You've got the causal relationship flipped. Gold isn't valuable because it's used in jewellery. It's used in jewellery because it's considered valuable.

There was a time when we hadn't the technology to produce aluminium in significant quantities like we do in today's factories, and it was more expensive than gold. And for that reason, it was used in jewellery, expensive cutlery and even the Washington monument.

Gold is mostly valuable for its scarcity and the way our culture has used scarce metals as a store of value, not because of its intrinsic value as a metal.

Today we can create artificial scarce tokens digitally, before using a centralised party to manage the ledger, today in a decentralised manner. Who knows whether gold's status will last, or in fact bitcoin's. Perhaps the noble notion of decentralisation won't be valued by markets in the end, perhaps there's no reason to respect one token's value for its scarcity when you can programmatically create a million clones on a single computer.

I've been a bitcoin enthusiast for half a decade, but the past few years I've seen a major decline in genuine interest in bitcoin other than as a get rich quick scheme. We used to have lots of cool and fun things going on, now it's bland and boring. People forget bitcoin's only value is its decentralised nature, yet the price increases don't reflect any significant growth in capturing the value of decentralisation, at all.

I don't believe I have the relationship flipped.

There are many valuable things that are not made into jewelry. There are metals that are more valuable than gold, but they are not as commonly used in jewelry because they aren't as aesthetically appealing. Gold was used for making beautiful things in cultures that did not treat it as money. It became valued because it was uniquely workable, beautiful, and durable.

Part of gold's value is its rarity, certainly. But another part of it is utility. If investor demand for gold collapsed, it would still be valued.

> People forget bitcoin's only value is its decentralised nature, yet the price increases don't reflect any significant growth

You seem to ignore the simple fact that as demand grows for a limited resource, the price grows. So even if the "value" of bitcoin viz a viz decentralization has remained constant, its market cap goes up because demand has exploded.

gold is also used in jewelry because jewelry made out of gold looks good, right? it's not pure scarcity, certain physical properties of it make it attractive, correct?

You can make something that looks identical with cheaper alternatives or even synthetic materials. Same with diamonds (see cubic zirconia).

Thus, it is not the actual properties that make them desirable as jewelry. It is solely the fact that they are valuable that people want them for jewelry.

hmm, perhaps, but historically you couldn't and so this combination of historical data, etc. as well as physical properties is what gives it value. But, yes, because of the issues you are talking about, going forward we should expect gold to be a bad investment, not a good investment.

I'm not sure you can say that gold is used in jewellery solely because it is valuable. Gold has physical properties being nonreactive and soft enough to be worked without large scale machinery that makes it a perfect material for making shiny jewellery out by a single skilled artisan. Add in an element of rarity/scarcity and it's pretty much a virtuous circle for why gold is used in jewellery.

If the price of gold was to collapse tomorrow, it's use in jewellery would continue without pause.

That may have been true a long time ago, but I highly doubt we'll be buying each other gold rings if they cost 50 cents in material like a plastic ring, or some shiny colored cheap metal ring, or any other easily malleable cheap and abundant material available today.

Price is a balance between supply and demand. Gold's price is high because there is a lot of demand for use in jewelry and industry. Its monetary value isn't some intrinsic or historical fluke. The monetary value is underwritten by its utility.

gold industrial use is like 10%, jewelry as just a fancier way to store gold, so 90% of gold is so valuable because is valuable, and for so many years, meaning something can be valuable without intrinsic value, aka bitcoin.

Non-financial use is the majority of gold demand:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/299603/gold-demand-by-se...

Jewelry is definitely not just a fancier way to store gold. How many people do you know that sold their wedding rings when prices spiked?

I don't think intrinsic value is a meaningful term. Gold has been valued for millennia because it is very useful for making pretty things. And the price has been high for a long time because the supply of it is low.

I disagree. Gold is valuable because physical commodities and physical things, like jewelry, etc. tend to track inflation over time. As an investment, gold is terrible. Just look at the chart of gold prices over a long period of time.

>Gold is valuable because physical commodities and physical things, like jewelry, etc. tend to track inflation over time.

I don't know how to read this other than as stating the same thing with different words, i.e. "tracking inflation" is just another way of saying that its valuable.

Well, what I mean is, physical things tend to track inflation. That doesn't make them great investments. I'm not sure it's fair to assume the same properties for bitcoin, but supposing bitcoin is like gold - gold is actually not a great investment.

Gold isn't worth $1.2K per ounce because of its "non-financial use", and has been valued throughout human history for its scarcity. I'm fairly certain kings weren't making crowns from the stuff 500 years ago because of its conductive properties.

Mostly they were using gold because it doesn't readily tarnish and it's relatively easy to work.

Scarcity was necessary, for sure. But definitely not sufficient.

But it was, in large part at least, because of its malleability. There were even scarcer materials that have never been used to make crowns.