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Very little though. If the demand for gold were merely industrial it would not need to be mined in such quantities as it has throughout history. I would put jew
by marshray 9y ago
Very little though. If the demand for gold were merely industrial it would not need to be mined in such quantities as it has throughout history. I would put jewelry in the 'sentimental' category as well.
Not only is Bitcoin purely sentimental, it represents has huge costs in the form of raw energy.
Bitcoin's only claim to value is that it is an artifact of an act of ritual sacrifice. One might imagine a precedent in some system of tokens issued by some ancient priesthood.
- alanfalcon 9y agoI love this imagery. Probably what Neal Stephenson was going for in Reamde, though your simple analogy resonates with me more.
- walterbell 9y agoHas the ritual sacrifice angle been explored elsewhere? Would make for good video.
- loeg 9y agoIn the TV show "Sherlock," the titular main character's self-deprecating videos for the "Everyone" collective (spoof on Anonymous) are a sort of ritual sacrifice as a medium of payment.
- roywiggins 9y agoCharles Stross' Laundry novels, at least, posit a connection between number-crunching and the occult, though unfortunately the series predates Bitcoin, which would have been perfect fodder.
- PascLeRasc 9y agoWait until the Vatican announces their ICO IndulgenceCoin
- Retric 9y agoElectronics industry actually uses a lot of gold as in 100's of tons. It's use is mostly limited by price so expect increased demand as the price drops. It's not clear how much demand for gold would increase at say 1/10th the price, but based on other commodities we would probably use more than 10x as much would would represent a solid price floor. Bitcoin on the other hand has no price floor and can effectively go to zero. Though, in practice much like beanie baby's or other fads people are likely to hold on to good vs sell it for 1/1,000th the price hopping for a comeback. You would expect long term bitcoin sales below 1 cent per coin to be very rare until eventually the network collapses.
- CPLX 9y agoGold has "real" demand though in jewelry. It's distributed and longstanding and it has utility. People wear it and use it in real life and value it and wish to keep it in order to look at it and possess it. That's as tangible as anything else. Nobody would say that there's no demand for musical instruments, or baseballs, because they are optional parts of life that aren't food or shelter. Gold has intrinsic value in part because people seem to intrinsically like it for what it actually is, not just it's utility in exchange. That's fundamentally different.
- masklinn 9y agomarshray never denied any of that, they just pointed out that the intrinsic value of gold is significantly lower than their valuation.
- nerfhammer 9y agothe modifier "intrinsic" doesn't add anything though. "people intrinsically like" --> "people like"; "gold is intrinsically valued" --> "gold is valued". "intrinsic" seems to imply an innate persistence despite not being able to justify such innateness, just empirical persistence. It just implies things that are arguably not justifiable needlessly. gold has been persistently valuable. The universe doesn't give it an innate value.
- marshray 9y ago'Intrinsic' here means that the property of the object remains even if people's preferences and culture change. Gold's utility for electronic applications is a fundamental property of the number of atoms in its nucleus, whereas there have been cultures that had it readily available yet didn't find it particularly desirable for jewelry.
- CPLX 9y agoThat's nonsense. People's long term interest in electronics is far more unproven and fleeting at this point than their interest in gold. Seeing as how cultures that considered gold a highly valued item developed independently in Europe and uncontacted pre-Columbian America, and the preference remains global today, there's clearly something durable about this concept.
- emodendroket 9y ago> Not only is Bitcoin purely sentimental, it represents has huge costs in the form of raw energy. > Bitcoin's only claim to value is that it is an artifact of an act of ritual sacrifice. One might imagine a precedent in some system of tokens issued by some ancient priesthood. I mean, in this respect the analogy to gold is not an awful fit.
- smogcutter 9y agoSomeone's been reading their Georges Bataille... Edit for less smug more content: sacrifice is an interesting lens through which to look at bitcoin. You could argue that burning "excess" compute power is the real point, not the tokens.
- walterbell 9y agoIt's not excess/surplus when computed on mining-specific ASICs.
- smogcutter 9y agoOn the contrary, it's even more so (with regard to this line of argument). That capital could've become any number of things instead.