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Re:Ask HN: What is the reason behind the rise of cryptocurre... by shawabawa3 on Tuesday December 12, 2017 @04:14PM (#15909545)
Gold's market cap is $8 trillion.

90+% of that value is as a store of value and speculation.

Cryptocurrencies could do that job better. Even with the high fees atm for bitcoin, it's still a hell of a lot cheaper than shipping gold

Re:Ask HN: What is the reason behind the rise of cryptocurre... by phoe17 on Tuesday December 12, 2017 @04:27PM (#15909657)
I have a read a few people comparing Bitcoin's store of value to that of Gold's. That analogy does make sense but they started off by calling Bitcoin a new form of currency, have we given up on that use-case?

Also, Gold fluctuates a lot less and the exchange of Gold is often not anonymous. If I am looking for a place to put my savings why would I choose an anonymous market that is highly volatile?

I understand that this logic is negated by Bitcoin's current value.

Re:Ask HN: What is the reason behind the rise of cryptocurre... by bassman9000 on Tuesday December 12, 2017 @06:02PM (#15910313)
For those buying gold for apocalyptic/pre-apocalyptic situations, crypto makes no sense. If everything goes to hell, there'll be no usable Internet, so it'll be difficult to verify transactions in sufficient nodes. But a chunk of gold will still be a chunk of gold.

In a more probable scenario, strong regulation kills the crypto.

I believe either scenario is far from plausible, but the case for gold makes sense for people that do.

Re:Ask HN: What is the reason behind the rise of cryptocurre... by AnimalMuppet on Tuesday December 12, 2017 @04:42PM (#15909795)
Could they?

I have a pretty good idea that gold will still be valuable 100 years from now in every country in the world. (Maybe not the same value as today, but still valuable.)

Bitcoin? I have much less confidence.