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I really don't get why bitcoin is worth so much.Bitcoin is called a store of value like gold, but gold has inherent uses. If the price of gold went to zero then

I really don't get why bitcoin is worth so much.Bitcoin is called a store of value like gold, but gold has inherent uses. If the price of gold went to zero then you could still use it to make jewellery or use it for electrical conductivity. If the price of bitcoin goes to zero then it's worthless. It's also not environmentally friendly and bitcoin mining uses up 0.21% of the world's power supply. And all of this energy is used to calculate billions of hashes per second out of which all but one will be discarded. There is also increased regulatory focus from governments who see it as a threat , with India even going so far as to suggest they would ban it.

pqs 6y ago
To me, the bans are the proof tha BTC is ofering something. Why would central banks fear something that has no value?
koonsolo 6y ago
I'm pretty sure most gold investors don't actually have the gold physically at their location (Maybe someone can prove me wrong here). Gold seems to be mainly to store loads of money, without actually having the physical drawbacks of gold. So most money invested in gold, is basically a paper that claims you have gold. In that case, the benefits of the physical attributes of gold go away pretty quickly. So having a claim that you own gold, is maybe not that different than storing value in some virtual thing that everyone agrees on has some value. Let's say you do want to have the physical gold at your location. Well, then you have to think about transport and safely storing it. It feels like Bitcoin bootstrapped it's way up to having value. And right now, it seems as a "store of value", it has some benefits over gold itself.