Quote from: deisik on November 12, 2015, 07:05:17 PM

Quote from: jaysabi on November 12, 2015, 06:29:31 PM

Quote from: deisik on November 11, 2015, 07:28:11 AM

Value of gold is set by the laws of nature, which humans cannot change at their whimsy (at least, so far). It doesn't matter where it lives or originates, since humans cannot change their own nature either (just in case you're going to bring forward the argument of subjective value and all that crap). Bitcoin, on the hand, is, like fiat monies, a deliberate brain-child of men, and, as such, it is not "bestowed" with the same level of confidence (that nature provides)...

This "confidence" is undermined by definition

No no, gold has no inherent value. It is not set by the laws of nature, it is set by human perception of its worth. The laws of nature, as you say, influence the perception of gold in that it is a limited resource, but it is still the expectation that someone else in the future will consider gold an asset that gives it value in the present.

You'd better go and read my posts carefully. I expected this argument and specifically have pointed it out that "human perception" is also a result of natural forces. Even more, I ended my post with the saying that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". Did you read it? People like gold for its inherent qualities, and inherent means permanent and essential characteristics which cannot be taken or stripped off from an object possessing them without destroying it. Personally, you may not like gold, the way it looks and how it feels, but the rest of humanity would most certainly beg to differ with your opinion...

And just like you can't change the law of gravity, you can't change the nature of man. That's why the confidence in gold is incomparable with that of Bitcoin

Yes, I read it, I'm just disagreeing with your characterization of it. Value comes from two things: need and perception of value. Things that are not needs are not inherently valuable, and then value only comes from the perception that someone else will find value in it in the future. People like gold because it has value. Gold has value because people like it. Confidence in gold at this point is more tradition than anything else. You're saying that confidence in systems can't be compared to each other because the systems are different. That's not true at all. The systems can be radically different (like gold and bitcoin), and the value of each system still comes down to the confidence in the particular instrument. You can say that gold will always be valuable and cite its history as evidence and likely be right. That doesn't make it absolute, and the determining factor is always going to be whether or not people have confidence in the store of value.