In other assets you can manipulate price by doing big realestate trades in a region to move up the price.

Bitcoin has no purchasing power, only when it's converted to "real currency". Actually historically money has intrinsic value and currency was a substitute to it. That system worked, this doesn't. History shows this very clearly.

This text should come with notice, scarcity doesn't mean that it can only go up.

gold has multiple uses in electronics. If you want technology you need gold, also monetary aspect, minging costs, jewelry. But I agree it's more of a hold in vaults metal. Silver has more uses in real life, half of the supply is used industrially. Those real attributes gives the metal intrinsic value. Bitcoin has no such values, it's intrinsic value is 0. It's a collectible internet token.

@AnoE I wouldn't say that bitcoin is backed same way as commodities. One has real backing, other has no real backing. Idea doesn't make bitcoin special there are 10k different cryptos. The number of people invested is the point of this post, I am afraid that the money invested is already spent and gone.

@dave_thompson_085 yes but there was a point when those companies had worth, until they messed up and broke their balance sheets. Oil has value, people have to move. Also price has fluctuations. If there was no manipulation(example: oil cartel OPEC). Then the price would be more stable and up to the market situation. Also FIAT system messes with markets. So I still would argue for real assets. But this is off topic.

@LawnmowerMan They don't accept bitcoin, it gets converted. The store owner doesn't want bitcoin. But he doesn't care how you get your dollars.

I agree with everything here, but people assume that they put their money in somewhere, it's invested and it will grow. But the problem with bitcoin is that you put money in it and other people will spend it. So there is no money in it, just until other people are willing to pay more for it. Like if you buy commodities, you invest betting on that the value of the commodity goes up(supply shortages, demand increase or for what ever reason).

Bitcoin is not like every other asset, it's not real. Assets like company shares, real estate and commodities have value. Bitcoin has no value, it's virtual. These arguments seem very short sigted.

Gold has value of the metal and silver is even better example. That is money and has been for thousands of years. USD was a substitution for gold, then it had value in the money itself. Now it's just FIAT, so no value in there. The point would be that all of the profits from bitcoin are spent, so there is no fallback price. It can go to zero like FIAT.