Comment by cs702 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cs702 | Hacker News Reader

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Gold, which is possibly the oldest store of value used by civilization, is just as volatile.

The inflation-adjusted price per Troy ounce of gold went from a high of around $2400 in the the late 1400's, to a low of $200 in 1919; then, it rose in fits and starts until it peaked at nearly $1600 in 1980; it then declined, again in fits and starts, until it bottomed just below $400 in 2002; then it rose to nearly $2000 in 2012; and since then, has dropped to just over $1200, today's price:

   1490   1919   1980   2002   2012   2017
  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----
  $2400   $200  $1600   $400  $2000  $1200

The price of gold is unstable over shorter time frames too. For example, since the start of last year, the price has oscillated between just over $1000 and nearly $1400 per Troy ounce.

This kind of volatility seems normal for assets used as a store of value.

Sources:

[1] http://www.zerohedge.com/news/charting-price-gold-all-way-ba...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_as_an_investment#/media/F...

[3] http://www.kitco.com/charts/historicalgold.html

Except that during crisis Gold is guarantee to fall back at worst to it's "practical" value as a metal being used for jewelry. Even tulips bulbs have a practical value as every gardener could tell you.

However the practical value of a crypto currency is zero. And no technical small talk was able to contest this truth so far.

EDIT: Downvote what you can't contest, how mature!

* I can buy a new Dell laptop with Bitcoin (https://blog.dell.com/en-us/we-re-now-accepting-bitcoin-on-d...).

* For that laptop I can buy Windows with Bitcoin (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13942/microsoft-acc...).

* I can book my holiday with Bitcoin (https://www.cheapair.com/help/payment-and-billing/what-is-bi...).

* I can donate to Wikimedia with Bitcoin (https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Ways_to_Give#bitcoin).

Can't really do any of those things with tulips or gold. This is just a small set of places where I can do purchases with Bitcoin.

As for currency, sure a tulip has practical value. But does a $100 bill? You can roll it for a cigarette or it can give you 5 seconds of warmth if you burn it. But that's about it. The reason you have all your savings in $ or € or something else, is because we all as a society say "this piece of paper (worth less than a cent in materials) is worth $5, and this one $50, and this slightly bigger one is $100". Same with crypto-currencies.

You're agreeing with him.

Gold and tulips are commodity currencies, they have value outside of their uses as a currency.

The dollar and bitcoin are not commodity currencies, i.e., they have no value or use outside of their use as currencies.

Whether bitcoin can be called a 'fiat' currency is debatable because it's not a currency "by fiat", though "fiat" currency has come to mean a non-commodity currency.

I see now that I misunderstood his point.

Buying something with something else is not a "practical use". Practical use means that you can actually build or make something of value with the product in question.

The prices for all of these things are almost certainly based on the conversion rate between Bitcoin and the US dollar (or other major currencies). If Bitcoin massively deflates you may be able to still do those things, but it will cost many more Bitcoin: that's the whole point of this discussion.

Yes, a $100 has no practical value either. But it's the official tender of the US government, which means that the US government does all of its spending in US dollars. Contracts, paying its employees, etc. The US government (federal, state, and local) spends a significant chunk of US GDP, i.e. a significant chunk of the world's largest economy.

A country's currency is understood to be tied to that country's economy and monetary policy. As the economy is larger and the policy decisions are protected from craziness by checks and balance, currencies tend to be volatile only to a certain point in practice.

This is even more true when you live in said country: if you live in the US, even if the US dollar is inflating considerably as measured against foreign currencies, the inflation of the dollar on the local economy is generally less. US annual consumer price index inflation has only cracked 10% for the year a handful of times in the last century.

I see your point, and I see I misunderstood the OP's point too. Thanks!

You are required to pay taxes in your state's currency. You can't really buy much with Bitcoin when it tanks, because all of those stores are just using the current exchange rate with state currency.

Gold has industrial usage as well - electronics, computers, even in space tech Gold it's used for it's unique properties.

I don't get why crypto keeps being compared to a metal.

Even fiat currency has intrinsic value. The Zimbabwe bills that were inflated to hell and beyond, then replaced, which aren't even legal tender any more, still have value as collectible notes. You see them on eBay all the time for a buck or two.

Nobody will pay anything for your Bitcoin wallet if Bitcoin fundamentally fails, just as nobody will pay for your World of Warcraft gold when the pull the plug on the last WoW server a decade or two from now. It's just a bunch of useless numbers.

If you're "investing" in crypto, that is speculating, then fine. If you're thinking it's a safe and secure way to store money you're mistaken.

> I don't get why crypto keeps being compared to a metal.

