Hacker News Reader

Comment by vorotato | Hacker News Reader

I think something that consistently deflates is already an absurdly flawed currency. It's not exactly an exchange medium if it's better to hold on to it than do something meaningful with it.

View on HN

It’s not a currency. It’s digital gold. Gold isn’t easy to exchange and it’s deflationary but it’s a good place to store your money for the long term, especially if you live in an unstable country.

What makes bitcoin valuable is that it’s gold without any of the downsides of gold. Hop in an airplane with the equivalent of millions of dollars in your pocket without having to trust or ask permission from anyone.

>the equivalent of millions of dollars in your pocket

Not really. Bitcoin is totally useless in most places especially outside of the developed world, you depend on the ability to find someone to trade you spendable money if you hope to make practical use of those "millions".

> What makes bitcoin valuable is that it’s gold without any of the downsides of gold.

Bitcoin has pretty much all the downsides that gold has, the main one being that despite its value its generally not accepted as a form of payment for goods and services, but even if you intend to barter, gold is much more practical because the transaction can be executed in real-time, offline, and isn't hindered by network congestion or limited access to computers/electricity/internet/technical-literacy etc etc. If are living in Puerto Rico the day before Irma hits, are you better off with 1kg of gold coins or 2 bitcoins?

>It’s not a currency. It’s digital gold.

Abstract: A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

In fact gold does not compare favorably to US equity markets as far as saving your money goes. An investment in an S&P500 index fund in late 2007 (right before the crash) would be worth more today than an investment in gold. An investment in the Dow Jones index in 1900 would be worth about six times as much as an equivalent investment in gold (assuming you held for 117 years, and not counting dividends).

Granted, people in unstable countries may have difficulty investing in the US stock market.

> Granted, people in unstable countries may have difficulty investing in the US stock market.

People in unstable countries may have trouble safeguarding gold stockpiles, as well.

> People in unstable countries may have trouble safeguarding gold stockpiles, as well.

Hence Bitcoin. cf. Zimbabwe

The fact that you can buy a similar amount of gold now for the same price as 2007 would indicate that it is currently at a better entry point. That this reasoning must be explained underlines a flaw in current investment sentiment. A 10-year horizon also is too short. A 100- or 500-year horizon is more typical for gold investment.

Like I said, on a 100-year timeline, the Dow Jones index outperformed gold -- with and without the gold standard, through booms and busts, through the great depression, through the oil crisis, etc. Since 1900, an investment tracking the DJIA would have gained 6x the value of a gold investment.

One day this will be true for Bitcoin, once it reaches a stable value.

As a store of value, Bitcoin is 100% a play on trust. Bitcoin's scarcity is based on consensus-- in an entirely decentralized network no less! Gold's scarcity is based on physical laws. I don't agree with Jamie Dimon much, but if folks think Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency is digital "gold," well there are a lot of people buying on a mistaken premise.

Meh, this is essentially a consensus argument which falls flat because gold’s value is ultimately based on consensus.

In the real world you cannot invent new elements, so it's hard to find an alternative for gold. Unfortunately everybody can create Bitcoin alternatives. That's the big difference between gold and Bitcoin.

Another consensus argument. There is more of a consensus around bitcoin than other cryptos and you can’t “invent” consensus either.

You need a consensus about what software to run, what it does, what version, and you need the consensus of the community to run nodes and mine.

Imagine that a large majority of miners bet the wrong way on Bitcoin at the CME and go in hoc up to their eyeballs short BTC. Let's say 80% of the BTC mining community is short big and they need BTC for delivery now. As a general proposition, that community could reach a consensus to modify the software they are running to inflate away their debt. The consensus is just like any other fiat currency, and it is very unlike the core nature of gold. The very scarcity is determined by consensus.

I see your point, theoretically majority miners could manipulate BTC supply. The major difference is that with fiat currency control of the money supply is centralized, while with Bitcoin it is distributed.

In addition, at the point that miners reached consensus for new BTC rules, arguably it would no longer be BTC.

Bitcoin’s qualities today make it more like gold than fiat, but in reality it’s neither. “Digital gold” is just an analogy.

I think everyone downvoted this because it is advertised as currency, but I think this person actually hit the nail on the head. Bitcoin does have value, but not as a currency because it doesn't actually inflate enough to make it bad to hoard. Instead its value (dubious, but I'll allow it) is essentially as a commodity, with all the rollercoaster that a commodity is. This is much more honest I think.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com