gold actually has critical scientific and industrial uses, so it does have some actual inherent value. though it's not usually traded based on that value.
gold mining is of course dirty and energy intensive. but bitcoin is a bottomless pit for high-performance silicone, which is a pretty important resource for gamers just about everything in the modern economy that uses a server or data somewhere.
that is not true for crypto in general, but bitcoin, ethereum, and other coins based on proof-of-work blockchains. there are other kinds of blockchains and cryptocurrencies that avoid those problems. ripple's XRP is an example that's pretty hot right now.
you really have to understand how much of a bottomless pit proof-of-work is, though. the more computing resources (and thus energy) you throw at it, the more it takes to mine a single coin. whether the bitcoin network consists of (a) millions of mining cards using jiggawatts of power or (b) one old laptop with a dead fan, the same number of coins are minted each day. as you add more computational resources, the harder the math problems become to solve. so you can never gain an absolute advantage, only a relative one against other miners. it's a zero-sum game. thus you always have to upgrade to the most advanced, fastest, most efficient silicone as soon as it becomes available, and continuously expand the size of your operation, using more power. there is no satiating the beast.
so the more the value of the coins goes up, the more silicon will cost as miners must always consume the best stuff to stay competitive. and that has a direct effect on basically every product in the economy, since virtually every product relies on computation resources somewhere in the supply chain. even if it's just "the cloud" those cloud resources run on servers that compete with bitcoin for silicon wafers. and computational products themselves become either unavailable or sold by scalpers at 300%+ their normal prices. you can add more manufacturing capacity, but it won't help anything. the only way they would slow down buying silicone is when either the bitcoin prices stop going up, or energy prices become the limiting factor, as they are using so much they drive up the local rates.
there is nothing at all stopping bitcoin from moving to proof-of-stake or some other system not based on burning energy to solve pointless math problems, it would just require consensus on the network. it is expected ethereum will move to proof-of-stake at some point. ethereum is behind current GPU shortages, while bitcoin mostly now runs on custom-made ASIC's, meaning it's not directly competing in the market with GPU's or CPU's, but certainly it is still competing for capacity at one of the handful of fabrication facilities that can create nanometer-scale transistors.
e.g. a high-end bitcoin mining machine is the Antminer S19 built using 5nm node from TSMC, which is critical for next-gen processors. very limited capacity, literally one factory the world can make them (TSMC fab18 in Tainan, Taiwan). though Intel and Samsung have some slightly less advanced factories in production now, and are working on upgrades. they're a year or two behind.
capitalism is really fucking wild, there is no reason why sand melting couldn't be done in dozens of countries. all the machines to actually do the most advanced lithography come from a single Dutch vendor (ASML). the main hold up is the intellectual property they own. there is no practical reason for it, plenty of countries have the infrastructure to make the equipment ASML makes, if they had the IP.
what we really need is for governments to ban proof-of-work outright. only then is it worth even thinking about the benefits and drawbacks of decentralized "currency". as long as they are destroying the planet and high-performance computing supply chains, they are overwhelmingly bad.
i personally think it's bad versus a central banking system, because there is no possibility for democratic control by the public with crypto, only control by people who own the currency. that's an incompatibility with any socialist or left-wing philosophy that is baked into the very function of the blockchain. that is, unless you have a blockchain controlled by the central bank itself, you could have a "digital yuan" for example that works on a blockchain but is controlled by PBC. or a "digital USD" controlled by the federal reserve, etc. but that defeats the benefits of a decentralized cryptocurrency. but also worth noting, crypto is mostly worthless if you can't exchange it for actual currency. which is a thing that can be regulated. it's only worth trading because it acts and a medium of exchange between traditional currencies and interfaces with them through exchanges like coinbase (which is why its IPO was considered a big deal). unless you can start paying your taxes or settling judgements directly in bitcoins, there is no intrinsic demand for it the way there will always be with fiat currencies, and it will always rely on exchange with fiat currencies to be worth anything.
having said all that, blockchain makes crypto and particularly bitcoin is still useful as a decentralized payment processor. fees are dramatically less expensive than wire transfers or visa/amex or debit card systems. and they bypass international delays or restrictions (which can be good or bad depending). crypto fees are related to the actual computing cost of processing the transaction and not arbitrarily set by a for-profit company. so if you want to buy products from china you can buy them bitcoin. i used bitcoin for a while pre-covid to order generic antidepressants (not a euphemism, legal drugs -- mirtazapine & selegiline) from a pharmacy in china because i had no insurance and it was easier and cheaper to just order them that way than to pay a US doctor and US pharmacy. i won't say it "saved my life" necessarily (it might have), but it certainly created a very real material benefit for me personally.
