Yep. And as an engineer, there are plenty of places I would specify the use gold if it were not so expensive.

Thermal properties along with inert/non-reactive nature of the material... Great stuff.

This proves my point though right? Investors and speculators have driven gold pricing many x its utility value.

I think most people look at gold as a flight to safety due to its relative stability. I wouldn't call gold a "speculative" asset. At the end of the day, gold is indeed a commodity - in electronics and such, and it's also heavily, heavily used in the jewelry industry (especially in places like India), so there is some utility there.

-Wayne

Taking the context into the equation one would be hard pressed to argue the jewelry portion is utility without being intentionally misleading.

Yeah, I wanted to mislead... thats why I posted a big chart...to mislead...

Meant more for your comment, seemed like you were implying jewelry as a utility function and therefore a justification. I only mean to compare the mindset, not argue the one vs the other.

Not my cup o'tea but I'm sure many of those into jewelry consider it to have utility.

The comparison to gold is a classic straw man argument. The energy consumption, lack of utility, and classic pattern of a multi-level marketing system cannot be reconciled by Bitcoin investors, so there is a common technique to deflect away by using a comparison to gold. It's all an MLM scheme / system right now that is attracting all of the "quick money" investors, plain and simple. Nothing wrong with that, I just prefer to call it like it is.

If Bitcoin were 100% stable and moved maybe 2-3% per year, I'd be willing to bet that most everyone who was "in Bitcoin" right now would not maintain their position.

-Wayne

Im not even sure how to respond to this...... context is important

I just don't understand your argument I guess. So do you consider gold a mlm system? It meets the same criteria. Is volatility the crossover? 2-3% vs 200% acceptable vs unacceptable? I'm just trying to grasp the mindset and viewpoint. To me, bitcoin has utility because I have used it to purchase goods. It also has a lot of utility in countries with less stable governments for the same reason, millions of dollars are exchanged pier to pier every day worldwide in real physical good purchases to live, eat ect. Not in your neck of the woods does not mean it doesn't happen and no utility to you does not equal no utility to all.

We can see the number of active addresses at any given time, sure its much higher when things are hot, but its always growing an not as low in downturns as you may think.

https://studio.glassnode.com/metrics?a=BTC&m=addresses.ActiveCount&resolution=1 month

Heres the thing, ShopCat. I don't feel the need to justify anything. I hope you have divested at least a little of your profit from crypto into other holdings, but its your wallet - right?

Did you know that in 1934 the US Government outlawed private citizens from owning gold? There are already rumblings in the Federal Gov to do the same with all crypto. I would imagine you think that would be impossible to enforce...

Best of Luck to you. Absolutely meant no disrespect.

Impossible to enforce as boating accidents nationwide skyrocket. Lol

I just sold my ETHE position for a cool 150% profit. So far it keeps dropping so I am not regretting it. I may jump back in when we hit bottom to ride the rollercoaster again :).

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1620927043.png

Again, the comparison to gold is a distraction from the discussion - this isn't a discussion about gold nor a comparison between the two.

Bitcoin has very little utility for 99.99% of the world's population (drug dealers and sex traffickers aside). If you've used Bitcoin to pay for (legal) stuff, then I'm just guessing that you're in the very, very small minority.

Just curious - what have you actually bought with Bitcoin and was that transaction within the past 12-24 months? Oh, and using an exchange like Coinbase for trading with other people with a Coinbase account doesn't count - that's the same thing as PayPal for Bitcoin - one is not actually "using" Bitcoin at that point, they are basically just trading "Coinbase credits" based upon the value of Bitcoin as an index - much like one's "funds" at PayPal aren't dollars and they don't really exist (one reason I don't leave any funds on account at PayPal).

-Wayne

Just because you keep saying it's a strawman argument, doesn't make it true. It is a completely valid argument/comparison. Just look at your posts:

Gold has very little utility for 99.99% of the world's population. If you've used gold to pay for (legal) stuff, then I'm just guessing that you're in the very, very small minority.

Just curious - what have you actually bought with gold and was that transaction within the past 12-24 months?

and yet, you think gold is so different?

Here's a clip from Bloomberg today:

In case anyone hasn't figured this out yet, I'm not a fan of Bitcoin, or other high-energy-consuming crypto currencies. As I stated earlier in this thread, I think that Bitcoin is version 1.0.0 of crypto. It's dang good, and other than the energy usage, fork issues and block size limitations, it's not bad for a first start. But I think it's doomed due to these limitations.

Version two needs to have a timed-element to blockchain mining. Right now, it's just a brute force race to see who can decode the fastest. That encourages power consumption. If mining were somewhat more randomly dispersed (using timestamps), then one would set up miners to wait, and then be awarded transaction points / processing payments somewhat randomly. It would turn the market into more transactional based - where the miners would be distributed payments to process instead of racing to process like the current system. Again, a good version 1.0.0, but as it stands right now, it's somewhat broken (in my opinion).

-Wayne

I've already shared a site with a large map of places that accept bitcoin, from normal everyday goods to concert and pro sports tickets. I have bought a watch pier to pier in the last month. You seem to just want to have blinders on, and keep your world view. Literally millions of dollars every day in bitcoin, pier to pier, NO FIAT, is used by regular citizens in Venezuela as their hyperinflation problem is ruining their lives. Yet you keep ignoring these things, or dismiss them as sex and drug traffickers in the 0.01%. lol There is no way you will ever change your mind on this it is clear. Have you looked into ANY of the other 1000s of cryptocurrencies that are being used by real companies including partnerships with federal governments, the UN, Google, IBM, Walmart, Microsoft, MIT ect? This is a new asset class which is rare, and dismissing it doesn't make it go away.

I think that Musk is a sideshow, if someone buys or sells based on what he has to say its just a casino to them.

Nope - gold is similar in many ways to Bitcoin. Now, back to the discussion of Bitcoin and other cryptos...

-Wayne

None taken, no cashing out, its a 25 year timeline for me and I'm already 8 years deep... maybe that makes me a sucker today though, only time will tell :)