[belltaco]

Gold is very different. There's a lot of ornamental uses(some industrial) and also historical and cultural value. Owning and hoarding gold is a status symbol in some cultures(2.5 billion plus with just China+India) way beyond owning the latest and most expensive iPhones.

Throughout most of modern history, you could buy things with gold and that's unlikely to change. Barring alchemy or some extreme globalwide natural disasters, there's a value floor on gold that's missing with bitcoin.

There are no current killer applications for bitcoin beyond some semi-legal trade of illicit drugs and ransomware which doesn't even need or cause the currency price to go up since it's usually converted back and forth to fiat. Perhaps this will change if countries currencies go belly up and die (think Venezuela, Argentina and Zimbabwe).

[ScottAS]

While gold has a much later stage "shared illusion of value" that comes from its brand and emotional associations, I'd argue that Bitcoin is extremely similar, just much earlier stage.

The purported uses of gold have no relevance, they're just part of the illusion of gold having value. We value 3 swimming pools of an arbitrary substance at 7 trillion dollars. There is no utility that even justifies 1% of this valuation. It does not produce dividends.

Would you rather speculate on a "shared illusion of value" that has massive room to grow into the digital age, or one that is potentially reaching peak levels of absurdity?

Both assets are illusory bullshit - but you can make a lot of money trading bullshit.