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You misunderstood the terms. Economically Durability refers to an asset that doesn't decay with time. Historically, things like cows, sheeps, wheat and other th

You misunderstood the terms. Economically Durability refers to an asset that doesn't decay with time. Historically, things like cows, sheeps, wheat and other things were used as money. Those things are not durable: they rot or are consumed. Gold, silver, paper/fiat money and BTC are durable. Portability refers to the ability/costs to transfer your money from, say, New York to Singapore. Transferring USD is cheap and easy, but transferring BTC isn't expensive either. Specially when compared to transferring cows or a gold bar. Storability is somewhat related to durability: you should be able to store your money, forget about it, and recover it later without loss. Think of burying gold and coming back for it in five years: all your gold is still there. Wheat seeds or cows not so much. BTC is perfectly storable: the very first mined BTC would be the same BCT for years to come. I would say that paper money loses against BTC and gold in this concept, but then again, fiat money works exactly like BTC. Losing your wallet is another concept not related to storability: you can also lose a gold coin or a $100 bill.

arcticbull 5y ago
> Transferring USD is cheap and easy, but transferring BTC isn't expensive either. I disagree, the sticker price at the moment looks cheap but only because the majority of a transaction cost is socialized in block reward. To look at the actual cost of a transaction you need to sum the direct fees and the socialized fees. After all, the socialized fees are going away over time, so either users will have to pay directly or be subject to a less secure network. An average block of 2000 transactions costs 6.25 BTC ($225,000) in indirect subsidies plus about $16,000 in direct costs. This means an average transaction costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $120. At $120, you could probably just overnight a gold bar via FedEx. This is dramatically higher than competitive solutions. > Losing your wallet is another concept not related to storability: you can also lose a gold coin or a $100 bill Yes, but losing a few billion dollars worth is exponentially harder. I would argue that over time your risk of losing all your coins in a step function approaches 100%. Even though it's step, on average it represents a negative storability/durability. As the total quantity in circulation drops the entire supply could be seen as "rotting."

arcticbull 5y ago

> Transferring USD is cheap and easy, but transferring BTC isn't expensive either. I disagree, the sticker price at the moment looks cheap but only because the majority of a transaction cost is socialized in block reward. To look at the actual cost of a transaction you need to sum the direct fees and the socialized fees. After all, the socialized fees are going away over time, so either users will have to pay directly or be subject to a less secure network. An average block of 2000 transactions costs 6.25 BTC ($225,000) in indirect subsidies plus about $16,000 in direct costs. This means an average transaction costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $120. At $120, you could probably just overnight a gold bar via FedEx. This is dramatically higher than competitive solutions. > Losing your wallet is another concept not related to storability: you can also lose a gold coin or a $100 bill Yes, but losing a few billion dollars worth is exponentially harder. I would argue that over time your risk of losing all your coins in a step function approaches 100%. Even though it's step, on average it represents a negative storability/durability. As the total quantity in circulation drops the entire supply could be seen as "rotting."