Long, long ago, before the dawn of human evolution, humankind first came into contact with its second most dangerous discovery after fire: gold. But little did they know that this discovery would trigger the beginning of a new era, an era I’d like to call

“The Millennia Quest.”

An era where empires were born and destroyed, where civilizations flourished and others were wiped out, and where discoveries, innovations, and breakthroughs came to be.

Pure luck? Maybe, and maybe not.

This is a story of how gold, a simple lie, shaped our entire history.

“HOOooHoo shiny, shiny rock, mine mine.”

I assume this was what humankind’s first interaction with gold looked like.

The gold was pretty; however, its wielder had no idea what it was, nor what it would one day become.

Most mammals are territorial, and humans are no exception.

Others in the tribe noticed how tightly he clung to the gold. Curiosity soon turned into envy, and envy into a desire to possess it for themselves. Then came the fighting. When the dust settled and the bloodshed ended, one remained standing, proclaiming himself the victor—the strongest and most powerful among them.

Since gold was much harder to find at that time, anyone who had it was strong, because they fought to keep it. Strength and ownership became intertwined.

This, perhaps, was the beginning of hierarchy and why only pharaohs and later nobles came to only possess it.

Humans had discovered something profound about themselves: we are fiercely territorial creatures. At the time, the only truly valuable resources were goods and gold. Later, services would join that list, but the principle remained the same. Whoever controlled the scarce resources controlled the game.

Pirates chased it. Nations waged wars over it. Entire civilizations crossed oceans in search of it. The more gold one possessed, the more power one wielded.

What if a different rock had been chosen?

What if it wasn't a rock at all? What if it had been a newly discovered and extremely rare fruit?

Imagine if it had been a pineapple.

You'd probably be longing pineapples at 20x leverage right now, hoping a storm didn't wipe out the harvest.

Of course, that was unlikely to happen. Fruits rot. Most other metals aren't nearly as attractive and often corrode over time. Gold happened to be different.

But is that really enough to justify its extraordinary value?

Maybe, back then, it was. Perhaps it was simply so difficult to find that people collectively decided it was worth fighting for.

Who knows? We can only assume.

To summarize, gold became valuable because it was:

• Shiny and visually appealing

• Durable—it doesn't rot, rust, or easily decay

• Scarce and difficult to obtain

That's pretty much it.

And I almost forgot: gold also happened to possess the three characteristics that make for a good form of money.

• Store of value — it doesn't rot, rust, or disappear over time

• Medium of exchange — it can be traded for goods and services

• Unit of account — people could price things relative to it. For example, two cows might be worth one piece of gold or ten pieces of silver.

However, gold wasn't a perfect unit of account. Its value fluctuated, and carrying large amounts of it was inconvenient and risky. These limitations eventually led to the rise of paper money, which represented claims on gold and was far easier to transport.

In the end, gold established itself as humanity's money not because it was useful to eat, wear, or build with, but because it was beautiful, scarce, durable, and widely desired. It checked all the boxes people needed for trade.

If gold hadn't been beautiful, perhaps it never would have become so valuable despite its scarcity.

After all, a polar bear's fur is rare too.

Because Bitcoin was the first successful cryptocurrency and has a fixed supply of 21 million coins, many assume that this alone explains its value.

I disagree.

As mentioned earlier, scarcity alone does not make an asset valuable. There are millions of assets with limited supplies that nobody wants. A limited supply only matters if there is demand for the asset in the first place.

Bitcoin was the first solution to the problem of creating a decentralized digital payment system. It was revolutionary, but being first does not necessarily mean being the best.

At the time of writing, there are blockchains that are faster, more scalable, and in some cases more technologically advanced than Bitcoin, yet many of them have not achieved even a fraction of Bitcoin's valuation.

Bitcoin is scarce, and many consider it a store of value. However, these characteristics alone do not fully explain its multi-trillion-dollar market capitalization.

To me, Bitcoin's value resembles gold's value in one important way: perception.

Gold became valuable partly because people collectively decided it was valuable. Bitcoin appears to benefit from a similar phenomenon. It was the first cryptocurrency ever created, and over time that first-mover status became part of its identity, narrative, and perceived legitimacy.

In my opinion, Bitcoin's value is not derived solely from its technological properties. It is derived from the collective belief that those properties matter.

If we compare Bitcoin and gold purely as assets, gold arguably has advantages in several areas. It has thousands of years of history, universal recognition, physical existence, and industrial uses beyond its role as money.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, derives much of its value from a different source: social consensus.

In that sense, Bitcoin is not unlike a famous painting. The canvas and paint are not what make it valuable. Its value comes from the story attached to it, the reputation behind it, and the number of people who believe it deserves that value.

When enough people believe an asset is valuable, others often follow. As more participants enter the system, that belief becomes self-reinforcing. The crowd grows, confidence increases, and eventually the perceived value becomes real in economic terms because people are willing to exchange goods, services, and capital for it.

Perhaps that is the greatest lesson from both gold and Bitcoin.

Value is rarely an objective property of an asset. More often, it is a story that enough people agree to tell each other.