[wpietri]

The key difference being that the intrinsic use of gold is proven by thousands of years of use and a current robust market in the $100 billion/year range [1], while the "intrinsic value" of Bitcoin has no historical track record and approximately $0 current demand.

An important second difference is that creating a replacement for the intrinsic value of gold is somewhere between difficult and impossible, whereas it appears any hustler who can scrape together three programmers can launch a Bitcoin alternative. Even if Bitcoin's intrinsic value were real, approximately infinite supply means the effective intrinsic value would be approximately zero.

[1] https://www.gold.org/research/gold-demand-trends/gold-demand...

[moduspol]

It seems unnecessarily reductive to claim that gold can have no valid alternatives, yet Bitcoin has no value because anyone can create an alternative.

I can start trying to use aluminum to hold value. It has intrinsic value through valid non-currency applications. Being able to do so in no way lessens the value of gold, and the ability to do the same thing with virtually any other material does not mean gold's effective intrinsic value is approximately zero.

It's the other factors you mentioned (robust market and long history of usage) that makes gold valuable relative to alternatives, and Bitcoin has factors that make it more valuable relative to other cryptocurrencies--including forks of Bitcoin. It's true that it is more likely Bitcoin is replaced by another crypto than gold replaced by another metal, but that's a far cry from Bitcoin's effective intrinsic value being approximately zero.

[wpietri]

I didn't say "has no valid alternatives". I just said it's hard. Gold is a specific element with specific characteristics that make it uniquely valuable for jewelry, electronics, and other industrial uses.

Gold has been out of fashion for currencies for many decades, especially since Bretton Woods; despite that gold had continued to be valuable because it has practical use, which is what people generally mean by intrinsic value, and definitely what dr_win meant.

It's not impossible that tomorrow you will invent some aluminum alloy that is way better than gold for jewelry, although it's certainly unlikely. But it would be very easy for someone to start offering yet another pseudocurrency that allows for "interesting digital infrastructure", which is what dr_win claimed was Bitcoin's intrinsic value.

Gold's demand is large and stable and it's supply is constrained. Bitcoin's demand as digital infrastructure is both small and unproven, and the supply appears bounded only by the number of hucksters in the world and the bytes of storage that they hucksters can command. That means that for dr_win's theory of intrinsic value, Bitcoin's should tend toward zero.

[laughfactory]

$0 demand? Are you kidding? If there was no demand then Bitcoin's price would be $0. It's not zero therefore demand is also not zero. This is basic economics. Come on, man.

No intrinsic value? How about how it is truly stored energy? It has a lot in common with gold. Just because it's digital doesn't make it's worthless. Lots of very valuable things are entirely digital these days.

[wpietri]

Read all the words, pal. We are not talking about "demand", we are talking about "intrinsic demand", by which we mean the non-currency need for the thing. The theory mr_win has about intrinsic value is not a bad one, but there is approximately $0 demand for the service he describes.

As an example, you can look at Bitcoin like digital Beanie Babies. The intrinsic value of a cute stuffed toy is, as any airport give shop can show you, a few bucks. The market price of Beanie Babies was for a time much higher due to limited issuance, energetic promotion, and a popular craze for them. The intrinsic demand did not change, so when the hype cycle ran out, price fell back toward intrinsic.

Bitcoin's intrinsic value is definitely not "stored energy", because you cannot get the energy back out. And it's not much like gold for reasons already described: gold has real, sustained intrinsic value. Bitcoin doesn't.

[baddox]

Your principle complaint seems to be a tautology: that a new technology has no track record before the date it was invented. People who routinely mock fanatical cryptocurrency proponents’ claims (e.g. “this is actually good news”) should look no further than this comment as an example of equally preposterous claims from cryptocurrency skeptics.

[wpietri]

One, Bitcoin wasn't invented yesterday; it's 9 years old by this point. It definitely has a track record. Many technologies have demonstrated substantial use value by 9 years in.

Two, we're talking intrinsic value, which is a basically backward-looking concept.

Three, all I'm doing is pointing out the error in mr_win's claim that Bitcoin's intrinsic value is "exact equivalent to industrial use of gold as gold's intrinsic value", and is therefore presumably worth something.

So if you would like to grumble at somebody for suggesting that one should evaluate intrinsic value based on actual utility, please go bother him.

[singularity2001]

after all these hundreds of comments about bitcoin this is by far the best explanation why it is (asymptotically) worthless

[TeMPOraL]

Couple that with (asymptotically) infinite energy demand just to support the network...