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Gold is physical, it can be made into jewelry due to its attractive luster. It has uses in electronics. Gold is 'first place' and has been a symbol of value fo

Gold is physical, it can be made into jewelry due to its attractive luster. It has uses in electronics. Gold is 'first place' and has been a symbol of value for most of our recorded history.

wakawaka28 2y ago
It also cannot be hacked or tracked like Bitcoin. It works offline and can even survive longer than whole countries. The biggest problems are risk of theft and high taxation.
- aprilthird2021 2y ago
  Yes, I think the privacy and security of gold are superior. Bitcoin, by trading those, is easier to transact with.
  - wakawaka28 2y ago
    Bitcoin was supposed to be private and secure, so it more or less failed its mission. It is only presently easier to trade because of various gimmicks to warm people up to the idea of accepting it. Gold on the other hand has a long history of being a currency. Everyone in the world knows it is valuable, even if they don't know how much. The fact Bitcoin wildly swings around in value and requires special computer access and sometimes hardware makes it harder to transact with. If you don't care about privacy and security, and want ease of use, you would be far better served by a credit card than a Bitcoin wallet. And if you do care about those three things, gold is better. The only thing I can say positive about Bitcoin is that it is easier to carry across borders than gold. That plus the modicum of privacy it offers might make it ok for some. As for me, I don't think I could privately accumulate enough Bitcoin for that to be a real benefit to me. Edit: I hit the limit for now so here's a reply: >Was it supposed to be [private]? A currency with a complete ledger of transactions available for view by anyone in the p2p network is hardly secure by design It was intended to be secure and private. That is, people can't steal your Bitcoin (theoretically) and the public ledger gives you some potential strategy if you did want to establish a reputation while dealing with anonymous people. Someone could also deal with you without ever knowing your identity, which makes it private. It would be fairly hard to identify Bitcoin users if their wallets were never linked to their identities, e.g. through an exchange. I don't know how other cryptocurrencies do their ledgers but I assume you are limited to querying the network about specific transactions instead of having access to it all. It could be done by having public yet encrypted transaction records as well maybe. Idk, cryptocurrency never appealed to me. I remember thinking my classmates were insane for buying Bitcoin at $70. The price movement we've seen feels like some insiders using it to embezzle money from reputable institutions who have been sold on the hype. We're in real trouble if the government starts buying it. We will be robbed blind.
    - aprilthird2021 2y ago
      Was it supposed to be? A currency with a complete ledger of transactions available for view by anyone in the p2p network is hardly secure by design. Edit: thanks for the reply. In that sense that you are able to be only identified by a wallet address, that makes sense. I guess I meant that, unlike privacy-focused coins like Monero, there is a way to see who sent what to who (even if who is just an address) and to develop surveillance based on this.
throw0101d 2y ago
> Gold is 'first place' and has been a symbol of value for most of our recorded history. Actually it has not. Not in Mesoamerican civilizations (Aztec, Mayans). Also not for the Chinese, who used silver for currency (and gold for ceremonial purposes). Around the Mediterranean, gold became a currency 'only' around 500BC with the Lydians—which is a very long time after the first economic records we have, which take back to Ur III, the Babylonians (Hammurabi), Ancient Egypt. And when it was used, there were periods of economic stagnation due to its fixed supply: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Bullion_Famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Bullion_Famine Letters of credit / bills of exchange were used in the Middle Ages. Most regular folks worked on credit for their day to day lives: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5,000_Years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5,000_Years The gold standard only appeared in the 1800s: * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/249245.The_Power_of_Gold https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/249245.The_Power_of_Gold And it had all sorts of problems with it: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression * https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/why-the-gold-standard-is-the-worlds-worst-economic-idea-in-2-charts/261552/ https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/business/arch...
- itsalwaysgood 2y ago
  I did not say anything about gold being used as a currency, just that it has always been recognized as valuable, divine, even. I think your references to China probably backs me up: it was used in ceremony for a reason. Using gold as a currency has many problems: chief among them is scarcity as you mentioned. Yet we want to pretend it will be different with Bitcoin?
  - latchkey 2y ago
    > Yet we want to pretend it will be different with Bitcoin? Bitcoin is scarce, gold is not. For example, El Salvador just found trillions worth. It would take a majority of the miners to vote (by running a fork of the software) to increase supply, which goes against their own economics.

