[coolcase]

Not really. Gold has no more energy than carbon per gram. E=MC^2. And total energy is unavailable. Carbon had more available chemical energy. (Why we can burn coal not gold).

Bitcoin doesn't store any energy.

Bitcoin is like a F1 car going around a track forever, with your name scribbled on it.

[_Algernon_]

Both gold and bitcoin are a variant of "proof of wasted energy" or more euphemistically "proof of work". Why that makes it valuable is beyond me, but it isn't really a new thing considering the historic value of gold being much more than its utility as a material.

[briansm]

The 'value' in them is that they demonstrate that energy is currently so cheap and abundant to Us that we can waste it frivolously.

It's a sort-of flex, showing off, a demonstration of (energy) wealth. Humanities's peacock feathers.

[briansm]

Maybe I didn't explain it well, gold and bitcoin are the 'memory' of used energy, they are not energy sources themselves.

I think of them as representations of the idea that energy is (currently) so abundant and cheap that we can waste it on mining things like gold and crypto, a fundamentally ridiculous concept in terms of real actual human needs.

Once that stops being the case (when fossil fuel starts running out globally), the whole thing - cash, gold, crypto, stocks, bonds, property - everything falls apart.

[notpushkin]

Bitcoin isn’t valuable because of used energy. The energy here is just a way to limit the rate Bitcoin is produced, and to help prevent double spending.

Bitcoin is valuable because people accept that it’s valuable, same as with cash, gold, crypto, stocks, bonds, property. The price of an apple is $2 is because I offered it to you for $2 and you bought it.

[coolcase]

Almost. Bitcoin energy use is a way to have a decentralised trust less network. If bitcoin was free to mine the most money would go to the most nodes. It would be proof of DDOS in a sense and would probably seize up pretty quick.

Gold is a bit different. You could stop mining it today entirely and you could still have a gold currency. Stop mining bitcoin and it all effectively disappears!

[eimrine]

The people appreciate the value exactly because of used energy (entropy), if you want to rewrite Bitcoin history you are going to spend no less then it has boon spent. The limit of producing of bitcoins is not related to energy.

[notpushkin]

Yeah. I mean, people value the utility of it: it can be used to transfer value over the Internet, and you can’t steal it by changing values in the DB. PoW is just a means to an end here. I think we largely agree on that.

[ivewonyoung]

You could make eimrineCoin that's an exact clone of bitcoin, but it'd be extremely unlikely to reach a fraction of BTC's market cap, because others won't consider it valuable although it's mined with energy.