So far so familiar to people I bore senseless about this stuff at parties. Then it got a lot more interesting when my old chum Izabella Kaminska from the FT stepped into the fray, pointing to something that Craig Wright (the man who may or may not be Satoshi Nakamoto) wrote on the topic.
It’s the first time anyone in the bitcoin world has actually made a compelling argument, with historical references. First, he describes bitcoin not as a currency or a commodity but as a security service.
I had not read the Wright piece before, so I had a very quick glance and then bookmarked it to read later. Unfortunately, there was no later as Mr. Wright has now canned his blog, but a correspondent found it
using the wayback machine . Dr. Wright says “The mining of bitcoin is a security service that alone creates no wealth”. So to return to the point above, the sheer volume of mining going on (provided it does not become concentrated) means that there is a very, very secure piece of infrastructure out there. This infrastructure may be used to “anchor” all sorts of new services that need security as I said above. Some of them may be payments (as the Lightning folks hope) but most of them will not be. Now, while I think it unlikely that the bitcoin blockchain will be the final form of this infrastructure, that’s no reason not to experiment with it, in which case bitcoins will continue to have value even if no-one is using them to buy mundane goods or services.
Snippings 