[thinkloop]

> that includes currencies

Currencies have value because entities with monopolies on force (countries) give them special legal status to be used conveniently as means of exchange. This is one of the hurdles for Bitcoin, and was a big source of debate in 2016-2018. Every time you spend Bitcoin you have to keep track of the avg. acquisition cost and resulting realized capital gains for every transaction to be able to declare the appropriate gains or losses on your taxes at year-end. A heavy burden for a "currency".

> statements like 'its only valued because people give it value' are not very informative

If you go to first principles, sure, everything is an illusion. But gold, crypto, and other "stores of value" derive their value in fundamentally different ways than everything else. Our existing models and body of knowledge do not apply to them. This is worth investigating. All other things are consumed in some way or another, and the rate at which they are consumed, relative to their supply, determines their price. The consumption of gold relative to its supply is much too low to justify its price using the same models.