No, it's a "barbarous relic" in the words of Keynes, which is why it's not really used as currency any more. There are real reasons why the world went off the gold standard.

Yes, because governments want to print fiat money to finance their debt. It has a nice side effect of moving more money into spending / investment, because inflation eats savings. Instead of gold, people buy homes and stock.

Or, Keynes was wrong and he is responsible with all the boom and bust cycles and inflationary theft.

Serious question, Keynes was born in the late 1880 and didnt publish anything until 1900s... we had boom and bust cycles long before this. How do you explain that?

Yes there were other boom and busts. But Keynes makes sure of it. According to Hayek (and many others), Keynesian spending policies are not a solution to unemployment or economic crises. On the contrary, they are a real threat to economic stability.

that's a valid question. three reasons why bitcoin & crypto is NOT like gold and very dangerous. 1) limited supply: drives up price enormously. almost endless. minimal supply, infinitely increasing demand. depending on how far this will go it can potentially suck up all liquidity in the world. 2) no authority, no price stabilization, meaning extreme volatility that adds fuel to vol & price rise, 3) ease of access: anyone can buy with a dollar, also fueling to vol & price rise.

how bitcoin will end looks very ugly to me in any case. either collapsing a global economy or bringing an unprecedented global inflation

> 1) limited supply [...] 2) no authority [...] 3) ease of access

But there must be something bad about it as well, right?

All your points are positively good things.

1- Limited supply prevents money printing and inflationary theft. Besides there are many coin alternatives and a BTC can be divided to a hundred million units.

2- No `central` authority is a big plus (probably the best property of it). Once crypto coin pass its infancy, the volatility will be much lower.

3-Ease of access. Another superb property.

1 - money printing is not crony capitalism like what bitcoin creators tout them to be. it is a method of stabilizing value. when used wrong it can destroy economy (venezuela, zimbabwe), but that is a question of politics (voting wrong people). bitcoin or crypto's decentralization is NOT a solution to this problem. also bitcoin is particularly problematic because it gained traction. value is simply sum of people's belief. when other coins gather enough followers then it will similarly be a problem, but not at the moment.

2 - this is false. if you know how currencies work you will know that this whole "decentralization" makes no sense. central authority is required for a currency because price needs to be stabilized. unlike what some people believe, bitcoin will not "self-stabilize" because currency stabilization has nothing to do with how many people use it. currency stabilization works by an authority dictating how much it should worth and manipulating market towards it. this is not some conspiracy, it is a protection provided for all currency users. not only bitcoin offer zero protection (completely exposed to vol risk), but also it is not really decentralized as 40% of entire bitcoin owned is owned by 1000 people only.

3 - yes, this is a good property. so there should be a state sponsored coin.

> either collapsing a global economy

Barely anyone uses bitcoin as a percentage of the world's total population, this isn't even remotely feasible today, or likely even in five years.

us economy is big so bitcoin feels like a noise right now. in other countries, it is a real threat. it's going to take some years until us feels the heat, but by then it will be too late.

I’m curious. How would it bring about global inflation since almost all of bitcoin is not really used for getting goods/services and people need to exchange real dollars/yen/etc to drive up its price? Doesn’t it actually suck out liquidity from other assets and drive down inflation of other assets?

bitcoin's price increase creates inflation because it makes holders wealthy. inflation is not a bad thing when driven by fundamental growth (value creation). bitcoin is not creating value.

it is far easier to transfer 10 million dollars wworth of bitcoin than it is 10 million of gold.

this comparisons are _not_ doing either bitcoin nor gold justice.

bitcoin is far more liquid, accessible and usable than gold ever will be. I will start calling it Internet Liquid Gold... because while the transactions might be slow, being able to transfer it across continents multiple times back and forth is possible before someone can go to their version of fort knox and put actual gold in a truck.

People don't move gold around. They trade gold IOU's which can be transferred faster than bitcoin, with far lower fees.

Occasionally they do move gold physically, like when Germany moved $27 Billion of gold from the United States & France back to Germany:

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/23/germanys-central-bank-just-s...

> People don't move gold around.

Precisely, because it's slow and expensive. If you're going to hold out transfers of IOUs in place of actual gold, that can work for any commodity; a Bitcoin IOU would function just as well as a gold IOU. As a practical example, most Bitcoin exchanges allow transfers between members instantaneously and without any notable fees. Of course, that reintroduces a trust relationship. The point of having actual gold in-hand, or actual bitcoins recorded on the blockchain, is that the transfer is completed and effectively irreversible. You don't get that with IOUs.

Would the analogy to gold IOUs then be the Lightning Network?

I would not say bitcoin is more usable then gold as gold has numerous industrial purposes (electronics, optics, thermal and electronic shielding).

If we were able to infinitely replicate gold and bitcoins, gold would still have value, bitcoins would not.

I agree with your sentiment, I should have asserted that I was thinking strictly for use as a currency.

as an aside, no one can make infinite of anything so I do not think that part of the comment applies.