Houses are lived in. Stocks act as a cashflow for companies. Even if the world economy collapses you can still use a solid gold bar as a blunt instrument to kill an animal and eat it.
Cryptocurrencies have exactly 0 secondary uses.
I'd take ownership in Apple all day over any coin, as I suspect more people out there value the Apple Stock over the ever-increasingly tough to exchange Bitcoin.
These events both seem very unlikely right now, but they provide a last-resort value for an ownership interest in Amazon.
(I don't mean to support other people in this thread who are criticizing cryptocurrencies for their lack of inherent value, but stocks do have a particular basis for their value that cryptocurrencies commonly don't.)
In other words, owning a non-dust amount of Satoshis gives you some useful property. Anything scarce and useful will have value and market will price it. Anything with a price and good properties to become means of exchange, unit of account or store of value could under some circumstances become a form of money.
Similar as with gold. You can use it in electro-industry. That's its secondary value for people who see value in electronic devices. If you were to explain why gold is valuable in electro-industry to a member of native african tribe, he would not see that value, because electricity and electronic devices is something not considered in his mind. You are in the same boat with Bitcoin here :-)
The point is - crypto-currencies are fairy dust. There is nothing real or tangible about them.
Most money in circulation is 0/1's on hard drives.
I'm bearish on cryptocurrencies because frankly the entire thing is hilarious but modern currencies aren't entirely dissimilar.
Being backed by demand from the entire economy of a stable polity is certainly better than being backed by sunk (energy) cost fallacy and speculator enthusiasm.
I think this thread started out with someone saying that crypto-currencies aren't very useful as currency, but as assets (like a gold bar) instead. And then it was argued that they're not very good as assets either.
I guess what I am trying to say is that there is a lot more that goes into value than utility. That's why I do not think that people always act rationally. Clearly there is something irrational about people's relationship with gold that makes it valuable. I don't see why crypto cannot have a similar irrational evaluation. Sure, it could go "poof" tomorrow, but I don't know if that will stop people from seeing it as valuable.
Not really. Pyrite has a vaguely similar color to gold and flakes of it can be easily be visually mistaken for gold in certain contexts, it doesn't generally closely resemble gold, even cosmetically.