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This is another misconception. Gold can be held, yes. It also is expensive to verify, transport, and protect. This has proved problematic for holders of the pa

This is another misconception. Gold can be held, yes. It also is expensive to verify, transport, and protect. This has proved problematic for holders of the past. A paper system had to be built on top of Gold, which severely diluted the value proposition as gold was confiscated and stockpiled centrally. Practically speaking, very few individuals hold gold and the utility of doing so is limited when you consider how liquidity in the gold market functions. Bitcoin is a different beast. You hold the cryptographic keys (like a password) which let you move Bitcoin to someone else’s address (under their password). You don’t trust anyone: Bitcoin is verified by math, not humans. It is tangible in the same way that owning google.com is tangible (and unarguably valuable). Bits and bytes exist on a global network and only you can move them. When compared to Gold, Bitcoin is interesting because it is highly transportable, easily divisible, and censorship resistant. Consider this: Bitcoin let’s you store $1T USD of dollars in your head, transport it anywhere in the world, and there’s not a single thing anyone else can do about it.

Ididntdothis 7y ago
“Bitcoin let’s you store $1T USD of dollars in your head, transport it anywhere in the world, and there’s not a single thing anyone else can do about it.” As of now the $1T can also disappear and nobody will even notice.
- anon73044 7y ago
  This! Bus factor and too many single points of failure. How many lost wallets are out there with a few hundred or thousands of coins from before Bitcoin hit $100?
  - unhashable 7y ago
    Single points of failure? Bitcoin is decentralized, like the internet. It’s designed to explicitly avoid points of failure and trusting of node participants. Lots of Bitcoin has been lost. Good key hygiene should not be taken lightly. What is unfortunate for those losers is fortunate for Bitcoin. As the supply of lost Bitcoin increases the overall scarcity of the asset increases.
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      There is no single point of failure for a bank account. If you die suddenly, your assigns can petition the court for the assets. With bitcoin the single point of failure is always your key. That's why every random walk down the timeline leads to 100% of keys lost over the full course of time.
- unhashable 7y ago
  What do you mean it can disappear and nobody will even notice? I can think of a few things but I’d rather not assume. Can you spell it out so I can better reply?
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    Nothing is backing up bitcoin. Almost nobody is using it to pay for things. If bitcoin went away I don’t think the regular economy wouldn’t notice anything. Only speculators would notice.
    - unhashable 7y ago
      Totally. Bitcoin is not a medium of exchange (cash). It’s not useful for payments. Bitcoin is currently a bet that digital scarcity will bring back the concept of saving (SoV) so that people don’t have to invest in equities just to protect their purchasing power. Only the people making this bet will be affected if Bitcoin fails. The monetary system will keep moving forward unaffected. If Bitcoin succeeds, eventually the price will slow down and it can be used for cash. That will have to occur many decades down the road, if it ever occurs. As for backups, the Bitcoin ledger is likely the most durable dataset that has ever existed. Backups are made daily at every layer across the world and there is no central point of failure in the network. Shutting down the Bitcoin network would take a world war, and even then the network would survive through backups and the will of network participants to bring it back.
      - Ididntdothis 7y ago
        “Only the people making this bet will be affected if Bitcoin fails” Which means that it’s just a gamble of some insiders.
        unhashable 7y ago
        Does it feel like I’m arguing that point? I’m not. Speculation is by definition gambling. Investing is also speculation. You have a thesis, and you make returns if that plays out. You lose capital when you are wrong. Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "insiders" - most of the world can purchase Bitcoin, the software is OSS, the network inspectable, and the evolving thesis and narrative is fully available online. Bitcoin is the people's money.
glofish 7y ago
> This is another misconception. Care to elaborate on what my misconception was? I never said that bitcoin is not an interesting concept on its own. Just that is ain't got what most people think or need when they talk about gold or money. Especially not in time of economic distress. Can you use bitcoin without the internet? Can you use bitcoin without someone else mining and being allowed to connect to these entities?
- unhashable 7y ago
  To address your point more directly: many think that Bitcoin isn’t tangible because you have to trust that the network of full nodes are verifying transactions, and if they stop then Bitcoin ceases to exist. Full nodes have financial incentives to run and they do so today at a scale that rivals the internet. It’s not a favor to Bitcoin, it’s a business. They would only stop if the financial incentive ceased to exist. I can’t think of a reason node operators would cease to care about their own financial well-being. That’s baked into our species. Note that your reservations apply equally (and potentially more so) to fiat. USD is a virtual currency. Cash is on the way out. You will not be able to spend your USD offline. USD is based on a network of centralized banks. You cannot spend your fiat without a computer asking permission from these centralized systems. The world stops if the internet stops. That’s not a Bitcoin problem. Bitcoin actually improves on the state of things by replacing encumbant authorities and centralized computing systems with math and a decentralized network. I’ll add this. It’s not the current state of the world, but there is a very real chance Bitcoin can be made available off-internet via a satellite network. This would prevent state-level censorship like what we see when authoritarian regimes cut the internet. https://github.com/Blockstream/satellite/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/Blockstream/satellite/blob/master/README....
  - weego 7y ago
    When you think about it, you realize: USD is also virtual currency. Cash is on the way out. You will not be able to spend your USD offline. I mean by that definition anything past barter economies are virtual, so sure if that's your definition then your statement stands. It's completely incorrect by any meaningful definition of virtual though.
rideontime 7y ago
> You can't prove you have bitcoin if you don't have internet access for example. You can't have bitcoin if miners don't run their nodes. Nothing you said addressed this.
- unhashable 7y ago
  Yeah, I missed the point about trusting the math that enables a decentralized network. Addressed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22559645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22559645
kaikai 7y ago
