Useless, yet valuable?
Gold becomes rings and rice becomes meals. Bitcoin cannot be eaten or worn, yet it has a price. Oh Taemin has long given one answer: bitcoin is valuable because of how it was obtained, not what it is for.
Early miners spent electricity, hardware and time to get bitcoin. People who paid a cost will not hand it over cheaply; they want at least what they put in. When enough people feel that way, those demands form a price floor. The Mobick blog defines it like this:
Between free and too costly
So how do you give a new coin a price? Here is the trap. To be widely known it must be widely given — but give it away for free and it is worth nothing. Make it too hard to get and it never spreads. The docs call this the tension between reach and value.
Mobick climbed between them step by step:
- 2022 — small gifts for light missions: buying a book, having a coffee. The book “The Metaverse and the Future of Money” came with a paper wallet.
- 18 March 2023, Gwanaksan — the first offline airdrop, only for people who climbed the mountain. Hundreds queued on a live stream, and everyone saw that many others were paying the cost too. Afterwards Mobick crossed one dollar and P2P trading began.
- Gyeryongsan — a farther mountain. Turnout grew.
- Hallasan, Jeju — reachable only by boat or plane. Demand forced pre-registration and screening, and a community began organising itself.
- Los Angeles, then Australia — the cost of crossing oceans. The tour ended in Montville, Australia, in July 2023.
Each step raised the cost of getting coins, and the shared belief that “we earned these, we won’t sell them cheap” grew stronger. The blog sums it up as recreating the monetary phenomenon without a pump and dump.
What one dollar means
The docs set stage one’s goal at one dollar. A coin above a dollar is perceived as a thing of value, a sign that the reach-versus-value tension has been overcome.
Crucially, all of this happened without investment. When an issuer sells coins to raise money (ICO, IEO), they can be seen as investment contracts — securities. Mobick gave coins away instead, making recipients pay their own costs, and a market price formed. The docs call this stage one, “making money,” and mark it complete.
Why this site shows no price
There is no price chart here. How Mobick came to have value is worth learning; today’s price is not. Prices are set on exchanges and in P2P markets, and this site recommends no buying or selling.
Summary
- The monetary phenomenon: people do not give away cheaply what they paid to get; together that forms value.
- Free means worthless; too costly means it never spreads.
- Mobick raised the cost step by step: books and coffee → Gwanaksan → Gyeryongsan → Hallasan → LA → Australia.
- Coins given away without investment found a P2P price — stage one, “making money.”
Check yourself
Get them right to add a block to your chain
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Q1What matters most in the monetary phenomenon?
People who paid a cost ask others for at least as much. Together those demands form a price floor. How it was obtained comes before what it is used for.
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Q2What happens if you simply hand out lots of a coin for free?
Reach and value pull against each other. Mobick climbed between them by raising the cost step by step.
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Q3Why, according to the docs, did Mobick distribute coins without investment or an ICO?
Selling coins to raise money can look like an investment contract. Giving them away — while making recipients pay their own costs — let a P2P price form. That was stage one.
Sources
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