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Bitcoin may be largely used as a store of value like gold, but that's not what it was designed for. It's designed to be a currency.
by KoftaBob 5y ago
Bitcoin may be largely used as a store of value like gold, but that's not what it was designed for. It's designed to be a currency.
- MerelyMortal 5y agoI'm not arguing one way or the other about Bitcoin, but just pointing something out in general: "designed to be" doesn't mean it actually is. Engineers can design things however they want, but that doesn't mean it always holds up.
- KoftaBob 5y agoSure, but the OP saying “bitcoin isn’t a currency” isn’t accurate. It’s a currency that happens to be popular as a store of value. It was designed to be a currency, and so for it to be good at that design, it should do currency things well, like broad support from point of sale systems. The fact that gold doesn’t have broad support from POS systems is irrelevant to its intended purpose in that context, of being a store of value. Their analogy doesn’t work because they’re comparing what bitcoin was designed to do, with what gold isn’t designed to do.
- lottin 5y agoGold is not used a store of value, and neither is bitcoin. Both are investments. The question is whether they are good investments or not.
- Geee 5y agoIt's designed to be money. Store of value is the most important property of money. In this, bitcoin is very similar to gold. Another one is to be medium of exchange, which bitcoin does better than gold, and thus can avoid the centralization failure that happened to gold.