You don't have to transport a heavy metal, instead all you have to do is ensure an electrical grid, fully functional internet access, and a distributed network of other people! I'm not sure that's any easier than carry around metal :P
- unhashable 7y ago
  I see: you’re concerned with a future where the concept of an internet ceases to exist? I’m afraid money will be the least of our problems then.
  - gchokov 7y ago
    It's already happening with Russia and China having their own networks.
    - unhashable 7y ago
      Absolute financial control of citizens is a hell on earth type of dystopia we must resist, thwart, and avoid at all costs. We must not go silently into that dark night.
  - glofish 7y ago
    for me, it not so unthinkable that you could have intermittent access to the internet (out days at a time), or that some parts of the internet would not be accessible for extended periods of time for you it seems that must equate the end of the world where it doesn't matter anyway.
    - unhashable 7y ago
      This is an interesting scenario worth thinking through. If Bitcoin is forced to go split-brain temporarily, the network could coordinate to rejoin after the fact. Or, it could stay split in two. Regardless, infighting over which network was “the real Bitcoin” would ensue. See Bitcoin Cash and friends.
defterGoose 7y ago
I'm truly struggling to understand how gold can be censored. Also, left out of this discussion is the fact that gold is actually tangible, divorced from some weird semantic backflips. You can build useful things with it.
- unhashable 7y ago
  Holding Bitcoin is not a semantic backflip. Do you hold the dollars in your bank account? Also: gold can easily be confiscated and it has been before - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102. How much gold do you think you can travel with? Think the TSA would allow even $100k of gold to be carried on your person? Given golds limited supply, why has the price been relatively stable in dollars (which are unlimited)? Because the gold market can easily be manipulated because central banks and Govs hold most of the supply and they can, and do, suppress with targeted market supply flooding.
  - ColanR 7y ago
    > Do you hold the dollars in your bank account? No, we don't, which is exactly why gold is considered superior.
    - deleted 7y ago
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    - unhashable 7y ago
      You missed the point. Holders of gold maintain custody at risk of physical confiscation. Holders of Bitcoin maintain custody (of the password that allows spending said Bitcoin) and are cannot he compelled one way or another. The bitcoin moves when they say so.
      - ColanR 7y ago
bb88 7y ago
This is another misconception: >Bitcoin let’s you store $1T USD of dollars in your head, transport it anywhere in the world, and there’s not a single thing anyone else can do about it. It's amazing how easy gray matter cryptography can be broken using a cheap $5 wrench.
- unhashable 7y ago
  Love that meme: https://www.xkcd.com/538/ https://www.xkcd.com/538/ So true too. At the end of the day, digital security must be reinforced with physical security and good opsec.
  - soperj 7y ago
    To be fair, it's quite easy to find that wrench used for 5 bucks. Also they'd likely just steal it.
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raverbashing 7y ago
Yes I'm sure a 1T transaction in bitcoins won't trigger any suspicion by anyone and will not cause people to try and track the authors of the transaction. I'm also sure trying to cash that out is going to be as easy as taking money out of an ATM Unless you "cash out" in USDT (tether) or something similarly fake
- unhashable 7y ago
  Obviously $1T is meant to by hyperbole. Still, it’s not that outlandish. $500M transferred for less than $400 on 7/29/19 - https://twitter.com/whale_alert/status/1155808847908544512?s=21 https://twitter.com/whale_alert/status/1155808847908544512?s... There are many of these, and they are increasing. Cashing out large sums is done over the counter, not through regular on/off ramps (as in your ATM example). Bitcoin is legal in the US, so I'm not sure how suspicion plays into it. The rich play by different rules than you and I.
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    No billionaire is going to pay more than $400 to instantly wire money either, though, as to your point, they play by different rules. Even HSBC offers free wires in the US. Also, it's $250M now due to the 50% drop in the last half hour, so in a way, they paid $250M for that transfer.
shpx 7y ago
Someone could convince enough people to switch to running code that says you don't have that $1T. Like they did with Ethereum.
jariel 7y ago
This is not the right way to compare BTC and Gold in terms of meaningful financial value. The 'transportability' of the asset is really a secondary feature when talking of 'stores of wealth'. Gold is obviously terribly difficult to move around, but that's fine, it's stored in large vaults and we make agreements as to 'who owns it'. Just as BTC implies a kind of 'contract' so does Gold ownership, they just take different forms. The value of Gold and BTC will be a function of their perception as a credible long-term source of value. BTC will not achieve the status of Gold for a very long time, and it's unlikely it ever will. I wouldn't write it off entirely, but it's basically not a relevant instrument at this time. As a currency BTC is probably dead for a variety of reasons, but it could come back in those terms, in which case, we'll view it differently. But the world is not going to value BTC materially differently due to how it's 'transported'. We can trade Gold in mostly the same way. "Bitcoin let’s you store $1T USD of dollars in your head, transport it anywhere in the world, and there’s not a single thing anyone else can do about it" Yes, there is 'something' we can do about it, and that's to collectively not care a single bit about the magic number in said BTC holder's 'head'.
threatofrain 7y ago
Gold is resistant to government intervention because there need not be any record of transaction or ownership.
mythz 7y ago
> Bitcoin let’s you store $1T USD of dollars in your head, transport it anywhere in the world, and there’s not a single thing anyone else can do about it. That's going to be pretty hard to do when all bitcoins have a combined "worth" of 92B. Bitcoin has no intrinsic value in that it only exists due to artificial demand, e.g. if someone invented a better digital currency, Bitcoin's demand would evaporate and all BTC's would be worthless. It's nothing like Gold which is one of the most useful precious metals with usages beyond a storage of value.
- mcpeepants 7y ago
  Many would argue that a "better" digital currency has already been created, yet Bitcoin remains at the top. I don't have much in the way of opinions here it's just an interesting aspect of what makes a digital currency more or less valuable (that is, it doesn't _seem_ to be how much better the tech is)
praptak 7y ago
"Bitcoin let’s you store $1T USD of dollars in your head, transport it anywhere in the world, and there’s not a single thing anyone else can do about it." How much of that 1T dollars would you keep after you try to pump it into bitcoin and then try to pump it out?
- jack_pp 7y ago
  You would have the same problem with any asset that needs to be sold in a market. Even gold

