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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 populati

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.
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xtracto 8y ago
> 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. This is really interesting. Gold has physical uses for constructs that were developed during the industrial revolution. And as you say are well tested. Ethereum or BCH, have information uses, for constructs that either have been developed in the last 20 years, or are being developed in this "information revolution" era. I think we are about 20 years early to really see if a thing with physical properties will actually be more valuable than something with "informatic" properties. My bet is that the latter will win, given that materials sit on a lower level chain of complexity than information management.
DINKDINK 8y ago
>Although price fluctuates, it's more stable than that of bitcoin, thus better suited as store of value. Price fluctuations are not what you care about with a store of value. What you care about is the elasticity of supply with respect to price. If the market price of gold increases, the production of it will increase (though to a lesser degree of other commodities). Bitcoin's supply curve is programmed with time as the only input. This means that no matter the change in price, supply cannot increase. This is a coup de grâce against every other existing 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. You don't want a store of value to have a myriad of other uses because those uses influence the price of the store of value. Say that 'Beautanium' becomes a more popular substance use for jewelry. Now Gold loses value. The only metric you care about in a store of value is the change in supply vs the available supply. This is Bitcoin's killer app, This is why it has value.
- mvindahl 8y ago
  > If the market price of gold increases, the production of it will increase (though to a lesser degree of other commodities). Yet the total amount of gold on this planet is finite, and as the millennia have passed, it has become increasingly expensive to dig it out of the ground. These are the same properties that people laud in bitcoin. > Bitcoin's supply curve is programmed with time as the only input As far as I am informed, bitcoin mining farms also tend to be connected to the power grid. May be just to keep the soft drink vending machine running. Dunno. > This is a coup de grâce against every other existing store of value. Limited supply is by no means unique to bitcoin. Gold and real estate share the same properties.
  - DINKDINK 8y ago
    >the total amount of gold on this planet is finite You confuse yourself with two qualities: Scarcity and Controlled Supply. The two are not the same. >> Bitcoin's supply curve is programmed with time as the only input >As far as I am informed, bitcoin mining farms also tend to be connected to the power grid. The electric grid has no influence on the supply curve of Bitcoin. Do you accept the fact that time is the only input for the supply function? It does not matter if there is one miner producing bitcoin or if bitcoin's price is $1 or $1MM dollars the same amount of bitcoins are produced. >Limited supply is by no means unique to bitcoin. Again seems like you completely misunderstand the difference between scarcity (limited supply) and controlled supply. There's a finite amount of water on the planet (because there's a finite amount of hydrogen and oxygen on Earth) too, does that mean water would make for good money? No because water is easily synthesized from other elements. It has a very multivariable supply function.

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.
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xtracto 8y ago

> 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. This is really interesting. Gold has physical uses for constructs that were developed during the industrial revolution. And as you say are well tested. Ethereum or BCH, have information uses, for constructs that either have been developed in the last 20 years, or are being developed in this "information revolution" era. I think we are about 20 years early to really see if a thing with physical properties will actually be more valuable than something with "informatic" properties. My bet is that the latter will win, given that materials sit on a lower level chain of complexity than information management.

DINKDINK 8y ago

>Although price fluctuates, it's more stable than that of bitcoin, thus better suited as store of value. Price fluctuations are not what you care about with a store of value. What you care about is the elasticity of supply with respect to price. If the market price of gold increases, the production of it will increase (though to a lesser degree of other commodities). Bitcoin's supply curve is programmed with time as the only input. This means that no matter the change in price, supply cannot increase. This is a coup de grâce against every other existing 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. You don't want a store of value to have a myriad of other uses because those uses influence the price of the store of value. Say that 'Beautanium' becomes a more popular substance use for jewelry. Now Gold loses value. The only metric you care about in a store of value is the change in supply vs the available supply. This is Bitcoin's killer app, This is why it has value.

mvindahl 8y ago
> If the market price of gold increases, the production of it will increase (though to a lesser degree of other commodities). Yet the total amount of gold on this planet is finite, and as the millennia have passed, it has become increasingly expensive to dig it out of the ground. These are the same properties that people laud in bitcoin. > Bitcoin's supply curve is programmed with time as the only input As far as I am informed, bitcoin mining farms also tend to be connected to the power grid. May be just to keep the soft drink vending machine running. Dunno. > This is a coup de grâce against every other existing store of value. Limited supply is by no means unique to bitcoin. Gold and real estate share the same properties.
- DINKDINK 8y ago
  >the total amount of gold on this planet is finite You confuse yourself with two qualities: Scarcity and Controlled Supply. The two are not the same. >> Bitcoin's supply curve is programmed with time as the only input >As far as I am informed, bitcoin mining farms also tend to be connected to the power grid. The electric grid has no influence on the supply curve of Bitcoin. Do you accept the fact that time is the only input for the supply function? It does not matter if there is one miner producing bitcoin or if bitcoin's price is $1 or $1MM dollars the same amount of bitcoins are produced. >Limited supply is by no means unique to bitcoin. Again seems like you completely misunderstand the difference between scarcity (limited supply) and controlled supply. There's a finite amount of water on the planet (because there's a finite amount of hydrogen and oxygen on Earth) too, does that mean water would make for good money? No because water is easily synthesized from other elements. It has a very multivariable supply function.