Are central banks retail investors? Are they buying gold to "to free the world or whatever"? No [1]?
Gold and silver have deep precedence as money. This leads to them trading as haven assets, i.e. their price rises when financial conditions deteriorate. Bitcoin doesn't. It trades as a risk asset, i.e. its price falls when financial conditions deteriorate. This could change! But that's true of literally every thing traded.
Bitcoin has that rep as well.
No, it doesn’t. The evidence is crypto trading as a risk asset. People believe it could one day trade as a haven asset, but that hasn’t happened yet. Not close.
It's proving quite useful to Russia's central bank which is selling gold to China as many of its other reserves have been frozen.
This could be an interesting thread in itself.
Gold and gold buggery are separate. Gold and silver have deep precedence as money. They're also useful commodities. Gold buggery involves retail investors disproportionately allocating to gold as a buy-and-hold asset, often with emotional attachment. Those buying crypto because it's going to free the world or whatever resemble the latter.