Ididntdothis 7y ago

“Bitcoin let’s you store $1T USD of dollars in your head, transport it anywhere in the world, and there’s not a single thing anyone else can do about it.” As of now the $1T can also disappear and nobody will even notice.

anon73044 7y ago
This! Bus factor and too many single points of failure. How many lost wallets are out there with a few hundred or thousands of coins from before Bitcoin hit $100?
- unhashable 7y ago
  Single points of failure? Bitcoin is decentralized, like the internet. It’s designed to explicitly avoid points of failure and trusting of node participants. Lots of Bitcoin has been lost. Good key hygiene should not be taken lightly. What is unfortunate for those losers is fortunate for Bitcoin. As the supply of lost Bitcoin increases the overall scarcity of the asset increases.
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    There is no single point of failure for a bank account. If you die suddenly, your assigns can petition the court for the assets. With bitcoin the single point of failure is always your key. That's why every random walk down the timeline leads to 100% of keys lost over the full course of time.
unhashable 7y ago
What do you mean it can disappear and nobody will even notice? I can think of a few things but I’d rather not assume. Can you spell it out so I can better reply?
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  Nothing is backing up bitcoin. Almost nobody is using it to pay for things. If bitcoin went away I don’t think the regular economy wouldn’t notice anything. Only speculators would notice.
  - unhashable 7y ago
    Totally. Bitcoin is not a medium of exchange (cash). It’s not useful for payments. Bitcoin is currently a bet that digital scarcity will bring back the concept of saving (SoV) so that people don’t have to invest in equities just to protect their purchasing power. Only the people making this bet will be affected if Bitcoin fails. The monetary system will keep moving forward unaffected. If Bitcoin succeeds, eventually the price will slow down and it can be used for cash. That will have to occur many decades down the road, if it ever occurs. As for backups, the Bitcoin ledger is likely the most durable dataset that has ever existed. Backups are made daily at every layer across the world and there is no central point of failure in the network. Shutting down the Bitcoin network would take a world war, and even then the network would survive through backups and the will of network participants to bring it back.
    - Ididntdothis 7y ago
      “Only the people making this bet will be affected if Bitcoin fails” Which means that it’s just a gamble of some insiders.
      - unhashable 7y ago
        Does it feel like I’m arguing that point? I’m not. Speculation is by definition gambling. Investing is also speculation. You have a thesis, and you make returns if that plays out. You lose capital when you are wrong. Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "insiders" - most of the world can purchase Bitcoin, the software is OSS, the network inspectable, and the evolving thesis and narrative is fully available online. Bitcoin is the people's money.

