I like to think of it like this: am I going to give my money to a network of computers that will make heat and burn coal just to maintain a small global ledger, or will I give my money to an organization of people who will presumably try to build a better life for themselves and others, and maybe accidentally burn some funds along the way? I'm giving my money to people.

So you only participate in IPOs? Otherwise you probably buying your shares from a market maker, which runs computers that make heat and burn coal to take advantage of a small difference between buy and ask price.

Comparing apples vs container ships.

With bank ledgers, the computation energy is a minimized side effect that does not even show up as a rounding error in the financial reports of companies, and they do tens of thousands of transactions per second.

For cryptocurrencies, burning the energy is a key feature - 100% correlated to the proof of work and increasing by design. This achieves handfuls of transactions per second with energy burn exceeding that of nations.

Children's cartoons make better representations of the real world than that post.

In a 'normal' economy that would make sense. However, Central Banks have gotten involved in buying stocks and as such, stock values have been hugely inflated. Many companies that might have otherwise not succeeded in a 'normal' market might have been able to survive due to QE. Which is part of the reason why more and more investors try to find alternative investment opportunities like metals and crypto.

Caveat: some established crypto (not BTC) have lower transaction fees and entry requirements in some countries than the stock markets.

I can't help add a cynical comment: BTC is also backed by real economic activity, it's "just" the legality that makes it different.

BTC like fiat money is not backed by anything. Anyone claiming otherwise just show they haven't got a clue what "backed" means.

I'm confused. Isn't the US dollars something like a legally-backed "we-owe-you" of US goods and services? Why else do non-US residents value the USD? And why does EURUSD vary with relative economic output of the two countries?

I can issue fiat money myself. Here: "I owe you 5 CKD." What is the value of that? Zero. You don't know me, you have no reason to trust me, you cannot take my IOU to court and force my property to be seized. Your 5 CKD is worthless, in contrast to 5 USD.

> I'm confused. Isn't the US dollars something like a legally-backed "we-owe-you" of US goods and services?

Not at all. You can't take your dollars to the issuer (the Federal Reserve) and have them redeemed for goods and services. They are not redeemable, hence not "backed". Fiat simply means not backed.

> Why else do non-US residents value the USD?

Do you mean why they demand USD? For different reasons. One reason is to pay for goods and services imported from the US. Another reason is to use it as reserve currency.

> And why does EURUSD vary with relative economic output of the two countries?

It doesn't.

The value of fiat money is maintained by the issuer though. How does this happen? The Government demands payments of tax etc in this issued money. Means you need to have this funny money otherwise you go to jail. After a while we also get used to it as "an accepted means of exchange". But the value of course will quickly evaporate if the authority of the Government goes.

The ability to pay taxes with a currency is indeed one of the reasons people will demand that currency, but this doesn't mean its value is maintained by the government. History has shown repeatedly that a currency's value can collapse while people are still required to pay taxes with it.

I agree and I'm not saying to only pick one hedge.

Extraordinary. I will tell the people of Venezuela and Argentina to drop their savings in Bitcoin and get stocks. Such a great idea, they will see the benefits within the year.