gold sits on 2 markets.. commodities and assets.

the commodity features are the electronics and jewellery stuff it can create
the assets features are the underlying mining cost, scarcity equalling the store of value aspects

bitcoin fits the asset category. not the commodity category

atleast try to not confuse the two markets and their different features/utilities they are used for

..
yes some say that bitcoin is becoming more of a commodity(raw item that makes other items) due to the whole 'sidechain' tokenisation thing.
but bitcoin as just bitcoin was/has been more of the asset class.

yes bitcoin is not physical. so its not "tangible". but tangible is not a synonym of intrinsic. they mean totally different things

---

lets take 3 other things..
a patent, a mortgage agreement, and a brand trademark

these 3 things do not have to be tangible themselves. (paper) they can be digital.
these 3 things do not have to be backed by tangible things
yes a mortgage agreement is backed by the collateral of the physical house.
but a patent is just a agreement, an idea. whereby it comes with the emotion that it permits the owner licence to do something or not do something where there is emotion that makes others fear being sued if they tresspass the idea, use the idea without the owners permission
a brand does not need to be physically stolen. (steal the contract put in a vault) it can be stolen via being used maliciously in slander or in copyright/counterfeit/phishing

these 3 things have value and can be traded electronically as they have value. all for different reasons.
its not all based on all having value based on something tangible.

EG a mortgage might have some intrinsic value based on the physical collateral. but most of the institutional derivatives trading of mortgage debt is based on the analysis of likelyhood of people defaulting/not paying. which is not about the house itself but about the emotional and cost/repayment risk of the person with debt. and how much some other institution values their own risk/reward to buy that debt at pennies on the dollar to pursue the debt.

when you start to look passed the narrow mind of "tangible" and seek out what other things are built into the underlying features of things of value. you might start to realise its not all about tangible, especially in the digital age where people can own digital property like a electronically signed patent/contract or a website brand

Even gold isn't backed up by anything, right? 
So why do people trust it and want to pay with expensive value? Because people believe Gold is valuable. The main thing here is people's trust. It is the same as Bitcoin, it doesn't need to be backed up by something because people trust it. People believe Bitcoin is something valuable and useful for human life. In this matter, something like Gold and Bitcoin is acceptable although it is not guaranteed by anything.

You cant actually with Bitcoin, if you run the same software you will just connect to the same network with the same rules, if you change rules your instance will split into another altcoin into its new network, with no users and be worthless and not be Bitcoin anymore. Bitcoin is unique, even as a software.

then don't store your gold with a 3rd party. not your keys not your crypto. same idea.

except you can't replace gold. it has applications in diverse industries.

That wouldn't be possible to do in a trustless manner. Also, say every dollar bill was backed by bitcoin. What would happen if someone loses that dollar bill?

To expand on the "trustless" aspect, you can't trust the government to back up its worthless paper money with a certain amount of ANYTHING.

Fiat can be counterfeited. But bitcoin can't. But if fiat was backed by bitcoin then you could counterfeit bitcoin i guess.

First of all, Bitcoin is not imaginary, it is real and it has its existence in the digital world. An asset of the digital world does not turn Bitcoin into an imaginary object, if that was the case then Microsoft and Google would have been imaginary as well, but they are not. They are very real.
The thing is, Bitcoin having a fixed existence of $21million in this world is more important than people realise. It keeps the cryptocurrency rare, guaranteeing that its value remains stable for years to come. This is why Bitcoin is sometimes referred to as "digital gold"; like gold, there is a finite supply of Bitcoin. Although Bitcoin was never created with the purpose of hedging inflation, many financial analysts believe that bitcoin’s fixed value is what can serve the purpose.
Moreover, comparing it to gold does not make sense. Because gold too is a natural resource, and one day it will come to an end as well.

I probably understand just as much about those things as you do.


The way I see it, it's all fine and good to say bitcoin has value and for people to agree it has value. But if it was backed up by some real world asset like say real estate or something tangible then it would be even better because then it couldnt ever go to 0 as long as the real estate didn't go to 0. Simple as that.


Keep in mind that bitcoin is the first but not necessarily the best that mankind will ever be able to come up with. how many people are still driving around a Ford Model T?

maybe part of it is psychology. but it can't just all be psycological. there really does need to be not only a perceived value but the thing really does have to be useful in some real world way. otherwise we're just pretending it is valuable.

That's not why I would be interested in bitcoin. I don't think it was designed for that purpose just my opinion though.

Also real value comes from a flexibility and we all know bitcoin have expand through the years and it made a great impact. That's the reason bitcoin is good because of its unexpected disappointment or happiness of its results. Investing with security ensures you money but with very low rate and it's not always we don't need money that's why people sometimes take risk for this benefits even though they know it is very tricky sometimes.

trying to compare bitcoin and gold is kind of a longshot. they are not as similar as you might think.

You can replace bitcoin with something similar like ethereum if all you want to do is transfer digital money. The something similar argument. There's alot of cryptocurrencies out there. They do similar thing. they let you transfer digital money. so bitcoin can easily be replaced by any of them because they can do the same thing.

on the other hand, you can't just as easily replace gold with some other metal in every application. there are probably certain applications where gold is the only thing that you can use. or at least a much more limit set of choices than with bitcoin where you can literally pick dozens of other cryptos to use to "send your money".

Anyone with particular knowledge can create cryptocurrency. But not anyone can produce gold because it is an natural mineral resource that has limited supply. While this is true, it should also be noted that bitcoin can't just be reproduced easily by copying and renaming. It doesn't work that way. If you will insist on doing so, you will definitely not succeed in renaming it alone. You can do another crypto coin, but it isn't guaranteed that it will be as valuable as bitcoin.

Remember, there are many crypto coins now circulating in the market, but not everyone has a value. Not everyone of it have the potential to rise up or surpass bitcoin too. Because without patronage, a crypto coin is useless.