glofish 7y ago

> This is another misconception. Care to elaborate on what my misconception was? I never said that bitcoin is not an interesting concept on its own. Just that is ain't got what most people think or need when they talk about gold or money. Especially not in time of economic distress. Can you use bitcoin without the internet? Can you use bitcoin without someone else mining and being allowed to connect to these entities?

unhashable 7y ago
To address your point more directly: many think that Bitcoin isn’t tangible because you have to trust that the network of full nodes are verifying transactions, and if they stop then Bitcoin ceases to exist. Full nodes have financial incentives to run and they do so today at a scale that rivals the internet. It’s not a favor to Bitcoin, it’s a business. They would only stop if the financial incentive ceased to exist. I can’t think of a reason node operators would cease to care about their own financial well-being. That’s baked into our species. Note that your reservations apply equally (and potentially more so) to fiat. USD is a virtual currency. Cash is on the way out. You will not be able to spend your USD offline. USD is based on a network of centralized banks. You cannot spend your fiat without a computer asking permission from these centralized systems. The world stops if the internet stops. That’s not a Bitcoin problem. Bitcoin actually improves on the state of things by replacing encumbant authorities and centralized computing systems with math and a decentralized network. I’ll add this. It’s not the current state of the world, but there is a very real chance Bitcoin can be made available off-internet via a satellite network. This would prevent state-level censorship like what we see when authoritarian regimes cut the internet. https://github.com/Blockstream/satellite/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/Blockstream/satellite/blob/master/README....
- weego 7y ago
  When you think about it, you realize: USD is also virtual currency. Cash is on the way out. You will not be able to spend your USD offline. I mean by that definition anything past barter economies are virtual, so sure if that's your definition then your statement stands. It's completely incorrect by any meaningful definition of virtual though.

rideontime 7y ago

> You can't prove you have bitcoin if you don't have internet access for example. You can't have bitcoin if miners don't run their nodes. Nothing you said addressed this.

unhashable 7y ago
Yeah, I missed the point about trusting the math that enables a decentralized network. Addressed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22559645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22559645

kaikai 7y ago

You don't have to transport a heavy metal, instead all you have to do is ensure an electrical grid, fully functional internet access, and a distributed network of other people! I'm not sure that's any easier than carry around metal :P

unhashable 7y ago
I see: you’re concerned with a future where the concept of an internet ceases to exist? I’m afraid money will be the least of our problems then.
- gchokov 7y ago
  It's already happening with Russia and China having their own networks.
  - unhashable 7y ago
    Absolute financial control of citizens is a hell on earth type of dystopia we must resist, thwart, and avoid at all costs. We must not go silently into that dark night.
- glofish 7y ago
  for me, it not so unthinkable that you could have intermittent access to the internet (out days at a time), or that some parts of the internet would not be accessible for extended periods of time for you it seems that must equate the end of the world where it doesn't matter anyway.
  - unhashable 7y ago
    This is an interesting scenario worth thinking through. If Bitcoin is forced to go split-brain temporarily, the network could coordinate to rejoin after the fact. Or, it could stay split in two. Regardless, infighting over which network was “the real Bitcoin” would ensue. See Bitcoin Cash and friends.

defterGoose 7y ago

I'm truly struggling to understand how gold can be censored. Also, left out of this discussion is the fact that gold is actually tangible, divorced from some weird semantic backflips. You can build useful things with it.

