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Comment by tscs37 | Hacker News Reader

Well, for one, if someone tells you Gold is an excellent store of value, it's probably bad advice, there are better places to put your money (like a bank account or ETF)

Plus, Gold might be highly volatile by some stock standards but it barely moved a percent over the last 24h while Bitcoin does percent movements on the hour mark.

Stores of value require a predictable purchasing power to be useful, bitcoin does not have predictable purchasing power. Or the guarantee that in 20 years I'll still be able to use bitcoin at all.

The major difference here is that gold has been used for about 2000 years plus now and has proven to be somewhat valuable in a functioning society. Bitcoin hasn't been around for a full percent of this time and nobody knows if it'll be around for another percent to begin with.

Ring me up though if Bitcoin will survive the next 100 years for sure.

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> Stores of value require a predictable purchasing power to be useful

Think you confuse matters: A currency should have "a predictable purchasing power", not a store of value. Latter should rather grow (which requires a deflationary nature/limited supply) and offer stability in times when stocks and/or currencies nosedive. Gold is not that bad for this use case and BTC is even better.

But instead of so much meta talk I would be happy if you let me know which asset is a better store of value than BTC and why (for all kind of countries, also those with weak economies/currencies/infrastructures).

A well aged wine is usually not a bad idea if you have some money.

In a deep crisis, cigarettes aren't a bad idea, they usually end up being a black market currency. In other regions of crisis bullets might also be a good idea.

For a proper financial market with money, a good store of value might just be a long term savings account in a bank, that's a very stable value store and usually those keep up with inflation pretty well. If you can have a bit more risk there are index fonds and ETFs but those are more money making than store of value.

In places with weak economies it usually doesn't make sense to establish much of a store of value, bartering is more common and people just live with what they have, the accumulation of wealth beyond the daily necessary can be rare in some african countries.

BTC is also a bad solution since it's rather expensive, weak economies have more people who can't afford the rather extreme transaction fees (which are laughably high compared to EU SEPA transactions even at comparable confirmation times)

> For a proper financial market with money, a good store of value might just be a long term savings account in a bank

Not sure. Look what 2008 happened: States had to rescue banks which would have gone bankrupt otherwise and because of this the entire economy/currency suffered. A FIAT saving account—even in a developed country/financial market—is a terrible store of value.

> weak economies have more people who can't afford the rather extreme transaction fees

When I look at Google Trends https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=bitcoin I see many weaker countries or low-income countries (South America, Russia) which have a quite high interest in BTC.

The transaction fees don't hurt if it's just about putting your savings in a safe spot. The people are not going to buy groceries with BTC.

> "a predictable purchasing power", not a store of value

The two go together, surely? What kind of value is it if it doesn't translate into purchasing power?

Hard to get better than US T-Bills for value preservation. That's the standard financial advice. There is a point in Bitcoin being available in countries where capital controls make USD hard to obtain, but the bitcoin is hardly easy to obtain in that situation either.

> bitcoin is hardly easy to obtain in that situation either.

It's def. easier than getting US T-Bills. BTC is widely available in most countries and if not, you just go to a meetup and trade it in person (with higher fees but still easier than... US T-Bills). So, you still owe us after all this discussion a better alternative for an internationally available store of value than BTC.

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