The shiny rocks can be turned into cutlery or jewelry, or used for making computer chips and circuit boards. They have intrinsic value.
The funny computer coins are rare, and as long as enough people think they have value, they do.
They can make shiny rocks by the millions now, so that’s a no go...............
Just buy tulips.
They are guaranteed to grow and grow in value forever.
As a rule of thumb, I suggest about 5 percent of one’s portfolio be in precious metals and jewels. I quickly follow this up by saying, you won’t get any argument from the misses if you have these fashioned into jewelry.
I’m investing in a rock polisher/tumbler so I can make my own shiny rocks
If you want an interesting read, the original (anonymous) thesis of bitcoin was that they were created as a statement about the worthlessness of fiat currency, except what we give it.
The proposition was that bitcoin was more valuable, in that; (1) it could be securely exchanged peer-to-peer over great distances, like cash and the transfer could not be easily prevented by middle-men (like banks or governments) (also like cash) and (2) was not subject to devaluation due to leftists going mad with a printing press.
It was never intended to be a “thing”, just proof of concept.
But became a “thing”.
How about computer generated artwork where you own the right to claim it as your own, but not necessarily the actual copyright and have no way to stop people from using it? There’s no limit to the profit on ugly monkey pictures!