Yes, diamonds are such a pyramid that is kept alive by pure market controlling efforts like monopoly and advertisment, just like crypto coins. Gold however has

Yes, diamonds are such a pyramid that is kept alive by pure market controlling efforts like monopoly and advertisment, just like crypto coins. Gold however has some market value by being impossible to artificially create, by being limited, by being hard to come by and by being hard to transport, all combined in one item. Yes, you concluded correctly that I see a strong relationship between market value and utility. I'm not sure if market value is the correct word for it, though. English is not my native tongue. There are two values a product has. One is trade value, the other is what you call utility. I believe the trade value of crypto coins exceeds their utility a lot. And I believe they have nearly no utility at all, because otherwise it would have shown by now what the utility is. I also believe it's totally possible that trade value can be kept high without utility for a long time, thus "people are willing to pay a big price for it for a few years" is not a proof of utility to me.