like to make things all or nothing but moving the needle even a little can have a big impact.
Totally. A phrase I like to use is just "what side of the hill are you on" when people are struggling to decide between two extremes. It's meant to show them that you don't need to go to the extreme, you just need to figure out what direction to start moving.
One could argue that these are needed for digital money but not ONLY digital money.
Good point. I'm not trying to say there are no other uses for whatever bitcoin is, but that some people valued bitcoin only/first for being money -- and, in the case of the early adopters, that this is a reasonable claim.
How long did it take for gold to become a money? Was it always a money or was this discovered?
I believe my position (although I don't think I fully expressed this) is that money existed before gold. That's an absurd statement, so perhaps I should rephrase it: money is something that humans developed independent of things like gold, they just anchored it to gold or shells or whatever because it provided scarcity.
I think this could be extended to say that gold coins or shells or nails are stablewords?
If money is a language, a way of communicating and "incorporate inchoate knowledge that we can't even articulate to ourselves" (#1426333), the way we peg them to reality is through some sort of scarcity. We need to pin our words down so they can't be thrown around without connection to reality. We have to make them into stablewords. This used to e mostly via physical objects. But Bitcoin changed the game.
(A title using stablewords would have been good, but I couldn't figure out a nice turn of phrase)
I'm not trying to say there are no other uses for whatever bitcoin is, but that some people valued bitcoin only/first for being money -- and, in the case of the early adopters, that this is a reasonable claim.
It is a reasonable claim and I agree with it.
money existed before gold.
Of course it did. I don't think that is absurd at all.
I love the title btw.
I tell my friends that seem to think money is evil that its a technology. But I like language too. Not sure I can explain it well though. Not before they doze off. Money is a tool (technology) to make exchange easier and more functional.
Here's how I reconcile it.
How long did it take for gold to become a money? Was it always a money or was this discovered?
Was bitcoin created to be money? Yeah, as you say it is hard to read the whitepaper and argue that it wasn't. But that doesn't mean it actually is money. But it does mean one person believed it or at least sold it that way. Other believed it as well. More and more believe it now but it isn't a general medium of exchange yet because not enough people believe it is money. Most have no clue. Others see it as a digital commodity / speculation only. It is that as well I would argue.
Bitcoin did have other utilities outside of money as well and still does. Specifically the PoW that enforces digital scarcity by the use of energy to protect the blockchain from rewriting. Solving the double spend problem was an innovation. Once could argue that these are needed for digital money but not ONLY digital money.
I'm probably out of my depth here but doesn't that all make sense? Am I missing your point? You bring up good questions either way though.