Also funny.... Buyer buys BTC because he thinks somebody else thinks a string of numbers is worth a lot of money.
It is a hedge against the expansion of paper money. 75% of all dollars in circulation have been printed since 2009.
That's the perception, all right. Something should be a hedge against that... but a "string of numbers"?
Gold is manipulated by those who have unlimited amounts of paper money. Look at the failed breakout last week. Broke above a trendline from the peak and was sold.
You're pointing out the "price" of gold, not the "worth" of it. A genuine hedge will hold some value when the money collapses.... I suspect BTC won't do that, but we'll see. (Don't mind my "sour grapes". When I first heard of BTC it was because it had fallen from $1200 to $200, and I thought it was on it's way to the "dustbin of fad history". Even if I had the chance to buy for pennies, I prolly would have bought $1000 worth and sold it for "2 or 3 thou" and been patting myself on the back for being so clever. I have a friend who says he bought some for $.28, but laments he sold for $1.00.)
Precious metals have real uses and fundametal value. Nobody can print metals. Fiat money at least pays taxes and legally discharges debt. Cryptos are intrinsically worthless. The mere act of referring to them as coins/currency means you've been conned. Cryptos are wasteful and useless digital collectibles only there to speculate on the greater fool.
They have a value that can be transferred without the approval of a third party censor. Stripe have kicked the Presidents online store off their network. Wikileaks were kicked off visa and mastercard. So they have a value to them.
The way to trade precious metals, fiat money, cryptos or manipulated stocks are exactly the same; ie buy low, sell high, or sell high buy low.
There can and there is always a discussion, what is the value of the USD, of Tesla, of Gold, of silver, of Real Estates and so on ? And certainly all these products have their value. But what is the value of Bitcoin ? N O T H I N G You do not need that thing for anything legal ! Real currencys are backed up by the economy of the specific country. You need metals for production and so on Company intend and mostly have profit to share and a lot assets. Rela Estates you need to live in or to rent it to other people and son on. Certainly there can be big discussions what the value is ! That is also the reason because there are markets. But Bitcoin was established out of nothing. There is NO value behind. And some day it will be exactly back to that value.....
Until then lots of people will be financially independend, retire early and buy a lot of real estate from the profits they made from holding Bitcoin. But you probably won't since you already know that it's worthless...