I’m not sure why you’re confused about it being downvoted.

1) Whether or not it meets the (or someone’s preferred) definition of currency is wholly incidental to the answerer’s explanation, so even if correct, this is not the place to make the point.

2) Bizarre non-sequitur that equates finiteness of currency with zero sum utility which is a real stretch and easy to find counterexamples for (eg chore tokens).

For the cherry on top, it links Medium as a main source.

Is that a good enough justification to downvote?

This is splitting hairs.

Sure, everything can be used as a currency. Gold, bitcoins, fiat cash, snackpack puddings at lunch, seashells, etc.

Then there are qualities that make something a good currency, by modern standards. As others have pointed out with links to examples, being deflationary, irreversible, volatile, and having low coverage with unpredictable fees are traits that make Bitcoin not a very good currency. Yes you can hand wave about future promises to be a great currency or chore tokens, but that does not reflect the utility of Bitcoin right now as a good currency.

I wasn't addressing whether bitcoin is or isn't a good currency. I was explaining why I downnvoted a comment that argued to that effect.

Are you saying that every comment whose conclusion happens to right should be upvoted (or at least not downvoted)? If so, that would be a mistake. If you present bad reasons to believe correct conclusion X, you are hurting the discussion just as much as if you argued for not-X. And the reasons given in that comment (fixed quantity implies zero-sum utility over such transactions) are bad reasons to believe bitcoin is not a currency.

Furthermore, there's still the fact that the commenter was latching onto a minor, tangential point and blowing it up to be the focus of the discussion. That's also an anti-pattern.

If you want to argue that bitcoin makes for a bad currency, great! I would just encourage you to bring it up in a place where it's actually relevant to the article or comment it replies to, and do so with reasons that pass simple sanity checks.

So you’re saying someone can make the comment stating it’s a currency but it can’t be refuted? Where then should this statement be discussed if not here? Should we start another thread to discuss the this specific comment and it’s reply? Further, the entire downvote system harms the conversation more as people leave or sit out conversations due to their voice being stifled by some random(s) on the internet. Lastly why is medium a bad choice? Legitimate articles have to be posted somewhere and most people don’t want to go through the trouble of setting up their own domain. If there were a custom domain in front of that medium link would you have cared?

>So you’re saying someone can make the comment stating it’s a currency but it can’t be refuted? Where then should this statement be discussed if not here? Should we start another thread to discuss the this specific comment and it’s reply?

No, I'm saying that if the bit about it being a currency was incidental to the core point, then you shouldn't turn the thread into a debate about whether it is a currency; you should use replies there to address what was the commenter's core point, which began as explanation of the mechanics of the halving.

Are you seriously saying that that there are no other comments on this discussion where it's actually relevant that Bitcoin is a currency and you can't bear to take those discussions there?

>Further, the entire downvote system harms the conversation more as people leave or sit out conversations due to their voice being stifled by some random(s) on the internet

The comment also gave a very bad reason to believe that bitcoin isn't a currency, and yes, that was polluting the discussion. No one has yet stood up to defend that argument, so I think I was on the right track.

>Lastly why is medium a bad choice?

Because it's an annoying site with every UX and privacy anti-pattern. ("Excuse the interruption...") But again, that was just on top of the two worse sins -- changing the core discussion, and presenting a poorly thought reason.

If you want to be Big Mad at somebody, pick the guy who introduced the notion of bitcoin-as-currency as part of the explanation. But once that was introduced as part of how to value it, it was reasonable to reply to it.

This, thanks.

> For the cherry on top, it links Medium as a main source.

No, I link Medium as a good explanation. Is there a reason an easy to understand explanation can't be on Medium?

Are you familiar with the idiom "cherry on top"? There were two much more important reasons before that one. If you want to defend your comment, start with those.

And if you were correctly representing the Medium article, then it's still a bad argument for the reason I gave. I would recommend using a different argument, or finding a more correct point to draw from that article.

But then, as mentioned before, you were still blowing up a tangential, non-central point (whether bitcoin is "a currency"), and that still makes it an unhelpful comment, for making the point there. The comment would have communicated just about the same thing if it said, "bitcoin's value, like any financial asset, is determined by the market"; nothing in the comment was making major inferences specifically from bitcoin's status as a currency.

Would you say the same thing about gold? Genuinely curious, since obviously Bitcoin is frequently compared to gold as a store of value instead of a unit of exchange.

The most persuasive defense of Bitcoin as a store of value is that the world needs precisely one digital store of value, and game theory may dictate that it will end up being Bitcoin.

But yes, Bitcoin is obviously ridiculously volatile. I tell friends that there is money to be made, but you need to have a very strong stomach for it.

Would I say what? That it's a "speculative, high-volatility commodity with no use value traded in an unregulated market"? No. Gold has use value and is generally traded in regulated markets.

If something is volatile and great for speculation, it's a bad store of value. So I don't think Bitcoin qualifies as that either.

> the world needs precisely one digital store of value

that's an assumption, not a fact. The existence of an object doesn't automatically prove that the world needs that object's existence.

May be the world _never_ needs such a method, given existing mechanisms already fullfill such a need (e.g., a bank account/credit card).

Whenever I see things like this, it reminds me of articles about VR being dead and how its obviously not actually useful or interesting.

It has always had potential to be a currency, but it requires a context of use in order to actually function as a currency. That context is still being established, and until it is, any basic evaluation of "is bitcoin a currency" will result in a "no".