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The fundamental problem of any such criticism of crypto is explaining then how crypto is different from gold besides "some people value gold also because of intrinsic value". Why is gold not exactly like having stock in a long bankrupt company?

If gold is indeed like crypto, then when is this gradually built dogma finally going to be exposed? Holding gold would've been good investment advice almost in any civilization.

Very similar arguments can be made about gold. And have been! And the fact they have been wrong until now is not necessarily a good predictor of the future.

In any case, there is one key thing which differentiates gold from crypto - there's only one kind of gold, and there's only a very small number of metals with similar properties to gold - perhaps 8 in total, all of which have been valuable since mankind figured out how to extract and work them, and none of which are exact substitutes for gold. Gold and gold-like metals are scarce!

Crypto is not scarce. Any one coin can be, but even if we, as a society, decided that, say, shiba inu themed crypto coins are our core store of value, there are multiple shiba inu themed coins already extant, and it is trivial to make infinite more. Even if we pick a single coin like Bitcoin (and why would we?), there are currently something like 45 currently active forks, all claiming to be the one true best Bitcoin.

Gold is valuable because it is unique and differentiable. (That is, if you want something like gold, you need to buy some gold, because nothing else is quite like it.) Litecoin is valuable because...?

Gold is not really scarce and as seen its price plummets multiple times throughout history as large quantities were unexpectedly discovered. If even a minority of the people currently hoarding gold decided to sell, the price would crash.

Gold is a strange asset. It is valuable because it is seen as a strong way to store value and it is a strong way to store value because people collectively believe it to be so. In that way, it is actually quite close to bitcoin.

I remember being surprised when I read that half of all of the gold we have has been mined since 1961, which really does show that basing your currency on it would have massive problems.

See also the inflationary spike of the Renaissance era, sometimes called the Spanish Price Revolution: https://voxeu.org/article/does-inflow-precious-metals-new-wo...

Prices rose sixfold over 150 years, which represents a ~1% inflation rate which seems low by modern standards, but the thing about inflation is that expectations matter far more than the absolute rate, and European society had ~0% inflation assumptions baked into it, so the effects were significant and sweeping. The graph of price levels in England in that article is just wild.

It's now generally accepted that that the main driver of this was the Spanish treasure fleets from the New World, which significantly increased the money supply in Europe.

Which itself followed the Great Bullion Famine, where there was too little gold and silver available:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Bullion_Famine

It's also amusing that silver was far more critical than gold historically.

Gold has also stood the test of time in a way unique to our human culture

> is explaining then how crypto is different from gold besides "some people value gold also because of intrinsic value".

You say this as if having intrinsic value isn't enough?

> Repeat it enough and the dogma gradually becomes a truth you can build anything on top of.

That's what people that don't understand it hope.

What a completely nonsensical comparison. There are plenty of valid criticisms of crypto speculation and the underlying assets, but this is just hateful posturing painted up as sophisticated opinion.

What are your feelings on gold?

not op, but if bitcoin existed 1000 years ago, it would probably have replaced gold as a generic currency.

And while one might argue that the reason that gold is valued today is because of historic reasons, that it has been accepted as something of value almost everywhere for a very long time..

Now, if this wasn't the case, and someone would have proposed today that we should make this metal a currency just because it is limited in supply and very easy to recognize, I would probably feel the same way about gold as I do about bitcoin.

Complete bullshit.

First, even "financially" (thought what does it even mean???) holding crypto is not the same as holding a stock of a bankrupt company. Bankruptcy is a process with many mandated "financial" steps with set dates none of which are required from crypto.

Second, there are things beyond "financiality", such as easiness and reliability of "creating a derivative", and finding a buyer for it. So the premise of the whole comment is 100% useless in reality.

I think this analogy is almost correct, but it's better to think of crypto as owning a deed to land. You can in fact hold on to it and trade it, but at the end of the day all you are doing is changing the name on the deed. The land stays the land. You can put a house on it (store tokens), or you can build a factory (smart contracts), but the only reason why it has any value is because some other person may want to put a house or build a factory on it. Land has no intrinsic value because it can never truly be owned. It will outlast us all.

A land deed gives you the right to have people with guns enforce your will on others who would use that land; and limits the amount that those same people with guns would interfere with your abilith to use that land.

Further, in practice, most owned land is near immidietly turned into something that provides direct value. Be it shelter, or widgets.

so, almost correct, but at the same time the exact opposite?

If land has no intrinsic value, what does?

I feel like this time of analogy is the exact type of magical thinking the parent post identified.