How exactly is XEM supposed to have value?
Is it just a “fee coin” that you need to perform transactions on the NEM platform?
Is it going to be a store of value like silver or gold?
Is it going to be a currency you can use to buy precious metals or consumer goods?
Is XEM going to be all of the above? To me it’s not quite clear, please enlighten me…
XEM has a functional value because of what you can do with it, such as creating and sending digital assets.
It is also fully fungible and as such can be used as a currency in its own right.
Thanks for the answer, however it’s still not quite clear to me whether you can buy stuff with XEM in the future? Like consumer goods and investment assetts like gold. Is that something you devs are considering in the long run? I mean NEM is supposed to become a complete economic platform right? It would be nice if you can do ALL things with XEM on the NEM platform, now I kinda get the impression that XEM is just a cheap sideway currency without much intrinsic value, kinda like Ethereum, but I hope I am wrong? It’s confusing since it is being presented as an alternative to bitcoin whereas bitcoin DOES have a lot of intrinsic value. But I hope I am wrong, please enlighten me with your bright mind and your splendour 
So, it very much has the potential to be its own currency. It might even be used to back other assets in the future, though I don’t know of any set plans for this. (Also the name of XEM was chosen to start with an “X” so for in the future it can actually be a recognized currency and traded on FX platforms)
XEM itself has a lot more utility than Bitcoin in its versatility of actions. It can be used to make more kinds of transactions, can be secured by a better form of multisig, can be used to create assets and namespaces, can be used to write messages on the chain, none of which Bitcoin can natively do, all of which are things that are being hacked into Bitcoin on top of the main code so it can kind of do those things. If intrinsic value is determined by the tricks up one’s sleeve, and ways to potential earn more money, then XEM has a lot more tricks.
These additional traits, if they get to be used by real world businesses, can help to raise and stabilize the value of XEM. At the moment of writing this, those real world businesses using XEM are exactly 0. Hahahaha. But this is a great platform for future businesses to build on, and some people can see the code and see the vision and are speculating on XEM, which I would say is the main value of XEM at the moment. Not just XEM but basically every crypto that I know of except Bitcoin are being primarily only speculated on. Bitcoin actually has real third party business being run from its chain. Of course we fully intend that for NEM too or we wouldn’t be here.
Can you explain why you think Bitcoin has an intrinsic value?
Even the USD or EUR has no intrinsic value. It is all just based on trust. Or is trust enough for you to call it intrinsic? Well then XEM has intrinsic value for sure, because I personally believe it is extremely undervalued right now^^
To me intrinsic value constitutes functionality. Bitcoin can be used as an assett and buy stuff with it. I kinda got the impression that XEM is only good as “fuel” to perform transactions, kinda like ethereum. In that case XEM will never be worth much since the focus is on the platform rather than XEM itself. I think there needs to be a balance, on the one hand yes it’s important that businesses and banks can make use of NEM platform, on the other hand it’s important that XEM will generate value for investors. I see much is being done for the former, yet not much seems to be done for the latter. I mean if XEM becomes worth 100 dollars, and private investors/companies/banks want to make a transaction, and a transaction costs 2 XEM, then these entities will not want to use the NEM platform.
The value of XEM and Bitcoin for that matter is bootstrapped by what you could do with it.
In Bitcoins early days, a Bitcoin was worth nothing because you could do nothing with it.
Later on businesses and third parties built on Bitcoin, people started to think that “this could be something” and then its value went up and now you can (kind of) use it to buy stuff.
XEM is in the initial stages, there isn’t much you can do with it right now so its value isn’t that high.
Later on when more and more people use it (read need it) the price will go up.
The value of all “articles of exchange” without intrinsic value (fiat money, crypto currencies/tokens etc.) are always depending on trust. Trust that needs to be created by one or better multiple entities that guarantee that anybody can trade that “article of exchange” for an article with intrinsic value (food or any needed products).
It is a chicken/egg problem. No trust without those entities, no entities without trust (at least very unlikely^^).
Trust is also usually an aftereffect of stability (low volatility). So if there is a way to ensure low volatility, then that would help a lot.
