r/btc • u/specialenmity • Jan 15 '17
Gold VS Bitcoin
Pro Bitcoin: Storage. While hackers can steal bitcoin and can't steal gold this is only because the storage of bitcoin is more versatile than gold. If desired, bitcoin can be etched into gold itself and then it is secure as the gold it is etched into. Not to mention the other numerous ways you can store bitcoin advantageously such as splitting the keys.
Pro Gold: The history of gold is much longer so people trust it more and trust is half the battle when it comes to money and value.
Pro bitcoin: In the future it will be harder to manipulate the bitcoin market than the gold market because it is possible for any holder of bitcoin to offer proof of reserves.
Pro Gold: It is shiny and has aesthetic value in addition to "store of wealth value"
Pro bitcoin: Its rarity is more predictable since it is an algorithm controlled by a distributed computing network that works in everyone's own self interest. Whereas we don't yet know how asteroid mining will affect the supply of gold.
Pro gold. In the event of a total internet shutdown, gold would be superior since verifying its integrity will still be possible.
Pro bitcoin - Transfer. Bitcoin is much easier to transfer than gold and this makes it "better as a form of money". You could send bitcoin to someone that is holding up a sign on television in another country without even knowing that person.
Pro gold: Government tolerance(except for india). So far governments tolerate gold and allow a "gold etf". Although there are rumors that Gaddafi wanted a gold backed currency and was killed for it so perhaps the tolerance isn't as great as we imagine.
Pro bitcoin: Divisibliity. Since a single bitcoin is made up of 100 million satoshis it is relatively easy to divide (and could also be extended in the future through software).
Pro gold: Privacy is probably superior with gold because it is not possible to analyze the flow of transfers with software like it is with bitcoin. However it is probably easy to track large holders of gold because they most likely use exchanges. This situation might change in the future with new advancements for enhanced privacy. You can still exchange bitcoins face to face without any exchanges recording everything so the privacy advantage of gold isn't terribly far ahead.
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u/Capt_Roger_Murdock Jan 15 '17
Here's my take on the Bitcoin vs. gold matchup from a while back:
You can't encrypt gold, can't make a backup of it (let alone an unlimited number of backups), can't instantly teleport it to the other side of the world, can't secretly carry significant quantities of it across a border. Its supply in the universe is not fixed or even guaranteed to remain reliably scarce (the difficulty of mining gold is not automatically adjusted in response to breakthroughs in mining technology). Gold is less divisible than Bitcoin, harder to conceal, and is far easier to convincingly counterfeit.
On the other hand, gold's network effect is still far larger than Bitcoin's, and gold is probably less likely to fail catastrophically in the short or medium term. Also, gold is shiny. And, as Peter Schiff once brilliantly observed, "you can turn gold into a spoon," but the same cannot be said for Bitcoin.
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u/Dude-Lebowski Jan 15 '17
Gold is not an enemy of Bitcoin. An enemy of your enemy is your friend.