This is weird to me. Does Facebook currently ban advertisements for commodities like gold? If no, then what's the difference between advertising for bitcoin and advertising for gold?
I don't think the problem is Bitcoin per se as much as the rancid industry of scams and frauds pumping and dumping alt coins and ICOs.
Don't agree? Ask yourself, why don't you see ads for other commodities, like rice or iron? Because there's no money in that. So how come there's money in ads for bitcoin? Could it be because bitcoin is not actually a commodity?
An important second difference is that creating a replacement for the intrinsic value of gold is somewhere between difficult and impossible, whereas it appears any hustler who can scrape together three programmers can launch a Bitcoin alternative. Even if Bitcoin's intrinsic value were real, approximately infinite supply means the effective intrinsic value would be approximately zero.
[1] https://www.gold.org/research/gold-demand-trends/gold-demand...
I can start trying to use aluminum to hold value. It has intrinsic value through valid non-currency applications. Being able to do so in no way lessens the value of gold, and the ability to do the same thing with virtually any other material does not mean gold's effective intrinsic value is approximately zero.
It's the other factors you mentioned (robust market and long history of usage) that makes gold valuable relative to alternatives, and Bitcoin has factors that make it more valuable relative to other cryptocurrencies--including forks of Bitcoin. It's true that it is more likely Bitcoin is replaced by another crypto than gold replaced by another metal, but that's a far cry from Bitcoin's effective intrinsic value being approximately zero.
Gold has been out of fashion for currencies for many decades, especially since Bretton Woods; despite that gold had continued to be valuable because it has practical use, which is what people generally mean by intrinsic value, and definitely what dr_win meant.
It's not impossible that tomorrow you will invent some aluminum alloy that is way better than gold for jewelry, although it's certainly unlikely. But it would be very easy for someone to start offering yet another pseudocurrency that allows for "interesting digital infrastructure", which is what dr_win claimed was Bitcoin's intrinsic value.
Gold's demand is large and stable and it's supply is constrained. Bitcoin's demand as digital infrastructure is both small and unproven, and the supply appears bounded only by the number of hucksters in the world and the bytes of storage that they hucksters can command. That means that for dr_win's theory of intrinsic value, Bitcoin's should tend toward zero.
No intrinsic value? How about how it is truly stored energy? It has a lot in common with gold. Just because it's digital doesn't make it's worthless. Lots of very valuable things are entirely digital these days.
As an example, you can look at Bitcoin like digital Beanie Babies. The intrinsic value of a cute stuffed toy is, as any airport give shop can show you, a few bucks. The market price of Beanie Babies was for a time much higher due to limited issuance, energetic promotion, and a popular craze for them. The intrinsic demand did not change, so when the hype cycle ran out, price fell back toward intrinsic.
Bitcoin's intrinsic value is definitely not "stored energy", because you cannot get the energy back out. And it's not much like gold for reasons already described: gold has real, sustained intrinsic value. Bitcoin doesn't.
Two, we're talking intrinsic value, which is a basically backward-looking concept.
Three, all I'm doing is pointing out the error in mr_win's claim that Bitcoin's intrinsic value is "exact equivalent to industrial use of gold as gold's intrinsic value", and is therefore presumably worth something.
So if you would like to grumble at somebody for suggesting that one should evaluate intrinsic value based on actual utility, please go bother him.
Compare with bitcoin, which has no physical form and is only usable in context of present economy of technological civilization.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold#Other_applications
Spacecraft shielding is my favorite
No one buys rice or iron on Facebook, but Bitcoin is mainstream enough where the Facebook audience is a good target.
> Well one difference is that bitcoin has no intrinsic value, ie, it's online gambling in disguise
While there are cryptocurrencies that are pump and dump and scams, there are legit ones that are being used as actual currency in transactions for actual products all over the world. I can buy coffee with cryptocurrency, but I certainly won't be able to pay for it with gold. Calling bitcoin 'online gambling in disguise' is like calling the stock market and forex trading 'online gambling'.
Intrinsic value is the value it has even if it is not thought of as a currency or unit of trade.
That's like, your definition dude.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/intrinsicvalue.asp
> The intrinsic value is the actual value of a company or an asset based on an underlying perception of its true value including all aspects of the business, in terms of both tangible and intangible factors. This value may or may not be the same as the current market value.
My best guess is, based on their guidelines (https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads/), sure, Facebook would be okay with any gold advertisements from accredited commodities investment institutions.
On the other hand, advertisements from certain random shady gold coin dealers? Honestly, Facebook should be weary of advertisements in this space too, if they aren't already.
If there was a way for cryptocurrency to come from an "accredited institution" with "sufficient disclosure" of various metrics and safeguards typically used in retail investing, I would think Facebook would be okay with it. It's more that a lot of cryptocurrency (really unfortunately considering how fascinating the tech is) feels shady and/or scam like at the moment.
Take Tezos for example. Greatest innovation in blockchain history or greatest scam in blockchain history? You could lose a lot of hair over that decision, or you could just kill 'em all and let Satoshi sort 'em out.
And they shouldn't have to. We tightly regulate securities-related promotional content because we learned, the hard way about a century ago, that left to itself securities markets breed scams like rabbits.