News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Why I’m Cryptophobic. Parent comment

Re:Why I’m Cryptophobic by aabhay on Thursday June 30, 2022 @11:10AM (#31933435)
Gold is the world's best physical commodity to use as a store of value -- it doesn't degrade or tarnish, is easily molded into coins or other symbols, melts easily, has a highly fixed supply (synthesizing it is prohibitively expensive), and (now) increasingly is not tied to an industrial output so can weather GDP fluctuations. So in a battle Royale of all commodities, gold wins. That said, all commodities are affected by price action by speculators, so the actual traded value of gold can be very unrealistic.

Gold is conceptually very similar to bitcoin, except gold can't be forked or copied. Which is why in the long term, I prefer gold.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why I’m Cryptophobic by kloch on Thursday June 30, 2022 @12:27PM (#31934891)
> a highly fixed supply (synthesizing it is prohibitively expensive)

This is what gives Bitcoin much of its value as well.

> Gold is conceptually very similar to bitcoin, except gold can't be forked or copied

This touches on another thing that makes Bitcoin valuable - consensus. Enough people agree to use it that it becomes the defacto standard.

Bitcoin (and Ether to a lesser extent) are the “rough consensus and running code” of decentralized algorithmic money

The two points are related. It was much easier to synthesize Bitcoin when fewer people were using it, and it’s market value was less.

This auto-scaling of difficulty with interest/value was added as a security mechanism but actually plays a key monetary role as well.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why I’m Cryptophobic by aabhay on Thursday June 30, 2022 @03:53PM (#31937712)
What makes you trust consensus? Consensus is fickle. Gold is unique in its physical properties. Even if you can’t agree on which country has a trustworthy currency, you have to trust gold.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why I’m Cryptophobic by daniel-cussen on Thursday June 30, 2022 @11:37AM (#31933993)
Gold and bitcoin are practically identical.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why I’m Cryptophobic by derac on Thursday June 30, 2022 @12:37PM (#31935043)
Good has a long history of use as a store of value. Bitcoin has a few years of being valuable. So did beanie babies. Noone knows if Bitcoin will be worth 0 or 100,000 in 5 years.
[ Parent | on HN ]