Re:Bitcoin is not a store of value
by caf on Monday September 19, 2022 @07:59AM
(#32897148)
Does it? The Protection Department of the United States Mint spends about $50M / year, and they look after the United States Bullion Depository which has over $10B worth of gold in deep storage - so no more than 0.5%/year.
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BTC miners make around 20mil / day and with a 400B market cap, that's around 1.78% / year so definitely higher. But I'd argue the United States Mint also relies at least partly on the US military.
The Protection Department would not last long against a nation-state attack. In contrast, BTC has no nation-state or military protection.
It doesn't matter about the US military, because the gold market doesn't have to prop up the US military - it gets that ride for free. The point isn't "who is cheaper" in some theoretical sense, it's that as a practical matter the nation of Bitcoinia is importing a large amount of electricity from the USD, RMB, EUR etc economies. This is equivalent in effect to what the gold market as a whole has to pay in storage/holding costs for physical gold. If physical gold holding costs were to rise substantially for some reason, that would significantly reduce the returns available from holding gold.