Gold like oil is stored energy... oil is captured sunlight mineralized... it is like an energy dense capacitor ... and gold is an elemental metal created in the furnance of a supernova, with many other unique properties that make it condusive as a form of proxy for trade (essential what fiat paper money is supposed to symbolically represent)
Bitcoin does not contain any energy. Mining bitcoin is not like mining uranium. or coal. Bitcoin is an accounting system, just like an excel spreadsheet, but only difference is that its an online ledger that is globally kept in sync (distributed peer to peer)
It takes more and more real energy to mine less and less bitcoin, but bitcoin does not provide any energy back in return, worst than ethanol which is already a negative energy sink, for bitcoin its EROEI is negative infinity.
A bitcoin is nothing more than a tally, a purely abstract symbol token that is supposed to represent resources/energy out there in the real world but without itself being a real resource/energy and without any corresponding real energy, resources, value creation that accompanies the creation of a bitcoin...
Lets say some day a whole bitcoin gets to one million USD or higher. Miners will be willing to spend almost a million dollars in real energy and resources, effort and time to conjur up another fake excel spreadsheet cell?
Some people who timed it right got rich during height of tulip mania but most people lost... it was a reshuffling of wealth like football squares, no real wealth was ever created into the system. Bitcoin is akin to buy and selling futures contracts of a flower that isnt real and never even existed in the first place!
Gold isn't stored energy. Prior to industrial use as an electrical conductor, its value to society is that of an aesthetic. At least copper and tin can be made to bronze and copper and zinc can be made to brass which can produce useful tools that can be used to produce agricultural commodities or turned to weapons to fight wars that will gain you land territory. Same with iron. Iron, copper, tin and zinc helps you in the acquisition (conquest) of land and later its cultivation. They can also be used for weapons and tools in the hunt of animals for food and for processing (butchering) their meat. These metals are still heavily used in modern civilization for the creation of infrastructure and engines, and copper as the main electrical conduit. We have supplemented these metals with others such as aluminum and magnesium.
For the most part, taxes from ancient to the medieval times, are collected in bushels of grain. The accounting and inventory system was invented for the management of this resource.
The value of bitcoin comes from its usefulness in international transfers, bypassing formal banking systems like as SWIFT. The transfer of wealth is actually how paper currency came to replace other forms of currency because of its
ease to aid transactions. Fiat currency began as paper notes used to representing holdings of gold and silver kept in secure places which travelers can carry for their journeys safely and lightly, and can be used to transact in the place of destination. While Song Dynasty China has a separate story with the creation and use of paper currency, medieval Europe has another. The Crusades and the capture of the Holy Land moved Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East into a new era.
At this time, people began to travel much more than they did, from Europe to the Holy Land for pilgrimage. The Holy Land was in the control and management of the Knight Templars. Since pilgrims cannot carry metal currency with their to their long journey, especially if said pilgrim is rich nobility, the pilgrim would deposit their currency to the nearest Knight Templar office. The Knight Templar would in return, hand the pilgrim a note stating the value of what was deposited with the Templars, redeemable in value when the pilgrim reached the Holy Land. When the pilgrim reached the Holy Land, he brings the note to the local Knight Templars branch, where he would redeem the wealth stated in the note.
This is the first operational banking system and international wealth transfers in history. Those notes were to become the basis for Western currency.
To say that gold is "God's money" should check to see history because fiat currency was invented by religious institutions.
That's where money's true value is --- it makes transactions easy.
Just holding gold and silver doesn't make transactions easy. How do you transact gold and silver? Paper notes are used to represent gold, until we have decided to detach the value of paper dollar currency from gold in 1972 to petroleum instead.
The problem of bitcoin is that it makes international transfers simpler, which is of key importance with globalization, it has yet to prove in a way as a means of transaction in common places like the grocery story, the supermarket and the gas station. If Amazon is going to accept bitcoin, bitcoin is going to leap.
This is why Alipay and WeChat themselves have become so valuable before the government clamped down on them and introduced the Digital Yuan. Digital currency is going to make a new leap in the way making money so convenient to use and transfer, and that this by itself will make the currency valuable.