gold actually has critical scientific and industrial uses, so it does have some actual inherent value. though it's not usually traded based on that value.
gold mining is of course dirty and energy intensive. but bitcoin is a bottomless pit for high-performance silicone, which is a pretty important resource for
gamersjust about everything in the modern economy that uses a server or data somewhere.that is not true for crypto in general, but bitcoin, ethereum, and other coins based on proof-of-work blockchains. there are other kinds of blockchains and cryptocurrencies that avoid those problems. ripple's XRP is an example that's pretty hot right now.
you really have to understand how much of a bottomless pit proof-of-work is, though. the more computing resources (and thus energy) you throw at it, the more it takes to mine a single coin. whether the bitcoin network consists of (a) millions of mining cards using jiggawatts of power or (b) one old laptop with a dead fan, the same number of coins are minted each day. as you add more computational resources, the harder the math problems become to solve. so you can never gain an absolute advantage, only a relative one against other miners. it's a zero-sum game. thus you always have to upgrade to the most advanced, fastest, most efficient silicone as soon as it becomes available, and continuously expand the size of your operation, using more power. there is no satiating the beast.
so the more the value of the coins goes up, the more silicon will cost as miners must always consume the best stuff to stay competitive. and that has a direct effect on basically every product in the economy, since virtually every product relies on computation resources somewhere in the supply chain. even if it's just "the cloud" those cloud resources run on servers that compete with bitcoin for silicon wafers. and computational products themselves become either unavailable or sold by scalpers at 300%+ their normal prices. you can add more manufacturing capacity, but it won't help anything. the only way they would slow down buying silicone is when either the bitcoin prices stop going up, or energy prices become the limiting factor, as they are using so much they drive up the local rates.
there is nothing at all stopping bitcoin from moving to proof-of-stake or some other system not based on burning energy to solve pointless math problems, it would just require consensus on the network. it is expected ethereum will move to proof-of-stake at some point. ethereum is behind current GPU shortages, while bitcoin mostly now runs on custom-made ASIC's, meaning it's not directly competing in the market with GPU's or CPU's, but certainly it is still competing for capacity at one of the handful of fabrication facilities that can create nanometer-scale transistors.
e.g. a high-end bitcoin mining machine is the Antminer S19 built using 5nm node from TSMC, which is critical for next-gen processors. very limited capacity, literally one factory the world can make them (TSMC fab18 in Tainan, Taiwan). though Intel and Samsung have some slightly less advanced factories in production now, and are working on upgrades. they're a year or two behind.
capitalism is really fucking wild, there is no reason why sand melting couldn't be done in dozens of countries. all the machines to actually do the most advanced lithography come from a single Dutch vendor (ASML). the main hold up is the intellectual property they own. there is no practical reason for it, plenty of countries have the infrastructure to make the equipment ASML makes, if they had the IP.
what we really need is for governments to ban proof-of-work outright. only then is it worth even thinking about the benefits and drawbacks of decentralized "currency". as long as they are destroying the planet and high-performance computing supply chains, they are overwhelmingly bad.
i personally think it's bad versus a central banking system, because there is no possibility for democratic control by the public with crypto, only control by people who own the currency. that's an incompatibility with any socialist or left-wing philosophy that is baked into the very function of the blockchain. that is, unless you have a blockchain controlled by the central bank itself, you could have a "digital yuan" for example that works on a blockchain but is controlled by PBC. or a "digital USD" controlled by the federal reserve, etc. but that defeats the benefits of a decentralized cryptocurrency. but also worth noting, crypto is mostly worthless if you can't exchange it for actual currency. which is a thing that can be regulated. it's only worth trading because it acts and a medium of exchange between traditional currencies and interfaces with them through exchanges like coinbase (which is why its IPO was considered a big deal). unless you can start paying your taxes or settling judgements directly in bitcoins, there is no intrinsic demand for it the way there will always be with fiat currencies, and it will always rely on exchange with fiat currencies to be worth anything.
having said all that, blockchain makes crypto and particularly bitcoin is still useful as a decentralized payment processor. fees are dramatically less expensive than wire transfers or visa/amex or debit card systems. and they bypass international delays or restrictions (which can be good or bad depending). crypto fees are related to the actual computing cost of processing the transaction and not arbitrarily set by a for-profit company. so if you want to buy products from china you can buy them bitcoin. i used bitcoin for a while pre-covid to order generic antidepressants (not a euphemism, legal drugs -- mirtazapine & selegiline) from a pharmacy in china because i had no insurance and it was easier and cheaper to just order them that way than to pay a US doctor and US pharmacy. i won't say it "saved my life" necessarily (it might have), but it certainly created a very real material benefit for me personally.