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Comment by dnautics | Hacker News Reader

that's not in any way "intrinsic" value.

Yes it is. The intrinsic value of food is that you can eat it; the intrinsic value of art objects is that you like them. All "intrinsic" value refers to is the use you can make of something without exchanging it for something else. If you were the only person in the world, and you appreciated the appearance of gold, than gold would be intrinsically valuable to you.

I will accept this. How then is it not the case that "if you were the only person in the world, and you appreciated bitcoin, then bitcoin would be intrinsically valuable to you."

The logical implication is sound, I just don't think the premise holds. If you were the only person in the world, a bitcoin would just be a random-looking sequence of numbers and letters, which really would be worthless.

Then can't I find the function of bitcoin intrinsically valuable?

You mightn't like my tastes but I don't like your gold necklace either.

But for the case of jewelry, its usefulness as such depends on it being valuable. So the buck can't stop there: what other use propped up its value?

The usefulness of gold as jewelry is not only its value; it also does not tarnish or rust, which is a very useful property for jewelry.

Nor does glass or plastic-coated aluminium. There are lots of shiny things that people don't want in their jewelry. If diamond were as common and cheap as glass, we'd probably see just as much diamond jewelry as glass. They're not massively "better" at being shiney. Even artificial gems are worth less in than natural ones even if they have fewer defects!

Neither of those things were around or refined enough like gold was when gold became the traditional metal for jewelry. Gold has a large first-mover advantage here that is being propped up by human psychology.

> Nor does glass or plastic-coated aluminium.

Glass is not easy to work into jewelry on its own (or at least wasn't 2000-3000 years ago). Plastic-coated aluminium didn't exist 2000-3000 years ago.

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