I've felt strange every time I've seen Bitcoin images, and I wasn't sure why. Today it suddenly hit me.
Essentially every Bitcoin image portrays gold coins, often of large size or in large numbers. Symbols of wealth accumulated as a hoard.
But Bitcoin's main virtue is supposed to be as a medium of exchange: a better symbol would be a wallet or a checkbook. Or you could just use the B with the slashes the way we use $.
So why is it portrayed as gold coins? Because an image of something concrete gives idiots a way to believe in Bitcoins, which are just patterns of 0's and 1's. To invoke the speculative greed that revolves around the gold market. It's part of the marketing sucker game.
It repulses me the same way most advertising associates products with sex or wealth or beautiful people does. It repulses me because it's an attempt to exploit subconscious biases, rather than an honest attempt to sell the benefits of the product.
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Most of the stock images of Bitcoin are of a commercial replica coin from Causacius. They once sold hollow coins with public keys that could be associated with a bit of BTC.
Of course, the broader similarity between gold (bugs) and Bitcoin is not coinidental.
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