> You're assuming gold / physicalvaluestores can be spent without shipping cost and exchange fees and that the volume traded reaches 0 in your comparison. Is the volume of any valuestore ever 0?

That's why gold isn't a currency there are definite transaction costs but the whole of the costs of transporting gold spent isn't required for my gold to be spent. With BTC the whole network supports all transactions and all transactions require the mining network for validation.

> mining doesn't have to be continuious, it's reward varies with volume to adjust the rate mined so you only wait a looong time if suddenly transaction volume spikes.

Mining has to continue as a whole though is what I'm meaning. Because it has not physical value and no ability to transfer without active mining the utility and value of BTC is inherently tied to the act of mining. There's also a hard minimum of active mining where the network remains secure against 51%/double spending attacks.

> That's why gold isn't a currency there are definite transaction costs but the whole of the costs of transporting gold spent isn't required for my gold to be spent.

Whole costs for transporting gold are definitely required to be spent... the gold must be transported from one owner's location to another, unless the escrow between the two parties is the same or you're actually trading ETFs.

> With BTC the whole network supports all transactions and all transactions require the mining network for validation.

This is true for the network as a whole, but not any given transaction. Such a model would mean that the network is topologically fully connected, which would in turn mean that it'd be orders of magnitude slower than it already is.

> That's why gold isn't a currency there are definite transaction costs but the whole of the costs of transporting gold spent isn't required for my gold to be spent.

What I'm trying to say here is that my transaction doesn't depend on the energy required to transport all the gold traded.