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Advantages of gold over bitcoin: If there's a total internet && computer && electricity apocalypse, a physical barter exchange with gold is more trustless than

Advantages of gold over bitcoin: If there's a total internet && computer && electricity apocalypse, a physical barter exchange with gold is more trustless than bitcoin. You can still transact bitcoin but there's trust involved. Advantages of Bitcoin over gold: No trusted third party (If you're moving sizable sums of gold, you're doing it with a trusted third party[TTP)) 99.99226%[1] transaction uptime (Your TTP keep business hours) No countries win the gold-geography lottery (Your country that has no gold reserves can still accumulate) Instantly assay the value (gold takes time) You can use latent renewable energy to mine bitcoin (the way that miners remain profitable is by using cheap hydro power that would be wasted if not consumed) No need to blow up mountains to sift for gold. Bitcoin is programmable value (People in places without functioning judicial/commercial systems can create contracts with each other) You cannot practically bring more bitcoin to market if the price increases (The price of gold dictates which gold fields are profitable to produce) Most importantly, it separates money that citizens use and the onus of financial obligations that the oligopoly (Banker's bailout 2008) and political class (Endless war) place on citizens. [1]http://bitcoinuptime.com/ http://bitcoinuptime.com/

Fomite 8y ago
I've always thought the Bitcoin use-case (admittedly from a subset of Bitcoin users) of "Complete collapse in the banking system" but somehow the internet still works without issue was...somewhat tenuous.
- sparkie 8y ago
  It's not a collapse of all banking systems, but the fiat money system which is dictated by central banks (which are mostly private entities, not government bodies). It means when governments want to borrow more money, their lenders actually need to have the liquidity available and can't just magic it out of thin air.
mvindahl 8y ago
Further advantages of gold over bitcoin: 1) Has been used for millennia. Bitcoin was invented ten years ago. 2) Accepted as valuable by most of human population. Bitcoin mostly as valuable within internet echo bubbles. 3) Although price fluctuates, it's more stable than that of bitcoin, thus better suited as store of value. 4) Has applications for industrial uses or for jewelry, guaranteeing that your gold retains at least a base value. Same cannot be said of prime number data structures. 5) Doesn't corrode and doesn't depend upon hardware or storage media to be working. I'm not saying that people should hoard gold, just that bitcoin is a pretty poor substitute. And, BTW: > No countries win the gold-geography lottery (Your country that has no gold reserves can still accumulate) Pop quiz: the population of Germany is roughly on par with the population of The Democratic Republic of Congo. Do the citizens of the two countries currently hold the same amount of bitcoin? If not, how come?
- VMG 8y ago
  > 5) Doesn't corrode and doesn't depend upon hardware or storage media to be working. Bitcoin corrodes? You can encode your private keys in Gold if you want to.
  - mvindahl 8y ago
    Well, the whole thing is computer data, stored on media. Already these days it's hard to find hardware to read the 5.25" floppy disks that I stored my code on in the late 1980s, and that's just three decades. Preserving digital data is a continuous effort. And yeah, you can encode your private keys in gold, and I kind of think that everyone should do that, to keep future archaeologists puzzled :-P
    - roenxi 8y ago
      If your house burns down, there is a reasonable chance of recovering, eg, gold slag. Not so much chance of recovering the markings that were on that gold before. It is difficult to compare the durability of gold and bitcoin. It does seem plausible, given the length of time we've been using it, that gold's value is completely related to its intrinsic properties and difficulty of mining. Bitcoin can't possibly be valued on its intrinsic properties, because I can fork the entire technical edifice, start a new blockchain called it Bitcoin+1, and the fork will have no value vs the original.
      - sparkie 8y ago
        There are products like Cryptosteel, which are designed specifically to be able to survive a typical house fire and a variety of other disasters. Combined with a passphrase, it also means your money can't be stolen if your house is burgled. Gold would be a sitting duck in this case.
      - ric2b 8y ago
        You're severely underestimating how much it takes to melt gold. I'd be surprised if you could do it with a burning house.
y4mi 8y ago
> No countries win the gold-geography lottery (Your country that has no gold reserves can still accumulate) > You can use latent renewable energy to mine bitcoin (the way that miners remain profitable is by using cheap hydro power that would be wasted if not consumed) No need to blow up mountains to sift for gold. ... you do realize that this is a contradiction, right? i mean yeah, its technically no longer a literal gold mine, but renewable energy sources where you can place power plants such as your mentioned hydro power aren't that abundant.
nfoz 8y ago
> No trusted third party (If you're moving sizable sums of gold, you're doing it with a trusted third party[TTP)) If you're using a computer, its hardware and software stack consist of one or more trusted third parties. Although it's an interesting thought-experiment to compare the risks!
jacobush 8y ago
There is no latent energy. There is only potential. That energy could have been used to split water, build a city or electrified train near the hydro plant, etc, etc. Moreover, you fail to account for human nature. I'd be shocked if bribes have not already passed hands, to allow for use of electricity for bitcoin mining near hydro power in remote areas. Bitcoin as of now, is by volume a mechanism for letting privileged people in China shift their wealth (including Face) from resources in China to somewhere outside of China, with Bitcoin as a proxy. All the while ignoring externalities. All the other rosy bitcoin has potential and so on, may be true, but please, look at what it is right now and say with a straight face that it's great. What is it, 90% of hash rate in China? Edit: the bitcoin block reward is irrelevant. When more value is being parked in bitcoin, the transaction fees are going to go up to match the lost rewards. And people will pay.

