Except that you can't clone gold or fork gold.

Gold isn't lost because you forgot the password to open it.

Or arbitrarily decide tomorrow that the old gold is not valid and a specific chain of gold is the real one.

Also, you can smelt gold, create electronics, jewellery, cosmetics, drugs with gold, you can't with Bitcoin.

Seriously comparing Bitcoin to gold is beyond silly.

I'm not invested in Bitcoin in any way, so I consider myself neutral. But I see some similarities here. Yes, unlike Bitcoin, gold has some real uses - but it's not what defines gold price, so I don't think it's relevant here. Yes, humanity could theoretically collectively decide that from now on gold is not valuable any more and chose some other scarce material as a way to store wealth, so I think it's not unlike bitcoin really. The difference is in mindshare - gold obviously has more of that, including governments investing in gold. Bitcoin is more likely to drop out of fashion with investors than gold, but so far it didn't happen, and there is also a chance it will not happen or that it will get even more mindshare, e.g. with other states following Trump's US in creating bitcoin reserves.

A Medici could hold a store of gold throughout their properties for the last 700 years and during that entire time, they can be a bank just on the fact that they can guarantee deposits against that wealth. At minimum they can ensure their wealth and that of their descendants, because gold has always been valuable. Even the communists hoarded gold - so much for building a currencyless society!

It is thus absurd to compare bitcoin to gold, yet. In 2000 years, if it's still around, I'm happy to accept the comparison.

I can find you people today that would take a gold coin for their services instead of a bitcoin (obviously worth far more), because they don't care / understand / trust it. The only reason I can think gold would no longer be valuable would also nullify the value of bitcoin - the demise of capitalism or anything like it, and the advent of a currencyless society.

> Yes, humanity could theoretically collectively decide that from now on gold is not valuable any more and chose some other scarce material as a way to store wealth

No it's not going to work because gold is very scarce and extremely valuable as a material in any case.

Yes, the price would take a hit, likely something between silver and current gold price, which would increase use and demand and then price again.

There's a reason we're thinking of mining it from asteroids.