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Gold is useful in chemical and industrial processes. Bitcoin obviously has no use other than money, so I don't know if they are completely comparable in this se
by cowtools 4y ago
Gold is useful in chemical and industrial processes. Bitcoin obviously has no use other than money, so I don't know if they are completely comparable in this sense.
If people decided that gold was not valuable as money, it would retain at least some value based on its usefulness alone.
- eldenwrong 4y agoIts has other uses, like Microsofts decentralized identity or document vérification storage
- cowtools 4y agodoes it? If you simply fork bitcoin, won't you also get those properties?
- eldenwrong 4y agoYes. Just like if you fork the amazon website you become amazon.
- ChaitanyaSai 4y agoThought-provoking post, but this is an argument I just don't get. Oxygen and CO2 are useful in chemical and industrial processes too. If you want something more limited, then Aluminium. That's the value Gold will retain if people decided it was of no use as long-term money. Gold's use in industry has very little to do with its value. What am I missing?
- rufusroflpunch 4y agoI consider Bitcoin’s use only as money to be a good thing for Bitcoin. It has no competing uses, thus has ultimate comparative advantage as money. The best monies throughout history had no competing consumption uses.
- ben_w 4y agoAn interesting idea. I think digital and paper currency[0] are the obvious competitors however, so it isn't uniquely the ultimate comparative advantage. [0] Ok, I guess you can burn paper money or use it as a chair, I think Weimar hyperinflation had examples of that…
- lottin 4y agoWhat makes you think having no competing uses is an advantage?
- aeternum 4y agoThis is an oft-cited example, but if you look at the numbers, the industrial demand is mostly insignificant. If for some reason people lost interest in gold as a store of value, the industrial market would be so oversaturated that the gold price would likely be very nearly zero.