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Comment by barbazoo | Hacker News Reader

Same reason maybe people buy gold?

Gold has a limited supply and has an industrial use, where it is irreplaceable, creating a floor to its price. Bitcoin has no use where it is irreplaceable and thus has no price floor. They are incomparable.

If the price of gold dropped to its industrial use demand it may as well go to zero.

Hell, if it did this maybe we would have more uses for it. That would be cool.

Only genuine use I can imagine (In like todays real world, not the Bitcoin maximalist fantasy world) is it's a way to escape a warzone with some of your wealth in tact.

Bitcoin has no use?

My company works with franchise restaurants in countries with hyper inflation and they use it to hedge their local currency when buying hard goods.

You dropped "where it is irreplaceable". The traditional hedge in such places has been to use a more stable currency, like dollars or euros, as a hedge if the national currency is subject to hyperinflation.

You're misquoting GP: No use where it is irreplaceable.

It's definitely being used by people for various purposes, but Bitcoin forks are much easier to spin up than alternate scarce chemical elements.

Only 10% of global gold production is used industrially. Most of gold's price is sustained by pure speculation.

Around half of the global demand is apparently for jewellery:

https://www.gold.org/goldhub/data#demand-and-supply

Yup. 10% industrial, ~45% jewelry, and ~45% bullion. Jewelry's use of gold is speculation just like bullion. People want gold or other precious metals in jewelry not because they provide the best physical properties at a given price-point (there are many superior alternatives), but only because such materials are expensive, ie. they speculatively assume the high prices will stay high and/or continue to appreciate.

what about just because it looks nice? people like nice things.

If "looking nice" was the main factor, people would be buying jewelry made of materials that look identical to gold AND are more durable AND are less expensive.

Bitcoin obviously has uses (arguably better served by other cryptocurrencies), and gold is far from irreplaceable in the vast majority of its uses.

Gold, like other heavy elements, can be found on other planets and asteroids.

Access to which is currently very limited as well.

Because they are manufacturing high-end audio cables?

do they do bitcoin necklaces??

Actually they do: https://multi.inc/key/

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