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Comment by guiomie | Hacker News Reader

When I read a message like this, I conclude that bitcoin has another 10x to go since gold has a 10 trillion market cap. (Preemptively I'm going to say that gold market cap has almost nothing to do with its usage as a commodity, google it)

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This seems to be flat out false. According to this 78% of gold globally is used in jewelry. Some other portion is used in electronics of industry.

https://goldprice.com/project/facts-about-gold/

There’s no such reserve value for Bitcoin. You can’t look at it or hold it or do anything with it other than as a currency.

I’ve seen widely varying stats estimating gold’s jewelry share but all of them are large.

Gold isn't used in jewelry because it's particularly suitable for jewelry. It isn't used because it's pretty, or shiny, or smooth against the skin. It's used because it's expensive. So it's fair to say that jewelry is very much tied to store of value and speculation.

Jewelry is incredibly expensive compared to the value of the gold in it. But only when you buy it, not when you sell it.

That's a moot point, Gold actual usage has no relation with its usage as a store of value. It's used as a store of value because it's shiny and people associates it with "value".

Think: why are diamonds so expensive?

Maybe I don’t follow you but if more than half of gold use is jewelry then it seems the use has a lot to do with it’s value. People trade gold on top of that but it’s linked to use. If jewelry demand dropped 98% it would surely affect the price of gold.

> half of gold use is jewelry

uh, no that's not true. I bet there's more bitcoin being used to buy drugs than gold being used in jewelry

And the GDP of New Zealand will go up 100x because the USA has a $21T GDP. (Preemtively I’m going to say that US’s market cap has almost nothing to do with its sheep population, google it.)

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