[luke3butler]

This might be beating a dead horse, but what's the difference between Bitcoin and gold then?

If gold loses its value, then it's just a heavy rock. They both take time, money, and resources to mine but neither of them have any intrinsic value.

[cglace]

Gold has a myriad of uses outside of it being a heavy rock. If it's price were to drop substantially it's use in industry would increase substantially and we know what happens to price when demand increases.

[soneil]

I don’t think industry is the floor you think it is. They’ll happily pay as little as they can for it.

I think the more honest measure is simply how many people have faith in it. Bitcoin and gold may be logically equivalent for this function, but a lot more people have a lot more faith in gold.

[oscilloscope]

Gold's been around for a lot longer— it's mythologically significant.

But as far as recent technology goes, Bitcoin's been around for a while. It's older then the iPad.

[matt_s]

That's sort of my point. If Bitcoin and gold lose all financial value, at least with gold you have a heavy rock and to most humans, visually appealing. You can do something with that - build a house with enough of it, make jewelry out of it, forge weapons (would they be any good?)

You can't do anything with Bitcoin if is exchanging at $0 USD.

[luke3butler]

A decentralized, distributed ledger has value as well.

Ethereum is a better example, but on the flip-side so is steel.