Because Bitcoin was literally created to imitate gold, with the idea being to propagate crank goldbug conspiracy theory economics.

This is why the price is so volatile - as an imitation of the gold standard, bitcoin wants to be money but actually works like a commodity, with booms, busts and bubbles.

https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/the-conspiracist-gold-b...

I understand it - even the term "gold rush" could be applied here, where people the get the fever and sometimes do irrational stuff to try to strike the good ol'gold nugget.

You can learn a lot from the psychology and sociology side of the Gold Rush event, and surely you can compare it to the crypto event (after all, that's what history is for).

But like you've said, Bitcoin was created to imitate gold... still it's not gold.

Unless said crises is global and the internet is dead world wide you would always be able to sell your cryptocurrency to someone in a stable economic market somewhere in the world. When the local fiat currency inflates to worthlessness cryptocurrencies shine.

I don't say cryptocurrency can't be a thing. If widely supported it can succeed as any other fiat currency.

It's just that I think it's nonsensical to apply analogy between gold/bitcoin because of the lack of practical value of BTC.

For instance if the Russian ruble lost 30% of it's value during late Cold War. Would you argue that it's like gold and that we should'nt worry? Well actually some people thought that way... and got burned.

Again I'm not comparing, I'am precisely stating that we should not compare crypto currency to previous markets. We should embrace the fact that we are totally in an unknown territory.

> We should embrace the fact that we are totally in an unknown territory.

Well, not really.

One, we aren't - hugely volatile charts like this are usual in commodities, which cryptos are constructed so as to imitate.

But two, when people start saying phrases like "a whole new form of money" or "the old rules don’t apply any more", people get gullible and the ethically-challenged get creative. And a whole pile of old cons come back into the world.

The best book ever written on Bitcoin is still Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay, and that was written in 1841. Chapter 1 on tulip mania and chapter 2 on the South Sea bubble will seem eerily familiar.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24518

> you would always be able to sell your cryptocurrency to someone in a stable economic market somewhere in the world

That's a pretty bold assertion without any evidence or real theoretical justification.

"Unless said crises is global and the internet is dead world wide you would always be able to sell your cryptocurrency to someone in a stable economic market somewhere in the world." Its not true.

Dogecoin is an example.

I have Dogecoin! It's actually worth a few hundred USD at current prices!

I mined some for shits and giggles years ago.

you are right only silver and gold are money.

it should not be Bitcoin vs Gold, the real question is Bitcoin vs USD

Dinosaur, meet meteor.

Wait, what? BTC's dollar volatility is a lot higher than gold's, though there have been short intervals where it's slightly lower.

There's even a site for tracking it; can't link the specific graph, but you can go here and just turn on 30-day BTC/USD and 30-day gold/USD for the past year.

https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/volatility-index/

Volatility over 1 month is vastly more harmful than volatility over a decade. To the point where they are not meaningfully comparable.

Further, showing that the actual price is between 200-2500 over 500 years is awesome demonstration of Gold's stability. If I buy 20 million in gold I might not make money over the next 50 years, but I will still be 'wealthy'. Cryptocurrency's have a nasty habit of simply disappearing much like individual stocks they could be around in 50 years and might be worth significantly more, but that does not mean they are worth storing in a giant vault.

you know what is an even better store of value? Just buying across the S&P 500. Treasury bonds also work.

I can understand going for Gold or BTC if you do not have reliable access to US financial markets, but if you do have this, there's no reasonable financial argument for using BTC as your store of value.

If the dollar falls apart, you won't be able to use BTC.

There is no "better" or "worse". The S&P500 is less volatile than Bitcoin, the flip side of that is that historically Bitcoin has appreciated relative to the S&P 500.

Bitcoins are far more practical than an S&P500 ETF. For instance, I can carry bitcoins across a border, whereas if you want to move shares across a border it will involve a lot of paperwork -- if you are a US citizen it may be impossible due to FATCA.

> Bitcoins are far more practical than an S&P500 ETF. For instance, I can carry bitcoins across a border, whereas if you want to move shares across a border it will involve a lot of paperwork -- if you are a US citizen it may be impossible due to FATCA.

You seem to be comparing like what is physically possible with one with what is legally allowed with another; it's physically possible, and you'll probably usually get away with it, to carry stock certificates across most borders. Conversely, I haven't seen ant set of customs allowances which permit travellers to legally carry bitcoins across the border (and those rules tend to be “everything not specifically permitted is prohibited”.)

An element of volatility is time, so Crypto is not reallt comparable to Gold..

Volatility isn't particularly an issue with the store of value function of money; it is a problem for the medium of exchange, and, even moreso, unit of account functions. Those latter two functions are what distinguishes money/currency from any other durable asset.

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