ECON Bitcoin vs. Gold

[Hfcomms]

Can someone teach me how to do this with gold?

In a heartbeat. You can do that day in and day out trading various gold ETF's and other various trusts. You would then say 'but that isn't real gold....that is paper gold'. Yeah, but BTC is just a piece of computer code so it is just as ethereal and unreal as a gold ETF which may or may not have real gold backing it which doesn't give you the right to convert to physical.

Nobody (or few) that hold real gold expect to be able to walk down to the local store and use it as a currency. Unlike BTC or other crypto's real gold isn't for trading but it is a long term store of value with no counterparty risk and which can't go bankrupt. As it is a long term store of wealth and I can convert it to the coin of the realm in a few days if I wanted to (which I don't as I hold it to get out of the fiat denominated system).

 

[alchemike]

Latest epiphany...

Gold can already be artificially produced, but not yet at a cost below its market price. One of the many mind-blowing aspects of Bitcoin is that it functions as a global bounty program for bringing more cost-effective energy sources into production.

How ironic will it be if Bitcoin drives the cost of energy so low that lab-grown gold can be produced below its market price, thereby comprising gold’s utility as reliably scarce money and thus destroying its “store of value” functionality...

 

[Gitche Gumee Kid]

Latest epiphany...

Gold can already be artificially produced, but not yet at a cost below its market price. One of the many mind-blowing aspects of Bitcoin is that it functions as a global bounty program for bringing more cost-effective energy sources into production.

How ironic will it be if Bitcoin drives the cost of energy so low that lab-grown gold can be produced below its market price, thereby comprising gold’s utility as reliably scarce money and thus destroying its “store of value” functionality...

Hey ! I sleep poorly as it is. LOL
GGK

 

[crossbowboy]

Will you trade me gold in your hand for one of my digital airplanes?
I have plenty of them in my simulator software folder on the ol' hard drive.

If you're actually willing to trade physical assets for imaginary things, I happen to have a couple bridges in the inventory that you may be interested in.

Just sayin'...

 

[shane]

I have thousands of dollars of essential life-saving survival information acquired and stored in my computer and USB memory sticks, lights go out or all electronics get fried and it's largely inaccessible, unavailable and then worthless to me, could even be life-threatening not to have then, kinda risky to be depending upon it, sorta like bitcoin, yes?

I also have tangible, hold in my hands, similar essential paper books and hard manuals of much of the same information and if lights go out I can still access all that vital info, at least during daylight hours!

That's, for me anyways, an example of the big difference between BC and tangible wealth.

Panic Early, Beat the Rush!
- Shane

 

[bracketquant]

Latest epiphany...

Gold can already be artificially produced, but not yet at a cost below its market price. One of the many mind-blowing aspects of Bitcoin is that it functions as a global bounty program for bringing more cost-effective energy sources into production.

How ironic will it be if Bitcoin drives the cost of energy so low that lab-grown gold can be produced below its market price, thereby comprising gold’s utility as reliably scarce money and thus destroying its “store of value” functionality...

I don't see the cost of energy, long term, going lower, only higher. Bitcoin, as a store of essentially nothing and as an energy pig, will likely be what gets destroyed.

 

[AuEagle]

If you don't hold it, you don't own it...

 

[West]

If you don't hold it, you don't own it...

And you can't physically play with it, or swim in it depending on how big the stack is.

 

[crossbowboy]

Bitcoin is an artifact of a finite system.

One Carrington-class (or greater) solar event - and all the digital currency on the planet evaporates like a Japanese kid pointing up into the sunny August sky over Hiroshima.

You'll be dead by the time your descendents learn how to power up the nodes that didn't fry, and learn how to connect them again.

If they even get that far, they will ask why we bothered to store so many gigabytes of meaningless and seemingly random code.




Empires fall.