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Comment by xutopia | Hacker News Reader

I see so many people dissing the technology and rehashing old arguments.

You shouldn't consider Bitcoin as a currency but as a better form of Gold. Like gold it has a limited amount available: ~180k tons of gold and eventually 21 million bitcoins. Like gold it is a good store of value (especially as more people are dropping their gold to purchase BTC). Unlike Gold you can send it to someone else online and that means it can also be used like a currency (even thought it is not its strength).

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Many people buy gold for “post apocalypse” scenarios. How well is the bitcoin network going to work in the post apocalypse?

Many people buy shovels to clear snow. How well will general purpose shovels work after a blizzard?

Product 1 has use A (in this case Apocalypse Insurance), and product 2 doesn't because its meant for another scenario.

In a true, real post apocalyptic world, you can't eat gold, you can't have sex with it, it will not cure your sickness nor will it feed your vices; therefore, it has little to no value.

But someone might exchange that gold with you for food, for sex, for medicine, and for what feeds your vices, as they have for millennia.

Once a semblance of civilization establishes again? Then yes, it's likely. During times of true hardship where the general population is at risk of dying of starvation, disease or being murdered by a once upstanding citizen, and there's no way to readily exchange that gold for needed supplies? No. You would consider yourself lucky to be able to exchange a bar of solid gold for a few cans of food.

True, it would by necessity be a barter economy.

Or similarly, an informal debt economy. If I give Bob a pair of boots, he'll be more obliged to give me one of his pigs when I tell him how nice and fat they look a month later. Informal debt economies really only work within tribal communities where social pressure has more leverage, but it does solve the double coincidence of wants problem.

It's also harder to confiscate than gold, given one takes reasonable security measures.

Gold and silver can't be "forked"

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