Crypto?

Crypto-currency. There's few people who are on the internet who haven't at least heard of Bitcoin at this point I would imagine.

I won't discuss its merits or its future but I am seeing many stories emerging on news feeds I follow on various platforms and regardless of the message they're attempting to convey one thing does catch my attention.

Bitcoin is frequently depicted as a physical coin when it really has no physical or material form aside from the hardware performing the bookkeeping of it's blockchain.

I think that it's interesting that the physical form the coin is portrayed in (and it applies to Ethereum and other crypto currencies also) is almost always a yellow metallic coin with a slashed "B" or the pyramid etc.

Like the late Professor Julius Sumner Miller woud say - "Why  is it so??"

Why not just a blue coloured token or a red one for example?

It seems it's attempting to attain properties by association that simply do not exist in reality. In many ways it is superior to any physical form of currency and yet this depiction seems to desire a link to the oldest form of money - famously called the "barbarous relic" by Keynes.

I believe Bitcoin was at some point before it rocketed in value sold in a physical form like this but it was simply the encryption keys used contained on the coin which was made of plastic or a base metal.

Nevertheless it's likely the image that pops into most people's heads when Bitcoin is mentioned however inaccurate and cheesy it is (to my way of thinking in any case).