No, it doesn't demonstrate that at all.

People invest and trade in gold. Which effectively means "gold paper", you don't physically own the gold. In fact, there's 4 times more paper gold than actual gold mined. This type of gold isn't productive. It's not going to be used to make jewelry, it doesn't even exist. It's just a number on screen and a shared belief that it has value.

To a degree you can extend that idea to stock. Sure, you can consider Apple stock to be "productive", as they make desirable products. Explain to me then how stocks are so volatile? It's because the value of the stock is largely believe-driven.

It's all just a bunch of numbers on screen. And they're all investments, regardless of personal opinions on actual value.

Gold is a raw material used in the production of manufactured goods. Which is the literal definition of a commodity. It's not a productive asset either. For the most part investment in gold doesn't produce returns. It's considered something that people hope will stay (roughly) at the same real value because it's scarce.

Apple stock on the other hand takes raw materials like people and chemicals and produces computing devices that are extraordinarily useful. That transformation is the definition of production. The stock value is a NPV calculation of the future earnings of that productive enterprise, which is the interaction of expectations of the enterprise as well as a guess what the cost of capital will be, iterated over many years into infinity.

Just because of the math involved and the iterative nature of the calculation tiny changes in expectations can cause large present value changes, but that isn't really material to the general concept of the enterprise as an ongoing means of producing new, novel, value in the world.

Ultimately, they're all a number on screen that at bare minimum needs to pertain inflation-adjusted value, and preferably grow. Otherwise there's no point to any of it.

> ... it come from people buying hamburgers

So from money someone else put into this whole hamburger thing and won't get it back?

> For example the dollars you get from selling McDonald’s stock 30 years after purchasing it come from people buying hamburgers.

Some dollars not all, and most likely bot even the most.

So the Bitcoin doesn't have this merchandise based mechanism for sucking the money out of the rest of the economy, so what? Only a part of the cash of the investors comes from it anyways. The rest comes from other investors who gambled wrong. Same as with Bitcoin.

Your argument is just a version of intrinsic value argument tgat crypto bros dismiss with a wide smile.

> So from money someone else put into this whole hamburger thing and won't get it back?

They got a hamburger and ate it. People need food.

They could eat something else. From the point of view of McDonalds investor there's no guarantee money will be flowing in because of sale of hamburgers.

McDonald's stock (MCD) pays a 2.39% dividend yield based on people buying hamburgers. That's hard cash paid out every year. Bitcoin doesn't pay any dividends.

Not all companies pay dividends and people don't think their stock is as worthless as bitcoin.

Stockholders expect all companies to eventually pay dividends. This is literally Finance 101 material, a basic part of DCF analysis.