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A very close friend of mine wrote this but he wants to remain anonymous:
Thought experiment to free your mind - concerning question above.
if you were an alien and you came to earth and saw people 's dealing with gold coins you'd think WTH is wrong with these people?
why is this shit a "store of value--something that has very little day to day practical use"...
and yet you'd see the following...
1. an entire company - big, multi billion dollar company...with many thousands of workers using very expensive machines and equip...to dig holes in the earth thousands of feet deep, dangerous nasty work...to extract a shit ton of ....rocks...
2. which are then brought to the surface and broken down into fine sand or whatever and then massive use of harsh chemicals such as mercury used to extract a few OUNCES of some yellow metal from the TONS of shit they dug up.
3. Then they'd pay guards to guard this gold...which would then be melted down into bars which then would be transported literally across the world - some turned into small coins that nobody ever even uses for transactions .
4. people would then stamp and enscribe symbols on the coin and then sell them to dealers - entirely different companies which carefully guard these coins...and sell them to...
5. Joe 6-pack...who forks over thousands of REAL useful fiat currency for ...then takes this gold coin and puts it in a dark safe for ....well, decades sometimes. And Joe feels rich...bc he has invested in this "store of value".
see how utterly crazy and impractical that is? Its physical- yes. But it does nothing, it consumed massive amount of energy discover, pull from the earth, process, ship, and ultimately sell to Joe. And before you start with the ole "but it has industrial value!" --- that clearly is not what drives the price of gold. come on. the industrial usage of gold would warrant prob something like $50/oz...the rest is due strictly to scarcity , network of acceptance as a TOKEN of value, difficult to counterfeit, fungible, sturdy, and all that jazz....but the VALUE of gold IS its acceptance as something rare and requiring tons of energy /time to produce. THAT'S ALL. Period. for example...if we discovered an absolute shit ton of new gold...say everyone dug a hole in their backyard and found 1,000 # of it...guess what? it'd no longer be dear and prized as a store of value.
Bitcoin is similar.... takes a shit ton of energy to validate, has no industrial physical purpose, is valuable solely bc of network effect plus all those same characteristics I mentioned about gold above- but improved upon. True- you cant HOLD it in your hand...but thats NOT what MAKES gold valuable...anymore than an ETF certificate or computer entry on your TD Ameritrade account showing you "own" xyz shares of gold fund, etc etc. BTC is better in many ways --- its more divisible than gold or USD ( 100M units per 1 BTC) , it can be transported to anyone on planet earth for a nominal cost within about 10 minutes, it requires no armed guards, insurance , safe, etc. It's a better unit of account, It cant be "destroyed" (sure it can be lost just as a coin can be or a $100 from your wallet), it cannot be counterfeited...and most importantly it cant be manipulated by say The Fed or some country administrator , etc. Also it cannot be inflated away...the total release schedule of BTC is public info. It never changes from its plan/program/design. It works as long as an internet exists. And yes it can be "stored off line"- requiring zero energy on the holders part.
It's valuable only bc it cant be faked , inflated, hacked, and it requires a shit ton of energy to produce.
all store of value things really are nothing more than a symbol proving that a bunch of limited resources (time and energy ) went into something. THAT IS what makes it valuable....humans like rare baubles ...rather that be seashells, gold coins, pieces of paper with dead president pics on them, small clear rocks(diamonds), Majic the Gathering cards, Picasso paintings , etc ....its what we do.
get it?
[/quotGood Idea
Thought experiment to free your mind - concerning question above.
if you were an alien and you came to earth and saw people 's dealing with gold coins you'd think WTH is wrong with these people?
why is this shit a "store of value--something that has very little day to day practical use"...and yet you'd see the following...
1. an entire company - big, multi billion dollar company...with many thousands of workers using very expensive machines and equip...to dig holes in the earth thousands of feet deep, dangerous nasty work...to extract a shit ton of ....rocks...
2. which are then brought to the surface and broken down into fine sand or whatever and then massive use of harsh chemicals such as mercury used to extract a few OUNCES of some yellow metal from the TONS of shit they dug up.
3. Then they'd pay guards to guard this gold...which would then be melted down into bars which then would be transported literally across the world - some turned into small coins that nobody ever even uses for transactions .
4. people would then stamp and enscribe symbols on the coin and then sell them to dealers - entirely different companies which carefully guard these coins...and sell them to...
5. Joe 6-pack...who forks over thousands of REAL useful fiat currency for ...then takes this gold coin and puts it in a dark safe for ....well, decades sometimes. And Joe feels rich...bc he has invested in this "store of value".
see how utterly crazy and impractical that is?
Its physical- yes. But it does nothing, it consumed massive amount of energy discover, pull from the earth, process, ship, and ultimately sell to Joe. And before you start with the ole "but it has industrial value!" --- that clearly is not what drives the price of gold. come on. the industrial usage of gold would warrant prob something like $50/oz...the rest is due strictly to scarcity , network of acceptance as a TOKEN of value, difficult to counterfeit, fungible, sturdy, and all that jazz....but the VALUE of gold IS its acceptance as something rare and requiring tons of energy /time to produce. THAT'S ALL. Period. for example...if we discovered an absolute shit ton of new gold...say everyone dug a hole in their backyard and found 1,000 # of it...guess what? it'd no longer be dear and prized as a store of value.Bitcoin is similar.... takes a shit ton of energy to validate, has no industrial physical purpose, is valuable solely bc of network effect plus all those same characteristics I mentioned about gold above- but improved upon. True- you cant HOLD it in your hand...but thats NOT what MAKES gold valuable...anymore than an ETF certificate or computer entry on your TD Ameritrade account showing you "own" xyz shares of gold fund, etc etc. BTC is better in many ways --- its more divisible than gold or USD ( 100M units per 1 BTC) , it can be transported to anyone on planet earth for a nominal cost within about 10 minutes, it requires no armed guards, insurance , safe, etc. It's a better unit of account, It cant be "destroyed" (sure it can be lost just as a coin can be or a $100 from your wallet), it cannot be counterfeited...and most importantly it cant be manipulated by say The Fed or some country administrator , etc. Also it cannot be inflated away...the total release schedule of BTC is public info. It never changes from its plan/program/design. It works as long as an internet exists. And yes it can be "stored off line"- requiring zero energy on the holders part.
It's valuable only bc it cant be faked , inflated, hacked, and it requires a shit ton of energy to produce.
all store of value things really are nothing more than a symbol proving that a bunch of limited resources (time and energy ) went into something. THAT IS what makes it valuable....humans like rare baubles ...rather that be seashells, gold coins, pieces of paper with dead president pics on them, small clear rocks(diamonds), Majic the Gathering cards, Picasso paintings , etc ....its what we do.
get it?
[/quotGood Idea
