I have a new take on Bitcoin.
It's the people who determine what Bitcoin is and it's the people who determine its value. Right now the people have determined that Bitcoin's value is $11,416. Momentarily they will determine its value differently, higher or lower. Some day they will determine that its value is zero. We all die sometime.
Bitcoin is democratic and decentralized. Nobody forces it on anybody, as governments do their national currencies. Bitcoin's demand comes from the people; its supply is determined by the people. Bitcoin is many things to many people but the crucial point is that Bitcoin is what they say it is. We make a completely understandable but fatal mistake when we ask Bitcoin existential questions: "What are you?" "What do you do?" and try to pigeon-hole it into categories, currency, store of value, collectible, that we are familiar with.
It is wrong-headed to say that Bitcoin's technology provides sufficient--or insufficient (as I did)--basis for its value. Bitcoin, like democracy, like trial by jury, is process-determinative, not outcome-determinative. In democracies the people always make the "right" choice by the act of choosing. In trial by jury justice is what the jury says it is. There is no external standard: not for the legitimacy of an elected official in a democracy nor for whether the jury made the "right" decision. Nor for what Bitcoin is or what Bitcoin is worth. In each case, it's the people. The candidate gets his legitimacy by the election process; the defendant gets justice by "due process;" Bitcoin gets its legitimacy from its number of buyers and sellers. In all three, process and outcome are collapsed.
The people who buy Bitcoin are always right; The people who sell Bitcoin are always right. The price of Bitcoin is always right.
