Gold has "real" demand though in jewelry. It's distributed and longstanding and it has utility. People wear it and use it in real life and value it and wish to keep it in order to look at it and possess it.

That's as tangible as anything else. Nobody would say that there's no demand for musical instruments, or baseballs, because they are optional parts of life that aren't food or shelter.

Gold has intrinsic value in part because people seem to intrinsically like it for what it actually is, not just it's utility in exchange. That's fundamentally different.

the modifier "intrinsic" doesn't add anything though. "people intrinsically like" --> "people like"; "gold is intrinsically valued" --> "gold is valued".

"intrinsic" seems to imply an innate persistence despite not being able to justify such innateness, just empirical persistence. It just implies things that are arguably not justifiable needlessly. gold has been persistently valuable. The universe doesn't give it an innate value.

'Intrinsic' here means that the property of the object remains even if people's preferences and culture change. Gold's utility for electronic applications is a fundamental property of the number of atoms in its nucleus, whereas there have been cultures that had it readily available yet didn't find it particularly desirable for jewelry.

That's nonsense. People's long term interest in electronics is far more unproven and fleeting at this point than their interest in gold.

Seeing as how cultures that considered gold a highly valued item developed independently in Europe and uncontacted pre-Columbian America, and the preference remains global today, there's clearly something durable about this concept.

gold has intrinsic physical properties, yes. that does not imply a particular intrinsic value to humans relative to other things humans could be exchanging things for.

you could say that the reasons for valuing gold probably aren't going to go away anytime soon as far as anyone can guess. though even then, the market value of gold has fluctuated by a factor of like 10 in recent history as the durable abstract reasons for wanting it have not apparently changed as much. did anything intrinsic about gold change from 1980-1981, when the price crashed 82%?

marshray never denied any of that, they just pointed out that the intrinsic value of gold is significantly lower than their valuation.

Being valued by people 'liking it' is exactly the opposite of _intrinsic value_.

Electronics industry actually uses a lot of gold as in 100's of tons. It's use is mostly limited by price so expect increased demand as the price drops.

It's not clear how much demand for gold would increase at say 1/10th the price, but based on other commodities we would probably use more than 10x as much would would represent a solid price floor.

Bitcoin on the other hand has no price floor and can effectively go to zero. Though, in practice much like beanie baby's or other fads people are likely to hold on to good vs sell it for 1/1,000th the price hopping for a comeback. You would expect long term bitcoin sales below 1 cent per coin to be very rare until eventually the network collapses.

> Not only is Bitcoin purely sentimental, it represents has huge costs in the form of raw energy.

> Bitcoin's only claim to value is that it is an artifact of an act of ritual sacrifice. One might imagine a precedent in some system of tokens issued by some ancient priesthood.

I mean, in this respect the analogy to gold is not an awful fit.

I love this imagery. Probably what Neal Stephenson was going for in Reamde, though your simple analogy resonates with me more.

Someone's been reading their Georges Bataille...

Edit for less smug more content: sacrifice is an interesting lens through which to look at bitcoin. You could argue that burning "excess" compute power is the real point, not the tokens.

It's not excess/surplus when computed on mining-specific ASICs.

On the contrary, it's even more so (with regard to this line of argument). That capital could've become any number of things instead.

Has the ritual sacrifice angle been explored elsewhere? Would make for good video.

Charles Stross' Laundry novels, at least, posit a connection between number-crunching and the occult, though unfortunately the series predates Bitcoin, which would have been perfect fodder.

In the TV show "Sherlock," the titular main character's self-deprecating videos for the "Everyone" collective (spoof on Anonymous) are a sort of ritual sacrifice as a medium of payment.

I think you're meaning to reference "Elementary," the other show about Sherlock Holmes.

Ah, you're absolutely right.

Wait until the Vatican announces their ICO IndulgenceCoin