Yes, using gold as a store of value is inefficient. You would generally expect returns worse than global equity markets over any significant period of time. You are at significant risk of _losing_ most of your money (adjusted for inflation, gold has never returned to its 80s peak, and was _much_ lower for most of the last 40 years). ~No-one should be investing in gold.

And bitcoin is even _worse_ than gold, on the fundamentals; gold does have at least have that bit of intrinsic value (plus a few millennia of cultural cachet). Bitcoin has _nothing_.

My wife can't wear a bitcoin. She can wear a gold necklace and will be pleased to do it even if the price goes to 10%

What’s better: someone’s wife wearing a gold necklace, or a gold ignot sitting idle in Fort Knox?

What’s better: someone living in a house, or a house sitting idle as a store of value?

What’s better: someone storing his wealth in houses and gold ignots, or in special financial assets that don’t take away products from other people?

Hoarded wealth is a stinking manure; used wealth is a fertilizer.

> hoarded

It’s bad to be able to transport wealth through time? Spend it or lose it? Never work hard now for later?

Doesn’t the appeal of gold as jewelry rely on it being expensive? I think if the price cratered its use in jewelry would probably plummet.

It's the look. You also get resin / rock / clay / steel / ... (anything really) jewellery. It's not just about the price. And even then, a jewelry-sized gold piece is quite cheap.

Would she be happy to wear a necklace that appeared identical to gold to the naked eye, but anyone with a $10 instrument could demonstrate was not gold but something relatively worthless? If so, I have something I would like to sell you that your wife would really love.

I doubt she would be too pleased with the green stain left behind when taken off

Industrial uses of gold aren't the only uses of gold. Like it or not, jewelry (among other decorative objects) containing actual gold is an enduring status symbol that is hard to 100% fake, and there is quite a large amount of the world's gold that is used for decorative purposes.

It makes it hard to value Bitcoin.

It's not only almost 100% speculation, it doesn't have much history track record.

Crypto bros need to understand that they aren't the first people to discover a speculation market, and just because they can dream of utility doesn't mean they test if the world wants to treat it as a reality. What they're doing is, from a financial perspective, boring and in many cases outdated.