> a highly fixed supply (synthesizing it is prohibitively expensive) This is what gives Bitcoin much of its value as well. > Gold is conceptually very similar

> a highly fixed supply (synthesizing it is prohibitively expensive) This is what gives Bitcoin much of its value as well. > Gold is conceptually very similar to bitcoin, except gold can't be forked or copied This touches on another thing that makes Bitcoin valuable - consensus. Enough people agree to use it that it becomes the defacto standard. Bitcoin (and Ether to a lesser extent) are the “rough consensus and running code” of decentralized algorithmic money The two points are related. It was much easier to synthesize Bitcoin when fewer people were using it, and it’s market value was less. This auto-scaling of difficulty with interest/value was added as a security mechanism but actually plays a key monetary role as well.