unhashable 7y ago
Holding Bitcoin is not a semantic backflip. Do you hold the dollars in your bank account? Also: gold can easily be confiscated and it has been before - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102. How much gold do you think you can travel with? Think the TSA would allow even $100k of gold to be carried on your person? Given golds limited supply, why has the price been relatively stable in dollars (which are unlimited)? Because the gold market can easily be manipulated because central banks and Govs hold most of the supply and they can, and do, suppress with targeted market supply flooding.
- ColanR 7y ago
  > Do you hold the dollars in your bank account? No, we don't, which is exactly why gold is considered superior.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - unhashable 7y ago
    You missed the point. Holders of gold maintain custody at risk of physical confiscation. Holders of Bitcoin maintain custody (of the password that allows spending said Bitcoin) and are cannot he compelled one way or another. The bitcoin moves when they say so.
    - ColanR 7y ago

bb88 7y ago

This is another misconception: >Bitcoin let’s you store $1T USD of dollars in your head, transport it anywhere in the world, and there’s not a single thing anyone else can do about it. It's amazing how easy gray matter cryptography can be broken using a cheap $5 wrench.

unhashable 7y ago
Love that meme: https://www.xkcd.com/538/ https://www.xkcd.com/538/ So true too. At the end of the day, digital security must be reinforced with physical security and good opsec.
- soperj 7y ago
  To be fair, it's quite easy to find that wrench used for 5 bucks. Also they'd likely just steal it.
deleted 7y ago
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deleted 7y ago
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raverbashing 7y ago

Yes I'm sure a 1T transaction in bitcoins won't trigger any suspicion by anyone and will not cause people to try and track the authors of the transaction. I'm also sure trying to cash that out is going to be as easy as taking money out of an ATM Unless you "cash out" in USDT (tether) or something similarly fake

unhashable 7y ago
Obviously $1T is meant to by hyperbole. Still, it’s not that outlandish. $500M transferred for less than $400 on 7/29/19 - https://twitter.com/whale_alert/status/1155808847908544512?s=21 https://twitter.com/whale_alert/status/1155808847908544512?s... There are many of these, and they are increasing. Cashing out large sums is done over the counter, not through regular on/off ramps (as in your ATM example). Bitcoin is legal in the US, so I'm not sure how suspicion plays into it. The rich play by different rules than you and I.
- arcticbull 7y ago
  No billionaire is going to pay more than $400 to instantly wire money either, though, as to your point, they play by different rules. Even HSBC offers free wires in the US. Also, it's $250M now due to the 50% drop in the last half hour, so in a way, they paid $250M for that transfer.

shpx 7y ago

Someone could convince enough people to switch to running code that says you don't have that $1T. Like they did with Ethereum.

jariel 7y ago

This is not the right way to compare BTC and Gold in terms of meaningful financial value. The 'transportability' of the asset is really a secondary feature when talking of 'stores of wealth'. Gold is obviously terribly difficult to move around, but that's fine, it's stored in large vaults and we make agreements as to 'who owns it'. Just as BTC implies a kind of 'contract' so does Gold ownership, they just take different forms. The value of Gold and BTC will be a function of their perception as a credible long-term source of value. BTC will not achieve the status of Gold for a very long time, and it's unlikely it ever will. I wouldn't write it off entirely, but it's basically not a relevant instrument at this time. As a currency BTC is probably dead for a variety of reasons, but it could come back in those terms, in which case, we'll view it differently. But the world is not going to value BTC materially differently due to how it's 'transported'. We can trade Gold in mostly the same way. "Bitcoin let’s you store $1T USD of dollars in your head, transport it anywhere in the world, and there’s not a single thing anyone else can do about it" Yes, there is 'something' we can do about it, and that's to collectively not care a single bit about the magic number in said BTC holder's 'head'.

threatofrain 7y ago

Gold is resistant to government intervention because there need not be any record of transaction or ownership.

mythz 7y ago

> Bitcoin let’s you store $1T USD of dollars in your head, transport it anywhere in the world, and there’s not a single thing anyone else can do about it. That's going to be pretty hard to do when all bitcoins have a combined "worth" of 92B. Bitcoin has no intrinsic value in that it only exists due to artificial demand, e.g. if someone invented a better digital currency, Bitcoin's demand would evaporate and all BTC's would be worthless. It's nothing like Gold which is one of the most useful precious metals with usages beyond a storage of value.

mcpeepants 7y ago
Many would argue that a "better" digital currency has already been created, yet Bitcoin remains at the top. I don't have much in the way of opinions here it's just an interesting aspect of what makes a digital currency more or less valuable (that is, it doesn't _seem_ to be how much better the tech is)

praptak 7y ago

"Bitcoin let’s you store $1T USD of dollars in your head, transport it anywhere in the world, and there’s not a single thing anyone else can do about it." How much of that 1T dollars would you keep after you try to pump it into bitcoin and then try to pump it out?

jack_pp 7y ago
You would have the same problem with any asset that needs to be sold in a market. Even gold