Faith and belief, two words that a lot of people don't want to hear, especially non-religious persons.
Personally, I can't blame anyone that hates these words because religion has essentially used them to manipulate people and a substance of manipulation is never something I associate myself with.
But religion didn't make these words nor did it make their meaning thereof. These words are a natural element.
You cannot take it out of life, it's simply always there.
For example, if you don't believe in God, you're essentially still believing in something, which in this case is the absence of God. If we dig further down that rabbit hole, there's essentially a void looking to be filled with something tangible - in comparison to believing that there is in fact, a God.
Humans cannot really function without believing in anything, one really has to hold onto something, that's how we get by, simply looking onto another for strength and the energy just keeps being passed around.
In a state of faith in something and belief of something lies value. If you've been following my recent contents you would have come across instances where I said that “value” is not quantifiable in an argument related to the deceptions of inflation and currency devaluation.
Value is not really quantifiable because it exists in a realm where numbers are not relevant.
Time is value, can one actually measure it? Can anyone buy it? Can anyone own it?
Forget the clock on your wall and the numbers on your phone/laptop screens, time is not something determinable or quantifiable, what we've done with clocks is simply a number system that refreshes by nightfall to keep us sane, it in no way reflects actual quantification of time.
Fiat Works Thus Far Because It's Built On Faith
In the system to remain true to the people.
The term "faith-based" is often used to describe fiat money because its value is not backed by a physical commodity like gold. Instead, it relies on the trust and confidence people have in the government that issues it. The value of fiat money is based on the belief that it can be exchanged for goods and services, and that the issuing authority will maintain its stability.
GPT
Notice the last lines, “that the issuing authority will maintain its stability”.
But that's the thing, it won't because there is really nothing there to maintain. Fiat thrives on the faith the people pour onto it, this is what keeps it alive. When people begin to lose faith, it appears as though it stumbles, this is usually when we come out to talk about money printing and inflation, which I'd admit, money printing primarily plays a role here because it causes businesses to have a reason to hike prices of goods and services on the notion that the system or authority that should keep the fiat money stable, is inflating it.
Crypto Is Trustless By Design, But It Is Not By Application
We all know the popular crypto is a trustless system statement but let's be honest with ourselves, the trustlessness of crypto with blockchain technology holds its value at the fundamental level but above that it's practically useless.
You need to build authority and cause people to trust in the system being built.
So on the application level, trust is required, faith needs to be built into the system for it to scale. I always say that replicating bitcoin isn't difficult, same code, same level of decentralization, and all that, but people will really not care because their faith is already in the current network.
For any new chain to earn the attention of the people, it has to propose a solution or new product that causes people to place their faith in it and believe it holds potential(value).
So when we talk about “store of values”. Bitcoin as a network is not, and neither is any system out there. The actual store of value lies in the faith and belief the community has placed in the network.
Take that away and it all goes extinct pretty quickly.