The foundational fallacy is that people try to explain money in physical terms when it is purely a sociological phenomenon.

Gold is not valuable because it is durable, fungible, portable, and scarce; it is valuable because of the **self-sustaining tradition** around it.

Its properties enable this, but don't guarantee it.

The same applies to Bitcoin. It’s why you can't copy Bitcoin's value by forkingthe blockchain and adding extra features - the shared socially-reinforcing belief of billions of people is impossible to replicate.

Similarly, if a new metal better than gold was found - it wouldn't inherit all its value.

- an excerpt from the 2-minute version of It's Not About The Technology, It's About The Money (2016) https://2minutebitcoin.org/blog/bitcoin-is-about-the-money-not-the-blockchain-technology