Fomite 8y ago

I've always thought the Bitcoin use-case (admittedly from a subset of Bitcoin users) of "Complete collapse in the banking system" but somehow the internet still works without issue was...somewhat tenuous.

sparkie 8y ago
It's not a collapse of all banking systems, but the fiat money system which is dictated by central banks (which are mostly private entities, not government bodies). It means when governments want to borrow more money, their lenders actually need to have the liquidity available and can't just magic it out of thin air.

mvindahl 8y ago

Further advantages of gold over bitcoin: 1) Has been used for millennia. Bitcoin was invented ten years ago. 2) Accepted as valuable by most of human population. Bitcoin mostly as valuable within internet echo bubbles. 3) Although price fluctuates, it's more stable than that of bitcoin, thus better suited as store of value. 4) Has applications for industrial uses or for jewelry, guaranteeing that your gold retains at least a base value. Same cannot be said of prime number data structures. 5) Doesn't corrode and doesn't depend upon hardware or storage media to be working. I'm not saying that people should hoard gold, just that bitcoin is a pretty poor substitute. And, BTW: > No countries win the gold-geography lottery (Your country that has no gold reserves can still accumulate) Pop quiz: the population of Germany is roughly on par with the population of The Democratic Republic of Congo. Do the citizens of the two countries currently hold the same amount of bitcoin? If not, how come?

VMG 8y ago
> 5) Doesn't corrode and doesn't depend upon hardware or storage media to be working. Bitcoin corrodes? You can encode your private keys in Gold if you want to.
- mvindahl 8y ago
  Well, the whole thing is computer data, stored on media. Already these days it's hard to find hardware to read the 5.25" floppy disks that I stored my code on in the late 1980s, and that's just three decades. Preserving digital data is a continuous effort. And yeah, you can encode your private keys in gold, and I kind of think that everyone should do that, to keep future archaeologists puzzled :-P
  - roenxi 8y ago
    If your house burns down, there is a reasonable chance of recovering, eg, gold slag. Not so much chance of recovering the markings that were on that gold before. It is difficult to compare the durability of gold and bitcoin. It does seem plausible, given the length of time we've been using it, that gold's value is completely related to its intrinsic properties and difficulty of mining. Bitcoin can't possibly be valued on its intrinsic properties, because I can fork the entire technical edifice, start a new blockchain called it Bitcoin+1, and the fork will have no value vs the original.
    - sparkie 8y ago
      There are products like Cryptosteel, which are designed specifically to be able to survive a typical house fire and a variety of other disasters. Combined with a passphrase, it also means your money can't be stolen if your house is burgled. Gold would be a sitting duck in this case.
    - ric2b 8y ago
      You're severely underestimating how much it takes to melt gold. I'd be surprised if you could do it with a burning house.

y4mi 8y ago

> No countries win the gold-geography lottery (Your country that has no gold reserves can still accumulate) > You can use latent renewable energy to mine bitcoin (the way that miners remain profitable is by using cheap hydro power that would be wasted if not consumed) No need to blow up mountains to sift for gold. ... you do realize that this is a contradiction, right? i mean yeah, its technically no longer a literal gold mine, but renewable energy sources where you can place power plants such as your mentioned hydro power aren't that abundant.

nfoz 8y ago

> No trusted third party (If you're moving sizable sums of gold, you're doing it with a trusted third party[TTP)) If you're using a computer, its hardware and software stack consist of one or more trusted third parties. Although it's an interesting thought-experiment to compare the risks!

jacobush 8y ago

There is no latent energy. There is only potential. That energy could have been used to split water, build a city or electrified train near the hydro plant, etc, etc. Moreover, you fail to account for human nature. I'd be shocked if bribes have not already passed hands, to allow for use of electricity for bitcoin mining near hydro power in remote areas. Bitcoin as of now, is by volume a mechanism for letting privileged people in China shift their wealth (including Face) from resources in China to somewhere outside of China, with Bitcoin as a proxy. All the while ignoring externalities. All the other rosy bitcoin has potential and so on, may be true, but please, look at what it is right now and say with a straight face that it's great. What is it, 90% of hash rate in China? Edit: the bitcoin block reward is irrelevant. When more value is being parked in bitcoin, the transaction fees are going to go up to match the lost rewards. And people will pay.