All crypto and fiat money have no intrinsic value. They are technically extrinsic in value. That is a fact.
If there is a demand for XEM to the point that it is 10c per XEM, do you think it will not be used as a medium of exchange?
People will then value it and naturally use it as a medium of exchange. Period.
If i were you, I would not worry too much. When there is utility there will be a price to XEM.
If people build cars and power stations, they need fuel. If fuel is a finite element, wouldn’t its price go up when there are more consumption of fuel. So, wouldn’t XEM go up the same and therefore becomes an expensive commodity? When a commodity gains value, it will naturally be something in demand.
I don’t think there are any confusions here. It is more a wrongful perception.
Thank you all for your answers, in the end I hope XEM becomes much more than just fuel for the NEM platform, but also a means to aquire stuff on the assett exchange (silver, gold etc.)
Value for fiat currencies comes ultimately from an authority that says they will use force/violence to protect and guarantee your property. Your 100 Japanese YEN has value because if people ignored the value or took the value from you, the government would arrest them or destroy them.
Bitcoin would be worthless if it was not convertible to fiat. Even people who love bitcoin constantly talk about the price in fiat terms. There is no intrinsic value that is separate from force or violence. If there was a military saying that they would protect the value of Bitcoin, then it would have intrinsic value of its own. Value comes from the barrel of a gun.
I think NEM devs should just focus on making XEM a vital element of the NEM platform, people should not be able to use the NEM platform without XEM, as long as that’s the case XEM will become a currency with intrinsic value.
It would be silly of them not to do that as they are holding bags full of it.
Hello guys, I’m trying to keep up with your project.
I’m initially a big fan of BitShares. Is there anyone here that could tell me what do you do more or better that BitShares already do ?
We’ve got a system running. Don’t know if their system is running all of what they claimed. Seems to see claims only. 100K Tx/S smells of something not quite possible today, especially when there are so many ifs about it in their write-up. On that basis, I didn’t bother to look at it in detail.
I have been in this community for a while now, I can tell you that I didn’t see any reason to have doubts about what they claim to be able to achieve.
100k tx/s is possible and could be running right now if needed. It would require the “witness” (full node signing blocks) to invest in better hardware. These witness are paid by the blockchain, so there is no logical reason to try to have it running right now, it would be wasting money.
What we have now running is 1000 tx/s, it’s more than enough.
100k tx/s is the potential scalability with the hardware of today.
The rest of features claimed on BitShares.org is already created and working on the blockchain level. Its being implemented in the GUI wallet as I’m writing.
Part of it is already there and running smoothly
But I’m not here to speak about BitShares, I’m here looking for new things, new ideas, new features of other promising projects
What is the minimum configuration for a node to run 1000 tps?
Fact of the matter is, 100k tx/s is possible. So is any other blockchain tech. It is possible. Being possible and being able to do it repeatedly is the “if” I am talking about. Further, to run it in a production environment, it is a different ball game. Latency and bandwidth limitations will substantially reduce its transaction handling capacity to a minimal rate. P2P doesn’t work for sure, unless you are saying that it works on a one to one basis or that we are talking about gigabit infra some many more years from now.
Visa has a peak handling capacity of 56K Tx/s. Can you imagine how much they spent on that? It is centralised, mind you. A centralised solution has a different design architecture. It can have bandwidth scalability, and does not rely on a peer to peer confirmation. Its confirmations are local to the data centre and works on a SAN storage, and an internal Gigabit network.
For a P2P to work as such, I very much doubt the claim. Like I said, there are too many ifs. Anyway, that’s just my opinion. I wish them good luck.
I’m not an expert on this but for the moment it seems that a cheap 30$ server is enough to run a witness.
About the too-many-“if”, it’s all been tested. The results of the testing has been publish on the forum and the explanation is available on the web site bitshares.org.
I don’t want to start a BiShares discussion here, my first question was made to find features that are different/better of it. I took BitShares as a comparative point because it’s for me the best tech on the moment.
That beeing said, I have a lot of respect of what you are doing here and own myself XEMs.