[waterhouse]

Would it be better if people poured loads of money into something useful as a speculative investment? Imagine if the price of, say, steel went up by a huge amount due to people hedging against currency. Or housing—I hear this has actually happened.

[slg]

The problem isn't the resource that is being used for irritational speculative investment. It is that irrational speculative investment happening at all. And for the record, Bitcoin investment is much less rational than gold investment.

[waterhouse]

And do you think the people making those irrational speculative investments will just stop if one of their investment targets is removed? I suppose a few might, but are those few worth it?

[slg]

Not completely, but to a certain extent, yes. Like that sibling comment stated, there are certain important qualities for a good speculative investment like being easy to store, transport, and hold. Remember the point early in the pandemic in which a barrel of oil actually had a negative price? That is because it was difficult and costly to actually have ownership over the speculative resource. Bitcoin being so easy to own and transport makes it a much more attractive speculative investment in comparison to gold, oil, or steel so more people participate in the speculation.