Bitcoin isn’t Digital Gold, it’s Digital Uselesstainium
By JP Koning
ZeroHedge.com
Wednesday, 6 December 2017
People often like to describe bitcoin as digital gold, but that analogy isn’t a very good one. Bitcoin is categorically different from the yellow metal. If we had to choose a metal as an analogy for bitcoin, that metal would be boring grey in colour (and thus lacking ornamental purpose), useless for industrial purposes, but scarce. As far as I know no such material exists, so let’s come up with a name for this imaginary metal: uselesstainium. Bitcoin is digital uselesstainium.
Before bitcoin fans get angry with me, I should confess that I got the idea for uselesstainium from a 2010 discussion board post by Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of bitcoin. Below are his thoughts on a scarce metal that is “boring grey” and “not useful for any practical or ornamental purpose”:
Let’s dig more into the difference between gold and this stuff we call uselesstainium. There are two reasons to value something: 1) because you want to use it, or 2) because you expect to pass it off in the future. Pass-it-off demand may be for short-term purposes, like money—you only expect to have a dollar bill in your wallet for a day or two before spending it on. Or it may be for the long-term, like a speculative asset that you intend to keep for a few years before selling to someone else. Either way, pass-it-off demand means that the item’s value to you depends on what *the next person* is willing to provide, not on its use-value.
The demand for gold is made up of both types of demand. A portion of those active in the gold market value it as jewellery or a collectors item, or because it can be used to make circuitry or in satellites. The other portion likes the metal for its pass-it-off purposes, say they expect that someone else will pay twice the price next year.
Because it is an ugly grey colour and thus unsuitable for collectors or jewellery wearers, and it can’t be used in teeth nor for industrial purposes, uselesstainium has no use-value. If it is going to be valued at all, then pass-it-off demand will have to be wholly responsible for generating that value.
Gold and a fat-finger trade
The Rest…HERE
