what would you ever do if bitcoin went negative price?

[aqarwaen29]

hypothetically what would you do,if bitcoin somwhow went negative price below 0 dollars.

it dosent matter why or how it happened.

do you think this would be bitcoin if that ever would happen actually.

[PDifolco]

It makes no real sense, I mean if ever a banknote had negative value you'll just dump it..

[Dedayog]

16 minutes ago, aqarwaen29 said:

hypothetically what would you do,if bitcoin somwhow went negative price below 0 dollars.

it dosent matter why or how it happened.

do you think this would be bitcoin if that ever would happen actually.

Can it even happen?

 

Asking about things that can't happen makes no sense, even hypothetically.

[mariushm]

Can't really go negative, but could go down to pennies.

People would stop mining it and temporarily move to other coins, so no new coins being created means the demand for coins will increase and prices should go up a bit.

The mining difficulty will also decrease a lot, as it's tied directly to the amount of miners mining the coins, and you need new coins being mined to do transactions (a bunch of transactions are "attached" to the creation of each new coin and that gets stuck into the blockchain, making the transactions irreversible) 

 

 

If not enough people need it for trading or buying things, it will end up delisted from exchanges, the value will go to 0, and will no longer be used by people. 

 

[venomtail]

Negative value was thought to be impossible until the 2020 pandemic.

 

Causation was physical laws of storage, too much supply and not enough places where to store them.

 

If another negative value dip is to happen, it certainly won't be to crypto. Doubt there is a way to recreate a lack of storage to keep around a crypto currency + oil can be used to create further value as a resource. As for cypto, cryto itself can't be used to create further wealth, merely a token of value like currency itself.

[jaslion]

It can only go negative if its cost to keep running goes over the revenue it generates. Since its all digital bs and basically just a mathematical formula thats near impossible to happen.

 

 

[Sarra]

FML if only housing prices went negative. Current prices are next-level stupid. -_____-;

[Heliian]

I would do nothing, it's nothing.  Crypto is dead.  It's going to take a long time before anyone jumps on that bandwagon again.

 

People still gonna hodl that crap until its worth .000000000000001 rupees. 

[ToboRobot]

2 hours ago, aqarwaen29 said:

hypothetically what would you do,if bitcoin somwhow went negative price below 0 dollars.

it dosent matter why or how it happened.

do you think this would be bitcoin if that ever would happen actually.

What would you do if USD went negative price?

[Middcore]

[Takumidesh]

2 hours ago, venomtail said:

Causation was physical laws of storage, too much supply and not enough places where to store them.

And that makes a pretty fundamental difference in this case. Since someone has to put the oil somewhere, the cost of holding becomes higher than the value of keeping and if that cost value ratio shrinks enough, it becomes more valuable to free up your ships or other resources than to hold it. 

 

Another key difference is that you cannot just really destroy the oil.

If these companies had the ability to snap their fingers and make that oil disappear they would do that before they would would pay for someone to take it.

 

Since the cost to hold/maintain bitcoin, especially on a cold wallet is effectively zero, a situation like that can't really happen. There is no reason to pay someone to take your bitcoin because there is no cost of upkeep or maintenance. and even if you really really really didn't want it anymore literally all you need to do to accomplish that is just forget your encryption keys, the bitcoin is effectively destroyed and the burden of 'storing' it is gone. there is no value at all in paying to give someone it.

1 hour ago, ToboRobot said:

What would you do if USD went negative price?

Even this is not the same scenario. Since dollar bills or coins could actually end up with a negative practical value.

 

In a hyper inflation scenario, lets say that over the course of a month, the value of USD to EUR went to 100,000USD = 1 EUR.

 

In this scenario a penny becomes a physical burden, there is no longer a practical use for it outside of its material value (the metal it is made of). There is however a burden of storage, just like the oil, you have to put it somewhere or process it.

 

If you were a bank, and you had a certain amount of physical space to store items. You would not want to fill that space with something worth nothing, and that does not generate value. The cost to maintain the space, pay rent, or whatever else, means a net loss.

