Those electronics may be rendered worthless by some new technology or what have you the next day. Value is an abstract concept.
Well today that is a bad analogy but before electronics it makes more sense to talk about gold.
Oooo, diamonds might be a good analogy … those things are worthless!
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Indeed it is, but unlike some other abstractions such as those of mathematics, they are not absolute in meaning or extent. Value and values (what is the worth of things, and what things are worthy) are highly cultural things, which means they are subject to the vagaries of fashion, hype, mass hysteria and all other aspects of large scale group dynamics. Valuation is a subjective judgement, but not made by a single subject. It is subjective to the group who define themselves by agreeing to the value of a thing. In this sense monetary value, religious value or national value are all of a kind, shared fictions that derive their reality from the fact that they are believed in by large numbers.
TLDR: Like beauty, the value of a thing is purely in the eye of the beholder. It is a form of group-think.
To me, the crypto currencies read like cults. They are too new, their proponents too enthusiastic for me to ascribe the same gravitas to their value as I do to the money our banks and states work with. Like cults (and ponzi schemes!) tend to do, the cryptocoin system will most likely collapse in on itself.
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Good for industrial use, but the value isn’t inflated.
I do like the story of how diamonds become so overvalued - lots of lessons in that one!
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I’m referring specifically to the delusional fantasies that in some future where paper currency collapses and becomes worthless suddenly those with hoards of gold will be fine because it has “real” value.
In such a dystopian event, there is no way that you will see electronics manufacturers continuing on as normal, or jewelry makers for that matter. What will people be using to purchase their products?
In other words, the gold will also be something that was of value from before, just like the paper money was.
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Raw power (as in, I can fight harder than you, so you do my bidding) is very exhausting to trade in. If I have to fight the one who is handy with the fishing rod for his fish every time I want one, or have to have present just the thing he wants or needs, there’s not much chance we can trade often. So he’ll have to trust/fear/indulge me with his fish.
Putting that trust/fear in a quantifiable representation is a very logical thing to. Kauri shells, bits of gold, whatever. It helps if the thing that represents power is rare, so you can’t just pick up a bunch of pinecones and tell every tradesman in the village you’re the richest and they should give you all their things. Ergo, gold. Or some very arcane digital thing. Because why not.
But for it to work it has to be backed by power. The power to prduce, but also regulating power, to prevent devaluation and such. In a very real sense the state, with it’s police and army is what makes money tick. This is something the bitcoins lack. They are backed only by the belief people have in their value. Which is very thin, compared to the US dollar and her CVBG’s.
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It pretty much is, it’ll be fun when it all collapses especially as everything is build on the scheme of USDT.
I mean it will, but what’s the joke - ‘Economists Have Predicted Nine Out Of The Last Five Recessions?’ It could go up x10 in the next 5 years or crash tomorrow. The new economics of bitcoin, WSB etc is essentially gambling. There’s no fundamentals, it’s basically a casino for those too embarrassed to say they are just using chance. The people that run the casino’s do ok, and we hear a lot about the winners, but it’s a net loss in the end.
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But they are used in a lot of cutting tools, etc.
Ooh, now that’s an interesting thing to think about, though. I mean, there’s an economy to bitcoin too, which creates a few jobs. On the other hand, it’s a massive redistribution scheme that works mostly in favor of those that don’t need that money desperately and have distributed their risk over lots of other stuff and bottom up distribution is not good for the economy in general. I guess there’s enough material for an upcoming generation of economy PhDs.
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It certainly uses a lot of electricity, so in a macro sense I don’t feel it’s been a great thing from an environmental perspective, what with those externalities never costed. Plus when you add in all the extra heat and stress generated from the heads of angry gamers not able to buy a new GPU, that can’t be good. 
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@fearlessfrog you are right on that Fearless. Bitcoin just angers me because it’s a giant ponzi casino that polutes the world in massive substances.
It will probably crash when the Chinese have enough or when regulators come down hard on people trading in it.
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While were at big oofs, with that argument in mind, we should never have started producing cars, TVs, heck, growing the cotton for our pants and dying them pollutes all the surface water in Asia.
We should invest in locally grown hemp. I hear it makes great pants.
Physical goods, or even the entire economic system at the same level as bitcoin mining power use is a bit of a reductio ad absurdum, but yeah, the system isn’t great at putting the true price of things on the sticker.
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Just a crazy get rich scheme, but,
If I wanted to produce bitcoins that required a lot of GPUs, I might develop a flightsim that required a high powered GPU to play. Get a lot of folks to play it. Insert code that when playing does the blockchain thing. Entice users to request updates that when downloaded also upload blockchain results.
Naw, that’s too crazy
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You’d waste much of the available mining power rendering the simulator! 
Perhaps sneak it onto Minecraft?
There the ideal name, and more players!
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Finally my hours put into Manic Miner come to fruition!
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I still think it’s a good idea. Maybe we can pull a GameStop ploy!
I frightened myself with the gamestop stuff.
I was up…then I was down…then I went up…then I nearly lost the lot. Ended up a few pence down when I sold and count myself very lucky.