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Sounds to me like he is just rambling a bit there at the end. Gold actually does have some intrinsic value—it's useful. It's stable, nonreactive, resistant to

Sounds to me like he is just rambling a bit there at the end. Gold actually does have some intrinsic value—it's useful. It's stable, nonreactive, resistant to corrosion and conducts electricity. It's been used as a value store since antiquity above others particularly because it is stable and noncorrosive. The conducive properties are just an added benefit we now have a use for. A gold coin from a hundred years ago is still a gold coin. A Bitcoin from today may not be a Bitcoin as we know it a few years from now. And if it is, it may be difficult to transact. Bitcoin, on the other hand, really has no use. There was this idea that it might be used to speed up transactions but as we saw leading up to the fork, that's not guaranteed. Anyone with enough capacity can basically seize control of the currency, so it's anything but stable. I think things like Ripple have a far higher value proposition than Bitcoin today—more of what Bitcoin once was.

graeme 9y ago
Botle was talking about return, not store of value. Gold holds value well, but its intrinsic value doesn’t really grow over time.
stale2002 9y ago
Well, the use case for Bitcoin is decentralized, censorship resistant, electronic transactions. Ripple is run using a different consensus algorithm, and is effectively managed by a central authority. The point of Bitcoin has very little to do with speeding up transactions, all though this isn't a negative. The point is sending transactions that are very difficult to censor. And yes, it does a very good job of this as there are a whole lot of transactions that governments would love to censor, but they AREN'T being censored, right now.
epistasis 9y ago
I doubt there's any room for gold in a Bogleheads' retirement portfolio. Or any other commodity. Or any individual stock.
AndrewBissell 9y ago
> Anyone with enough capacity can basically seize control of the currency, so it's anything but stable. The amount of resources required to execute this attack is moving higher at a rapid pace. Also, a 51% attack can gum up new transactions and potentially double spend, at least until people realize the attack is happening and stop signing new transactions. It can't rewrite blocks from the distant past to send everyone's coins to the attacker's address.
rifung 9y ago
> Sounds to me like he is just rambling a bit there at the end. Gold actually does have some intrinsic value—it's useful Actually I think you are misunderstanding him? He isn't saying that gold doesn't have intrinsic value; he's saying it doesn't inherently generate more value.

graeme 9y ago

Botle was talking about return, not store of value. Gold holds value well, but its intrinsic value doesn’t really grow over time.

stale2002 9y ago

Well, the use case for Bitcoin is decentralized, censorship resistant, electronic transactions. Ripple is run using a different consensus algorithm, and is effectively managed by a central authority. The point of Bitcoin has very little to do with speeding up transactions, all though this isn't a negative. The point is sending transactions that are very difficult to censor. And yes, it does a very good job of this as there are a whole lot of transactions that governments would love to censor, but they AREN'T being censored, right now.

epistasis 9y ago

I doubt there's any room for gold in a Bogleheads' retirement portfolio. Or any other commodity. Or any individual stock.

AndrewBissell 9y ago

> Anyone with enough capacity can basically seize control of the currency, so it's anything but stable. The amount of resources required to execute this attack is moving higher at a rapid pace. Also, a 51% attack can gum up new transactions and potentially double spend, at least until people realize the attack is happening and stop signing new transactions. It can't rewrite blocks from the distant past to send everyone's coins to the attacker's address.

rifung 9y ago

> Sounds to me like he is just rambling a bit there at the end. Gold actually does have some intrinsic value—it's useful Actually I think you are misunderstanding him? He isn't saying that gold doesn't have intrinsic value; he's saying it doesn't inherently generate more value.