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When you buy a gold ring you're paying for something that's been made from gold (and time and energy...) When you buy a bitcoin you're paying for something that
by c22 6y ago
When you buy a gold ring you're paying for something that's been made from gold (and time and energy...) When you buy a bitcoin you're paying for something that's been made from just time and electricity. Not used.
- drdeca 6y agoA ring made of gold is made of gold using time and effort. You can retrieve the gold from the ring. You cannot retrieve the time and effort. There is, in fact, a distinction here. Bitcoin very well may have legitimate uses (and I would say it does), but it is not like a ring made of gold, in the ring's capacity of being returned to it's constituent components.
- c22 6y agoI understand the distinction. Of course you can't "get back the gold" from a bitcoin, but you also didn't have to put it in in the first place. That doesn't reduce the value of the thing you've made except by degree (as would using more or less gold, or more or less time, or whatever).
- drdeca 6y agoI may have over-matched what you were saying to what others have said. My mistake. I was thinking of when others have suggested that the electricity use is like the gold or something.
- c22 6y agoThanks for the response. I agree that bitcoin cannot fill exactly the same niche as gold and I think it's foolish to try to shoehorn it into that role. I mostly wanted to address the concept that bitcoins merely represent used resources. Bitcoins are in fact a novel good that are produced using no physical resources which intrinsically gives it interesting and potentially promising properties. When you buy a plastic toy and it breaks you don't usually melt it down for its valuable plastic, you just throw it away. You mostly paid for the time and the energy to make it, but the physical substrate was valueless. That type of good currently dominates the marketplace and seems subpar to bitcoin from a manufacturing perspective.
- gpapilion 6y agoA gold ring isn't a store of monetary value, and the value of it outside of the jeweler is based on its gold content only, and in some cases collectible value. Its value to the wearer is subjective in nature, and will vary based on wearer. So with regard to bitcoin, it's not art, and not a useful commodity. It can be a representation of "value", but then why make it expensive to make since it's only a representation?
- c22 6y agoI'd argue bitcoins are actually rather inexpensive to make since they require no physical inputs (see my posts downthread).