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Comment by anm89 | Hacker News Reader

Gold doesn't have earnings releases either.

There's only one gold... of the cryptocurrencies Bitcoin has become the store of value, by consensus, but that consensus is far more easily popped than the consensus of Gold's worth

It at least is tied to a physical thing. There are then limits to how high gold can go in price as higher prices means more will come to the market to sell it because the higher prices are not viewed as sustainable.

Whereas with bitcoin, it is fairly unmoored from physical constraints.

There is no natural price for bitcoin.

It could go up forever or drop to nothing and both are acceptable valuations that would be hard to question -- because it is merely shared belief.

The only plus I can see is a stronger belief that you can't synthesise gold. Synthesising Bitcoin would take an enormous amount of coordinated computing power, but it is technically possible. Other than that I don't see why it matters that gold is a physical thing.

See my peer comment. You can "synthesize" gold pretty easily. I agree most people don't consider this when buying gold though. So "stronger belief" is still accurate. Unfortunately unscrupulous people make fortunes off of that strong belief.

> It at least is tied to a physical thing.

People should know more about the paper gold market. Most importantly how much gold people think they have stored safely in vaults, but is essentially just an IOU that could never be paid if everyone withdrew at the same time. Pretty scary/exciting stuff. I couldn't even begin to describe all the dimensions to this and still learning myself. But long story short, consider the possibility that the price of gold isn't anywhere near tied to a physical thing. :)

Chuck .E Cheese tokens are tied to a physical thing.

All money, currency and assets are based on faith on the continuing demand for that thing. All the other properties are incidental.

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