<story><title>Ending Bitcoin Support</title><url>https://stripe.com/blog/ending-bitcoin-support</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>marshray</author><text>Very little though. If the demand for gold were merely industrial it would not need to be mined in such quantities as it has throughout history. I would put jewelry in the &amp;#x27;sentimental&amp;#x27; category as well.&lt;p&gt;Not only is Bitcoin purely sentimental, it represents has huge costs in the form of raw energy.&lt;p&gt;Bitcoin&amp;#x27;s only claim to value is that it is an artifact of an act of ritual sacrifice. One might imagine a precedent in some system of tokens issued by some ancient priesthood.</text></item><item><author>0xcafecafe</author><text>Gold as a metal has an inherent value though. If not only for jewelry, it also has important uses in electronics. The value associated with bitcoin seems purely sentimental.</text></item><item><author>nulagrithom</author><text>&amp;gt; What future does an asset have if people don&amp;#x27;t actually buy stuff with it?&lt;p&gt;I look at it (maybe naively) like a solid gold bar. You&amp;#x27;re not going to walk in to a convenience store and pay with a bar of solid gold; you might flee the country with one though.&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, I totally agree with your read on the post. Linking the pull request[0] was especially backhanded. It feels like there&amp;#x27;s some underlying frustration there that was expounded upon using good references and kind words.&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;bitcoin-dot-org&amp;#x2F;bitcoin.org&amp;#x2F;pull&amp;#x2F;2010&amp;#x2F;files&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;bitcoin-dot-org&amp;#x2F;bitcoin.org&amp;#x2F;pull&amp;#x2F;2010&amp;#x2F;fil...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>montrose</author><text>This reads a bit like the sort of things people say when breaking up so as not to upset the other person too much. You&amp;#x27;re a great person, but you&amp;#x27;re just more of an asset than a medium of exchange, and what I need in my life right now is a medium of exchange.&lt;p&gt;What future does an asset have if people don&amp;#x27;t actually buy stuff with it? That is not a purely rhetorical question; cryptocurrencies change things a lot. But this news is worrying.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>CPLX</author><text>Gold has &amp;quot;real&amp;quot; demand though in jewelry. It&amp;#x27;s distributed and longstanding and it has utility. People wear it and use it in real life and value it and wish to keep it in order to look at it and possess it.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s as tangible as anything else. Nobody would say that there&amp;#x27;s no demand for musical instruments, or baseballs, because they are optional parts of life that aren&amp;#x27;t food or shelter.&lt;p&gt;Gold has intrinsic value in part because people seem to intrinsically like it for what it actually is, not just it&amp;#x27;s utility in exchange. That&amp;#x27;s fundamentally different.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ending Bitcoin Support</title><url>https://stripe.com/blog/ending-bitcoin-support</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>marshray</author><text>Very little though. If the demand for gold were merely industrial it would not need to be mined in such quantities as it has throughout history. I would put jewelry in the &amp;#x27;sentimental&amp;#x27; category as well.&lt;p&gt;Not only is Bitcoin purely sentimental, it represents has huge costs in the form of raw energy.&lt;p&gt;Bitcoin&amp;#x27;s only claim to value is that it is an artifact of an act of ritual sacrifice. One might imagine a precedent in some system of tokens issued by some ancient priesthood.</text></item><item><author>0xcafecafe</author><text>Gold as a metal has an inherent value though. If not only for jewelry, it also has important uses in electronics. The value associated with bitcoin seems purely sentimental.</text></item><item><author>nulagrithom</author><text>&amp;gt; What future does an asset have if people don&amp;#x27;t actually buy stuff with it?&lt;p&gt;I look at it (maybe naively) like a solid gold bar. You&amp;#x27;re not going to walk in to a convenience store and pay with a bar of solid gold; you might flee the country with one though.&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, I totally agree with your read on the post. Linking the pull request[0] was especially backhanded. It feels like there&amp;#x27;s some underlying frustration there that was expounded upon using good references and kind words.&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;bitcoin-dot-org&amp;#x2F;bitcoin.org&amp;#x2F;pull&amp;#x2F;2010&amp;#x2F;files&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;bitcoin-dot-org&amp;#x2F;bitcoin.org&amp;#x2F;pull&amp;#x2F;2010&amp;#x2F;fil...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>montrose</author><text>This reads a bit like the sort of things people say when breaking up so as not to upset the other person too much. You&amp;#x27;re a great person, but you&amp;#x27;re just more of an asset than a medium of exchange, and what I need in my life right now is a medium of exchange.&lt;p&gt;What future does an asset have if people don&amp;#x27;t actually buy stuff with it? That is not a purely rhetorical question; cryptocurrencies change things a lot. But this news is worrying.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>emodendroket</author><text>&amp;gt; Not only is Bitcoin purely sentimental, it represents has huge costs in the form of raw energy.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Bitcoin&amp;#x27;s only claim to value is that it is an artifact of an act of ritual sacrifice. One might imagine a precedent in some system of tokens issued by some ancient priesthood.&lt;p&gt;I mean, in this respect the analogy to gold is not an awful fit.</text></comment>