So in that scenario you may consider selling the pennies to a company that can melt them down, or maybe a place in the middle of nowhere where that space is less valuable, that way you can fill the space with gold, larger denominations, or other items of value.

But if noone wants to buy them, you may consider paying a certain amount to get rid of them, so that way you can free that space up.

 

So you pay $1 million dollars for someone to take the pennies, but you fill that space back up with something that generates $1million and 1 dollars.

[ewitte]

If you would cost money to sell something, why would you sell it?  Same reason I'm not going to list something on Ebay if the fees and shipping cost more than what I can sell it for.

[da na]

That is impossible. You can't lose money by having bitcoin. Now, if you're mining bitcoin with really inefficient hardware, you could lose money doing so, but the actual value of a currency will not drop below 0.

[Takumidesh]

1 minute ago, ewitte said:

If you would cost money to sell something, why would you sell it?  Same reason I'm not going to list something on Ebay if the fees and shipping cost more than what I can sell it for.

The same reason people pay for garbage collection.

[ToboRobot]

1 hour ago, Takumidesh said:

Even this is not the same scenario. Since dollar bills or coins could actually end up with a negative practical value.

 

In a hyper inflation scenario, lets say that over the course of a month, the value of USD to EUR went to 100,000USD = 1 EUR.

 

In this scenario a penny becomes a physical burden, there is no longer a practical use for it outside of its material value (the metal it is made of). There is however a burden of storage, just like the oil, you have to put it somewhere or process it.

 

If you were a bank, and you had a certain amount of physical space to store items. You would not want to fill that space with something worth nothing, and that does not generate value. The cost to maintain the space, pay rent, or whatever else, means a net loss.

So in that scenario you may consider selling the pennies to a company that can melt them down, or maybe a place in the middle of nowhere where that space is less valuable, that way you can fill the space with gold, larger denominations, or other items of value.

But if noone wants to buy them, you may consider paying a certain amount to get rid of them, so that way you can free that space up.

 

So you pay $1 million dollars for someone to take the pennies, but you fill that space back up with something that generates $1million and 1 dollars.

What is practical value?

[Takumidesh]

2 hours ago, ToboRobot said:

What is practical value?

in a hyper inflation scenario like i described, a penny would still technically have a value as a currency. However, that value would be so extremely low that it would be impractical to store or use it, since you would need 10 million physical pennies to buy a stick of gum.

 

since the actual value of the penny becomes lower than value of the actual space it consumes, it has an effective negative value. basically it becomes a drain on the owner of the penny.

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to Off Topic

 

This subject is both theoretical and about finance, not tech.

 

If value of something is negative, it means seller is paying you to buy something they are selling. So when it's currency, doesn't really happen. Of physical items (example of oil prices), possible.

[mr moose]

Well, I guess in the unlikely event that someone is going to pay me to take their bitcoin, I'd probably stop releasing ransomware.

[Sauron]

21 hours ago, venomtail said:

Doubt there is a way to recreate a lack of storage to keep around a crypto currency

well, digital storage has a cost and so does transfering btc, so if it's worth less than the storage space it occupies you might be willing to pay someone the transfer fee to get rid of it

[Arika]

laugh until the end of time and wonder why so many people were so deep into such a bullshit scam that is cryptocurrency.

[Takumidesh]

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

well, digital storage has a cost and so does transfering btc, so if it's worth less than the storage space it occupies you might be willing to pay someone the transfer fee to get rid of it

right, but there is no cost of disposal. e.g. with oil or something, it costs money to get rid of it. so the negative value is not really a traditional sale, its more of a disposal handling fee / short term storage fee (until the price recovers)

 

with crypto the cost to get rid of it is zero, you don't have to do anything. the worst case scenario is deleting a wallet.dat or forgetting encryption keys.

so even if the value goes to absolute zero, never to ever recover again. freeing up the resources is as easy hitting the delete key. it would be more work to pay someone and give them the crypto.