Gold is physical, it can be made into jewelry due to its attractive luster. It has uses in electronics. Gold is 'first place' and has been a symbol of value for most of our recorded history.

wakawaka28 2y ago

It also cannot be hacked or tracked like Bitcoin. It works offline and can even survive longer than whole countries. The biggest problems are risk of theft and high taxation.

aprilthird2021 2y ago
Yes, I think the privacy and security of gold are superior. Bitcoin, by trading those, is easier to transact with.
- wakawaka28 2y ago
  Bitcoin was supposed to be private and secure, so it more or less failed its mission. It is only presently easier to trade because of various gimmicks to warm people up to the idea of accepting it. Gold on the other hand has a long history of being a currency. Everyone in the world knows it is valuable, even if they don't know how much. The fact Bitcoin wildly swings around in value and requires special computer access and sometimes hardware makes it harder to transact with. If you don't care about privacy and security, and want ease of use, you would be far better served by a credit card than a Bitcoin wallet. And if you do care about those three things, gold is better. The only thing I can say positive about Bitcoin is that it is easier to carry across borders than gold. That plus the modicum of privacy it offers might make it ok for some. As for me, I don't think I could privately accumulate enough Bitcoin for that to be a real benefit to me. Edit: I hit the limit for now so here's a reply: >Was it supposed to be [private]? A currency with a complete ledger of transactions available for view by anyone in the p2p network is hardly secure by design It was intended to be secure and private. That is, people can't steal your Bitcoin (theoretically) and the public ledger gives you some potential strategy if you did want to establish a reputation while dealing with anonymous people. Someone could also deal with you without ever knowing your identity, which makes it private. It would be fairly hard to identify Bitcoin users if their wallets were never linked to their identities, e.g. through an exchange. I don't know how other cryptocurrencies do their ledgers but I assume you are limited to querying the network about specific transactions instead of having access to it all. It could be done by having public yet encrypted transaction records as well maybe. Idk, cryptocurrency never appealed to me. I remember thinking my classmates were insane for buying Bitcoin at $70. The price movement we've seen feels like some insiders using it to embezzle money from reputable institutions who have been sold on the hype. We're in real trouble if the government starts buying it. We will be robbed blind.
  - aprilthird2021 2y ago
    Was it supposed to be? A currency with a complete ledger of transactions available for view by anyone in the p2p network is hardly secure by design. Edit: thanks for the reply. In that sense that you are able to be only identified by a wallet address, that makes sense. I guess I meant that, unlike privacy-focused coins like Monero, there is a way to see who sent what to who (even if who is just an address) and to develop surveillance based on this.

throw0101d 2y ago

> Gold is 'first place' and has been a symbol of value for most of our recorded history. Actually it has not. Not in Mesoamerican civilizations (Aztec, Mayans). Also not for the Chinese, who used silver for currency (and gold for ceremonial purposes). Around the Mediterranean, gold became a currency 'only' around 500BC with the Lydians—which is a very long time after the first economic records we have, which take back to Ur III, the Babylonians (Hammurabi), Ancient Egypt. And when it was used, there were periods of economic stagnation due to its fixed supply: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Bullion_Famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Bullion_Famine Letters of credit / bills of exchange were used in the Middle Ages. Most regular folks worked on credit for their day to day lives: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5,000_Years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5,000_Years The gold standard only appeared in the 1800s: * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/249245.The_Power_of_Gold https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/249245.The_Power_of_Gold And it had all sorts of problems with it: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression * https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/why-the-gold-standard-is-the-worlds-worst-economic-idea-in-2-charts/261552/ https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/business/arch...

itsalwaysgood 2y ago
I did not say anything about gold being used as a currency, just that it has always been recognized as valuable, divine, even. I think your references to China probably backs me up: it was used in ceremony for a reason. Using gold as a currency has many problems: chief among them is scarcity as you mentioned. Yet we want to pretend it will be different with Bitcoin?
- latchkey 2y ago
  > Yet we want to pretend it will be different with Bitcoin? Bitcoin is scarce, gold is not. For example, El Salvador just found trillions worth. It would take a majority of the miners to vote (by running a fork of the software) to increase supply, which goes against their own economics.