is it liquid in the way gold is ?
In this sense, bitcoin and gold are similar, though it is probably easier to trade gold as a paper asset, and easier to spend bitcoin as a currency.
But I don't think any of the above are a fair characterization of bitcoin beyond the current moment. It is changing too quickly. Over the next 6 months I can easily imagine bitcoin having further liquidity issues as popularity gains, block size limits # of transactions, etc. I can equally imagine the next 6 months easing these issues as the inflection point of these issues force change that has been unpalatable until no alternative was possible.
All speculation though, and probably not very insightful for anyone familiar with the topics. My point is simply that gold and its market dynamics will not change in that time frame, while bitcoin's must change, so comparisons to gold are stretching an analogy at this point.
The linked article even cites one hodlr that purchased a professional hockey team with his crypto profits.
That's also why I quoted USD, if you include crypto-crypto volume and some of the zero fee exchanges it definitely becomes nonsense.
BTC plummeted from mid $17.8k to $14.9k in 15 minutes, now back to $16.6k. ETH from $857 to $700 same period, back to $771 now.
Good times...
Edit: ah did you mean dollars?
The coin itself is of course quite liquid although transaction fees mean you aren't buying your weekly shopping with bitcoin. But maybe you can pay your monthly rent.
If I keep Krugerrands stashed under my pillow because I expect Neo-Stalinists to one day take control of the continent and confiscate all property held in digital systems, it doesn't seem like Bitcoin will give me much peace of mind. Surely the New World Order will shut down my Internet access too?
(I could be wrong though. The Bitcoin maximalists are a weird bunch. I follow one such guy on Twitter, and he seems to post a lot of pictures of guns with USB sticks when he's not promising to take more Bitcoin tattoos or bashing Ethereum as "beta cuck fake coin".)
There's a range of topics (money, power, sex, death) that do funny things to the human mind. When broaching said topics, most if not all people become unfathomably stupid in various ways.
I'm not entirely sure how sending bitcoin wallets through email would solve liquidity issues though.
But again, you're right. The barbarous relic of forlorn ages can't be emailed. It must rely on the tentative lack of duplicator ray technology to avoid double spending problems.
Where by "instantly" you mean "takes at least an hour and costs a fortune"?
No. I could email the private keys for any amount of bitcoin to anyone on earth instantly. Or do it with morse code over a telegraph...or smoke signals, it doesn't matter. Transactions on the blockchain are a different issue entirely.