 

there is no case where paying someone to get rid of it is beneficial (outside of weird and specific criminal/laundering scenarios)

 

so there is really no reason to pay someone to 'take it off your hands' because the cost to do so yourself is 0.

[Sauron]

26 minutes ago, Takumidesh said:

right, but there is no cost of disposal. e.g. with oil or something, it costs money to get rid of it. so the negative value is not really a traditional sale, its more of a disposal handling fee / short term storage fee (until the price recovers)

If you really want to split hairs even deletion takes some time and energy as well as flash write cycles or hard disk wear  although you wouldn't need to pay anyone to do it, you'd just take that loss yourself.

31 minutes ago, Takumidesh said:

there is no case where paying someone to get rid of it is beneficial (outside of weird and specific criminal/laundering scenarios)

I guess maybe if you're an exchange holding customers' btc you wouldn't be allowed to just delete it? though at that point you obviously have bigger issues to worry about

[Takumidesh]

14 minutes ago, Sauron said:

If you really want to split hairs even deletion takes some time and energy as well as flash write cycles or hard disk wear  although you wouldn't need to pay anyone to do it, you'd just take that loss yourself.

I guess maybe if you're an exchange holding customers' btc you wouldn't be allowed to just delete it? though at that point you obviously have bigger issues to worry about

That is a good point. though in theory, the actual crypto doesn't really need anything. a cold wallet doesn't need to change for long term storage. But yea, the difference is that the cost is already incurred right, you already wrote the bytes, so no benefit to paying someone to delete it (since the bytes can just be naturally overwritten over time). and the process of deleting the keys makes it a non transferable event, so there is no way to 'fairly' offload the cost.

 

Though to get even deeper down the hole. There is no reason to have a wallet.dat at all. ALL YOU NEED is the private keys, there is no reason they cannot be stored in your head, which means you can effectively transfer all of your bitcoin to someone else with zero cost, by giving them your keys, no transaction fees or penalties or whatever, no wear and tear on a flash chip or hard disk. just the caloric expense of moving your vocal cords, I don't know how much cheaper something can get lol.

 

I think the exchange issue would only be a real problem with the conversions.

and even an exchange in that scenario, would be required to give it to the clients (because it isn't theirs to hold) and therefore isn't making a value transaction with the crypto (as in they aren't selling it) so the costs incurred to transfer it back to the client are somewhat isolated from the value of currency itself, its a separate business or legal cost to make the client whole.  similar to how you don't count the value of the check you are writing as part of the bill. ( i know not a perfect analogy)

 

 

[Beerzerker]

3 hours ago, Arika S said:

laugh until the end of time and wonder why so many people were so deep into such a bullshit scam that is cryptocurrency.

Was going to say the same thing because I too would laugh my ass off over it.

If you're foolish enough to fall for it, you get what you deserve....
Esp when others are telling you point-blank what the real deal is about it and you ignore them.

[Sauron]

25 minutes ago, Takumidesh said:

just the caloric expense of moving your vocal cords, I don't know how much cheaper something can get lol.

well, if your time could be better spent than calling or messaging the other person and that person would also rather be doing something else... not to mention if they need to be doing this for multiple wallets or merging them for better handling or whatever. you'd incur in some expense if you couldn't just delete everything, that's for sure. whether that expense would be part of "selling" the tokens depends on how you actually solve the problem.

31 minutes ago, Takumidesh said:

and even an exchange in that scenario, would be required to give it to the clients (because it isn't theirs to hold) and therefore isn't making a value transaction with the crypto (as in they aren't selling it) so the costs incurred to transfer it back to the client are somewhat isolated from the value of currency itself, its a separate business or legal cost to make the client whole.

what if the customers absolutely don't want to have the crypto back and pay the exchange to "buy" it from them and keep or destroy it

 

also there's L salvador which has declared it legal tender so people probably can't just destroy it there even if it belongs to them