Comment by copenocoiner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by copenocoiner | Hacker News Reader

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How much does it cost to move 17 tons of gold? What is the risk involved in transfer?

I can answer that question for BTC. To transfer the USD value equivalent of 17 tons of gold, it's currently around $27.50[1]. This transaction can be made anywhere you can broadcast a hash string.

If you want to get fancy, you can trade wBTC on ethereum for, as of this moment, ~$8[2]. If even that is too high a fee for you, you could bridge over to xDAI and trade for orders of magnitude less than the value of a penny[3]. Again, you can do this anywhere you can broadcast a hash string.]

All of this is EXCHANGE, transaction, alone. Zero mention of the amazing utility of the financial instruments that are IMPOSSIBLE with legacy protocols. To go over which is not a comment or a blogpost but a detailed textbook or equivalent of a MOOC.

How's that for intrinsic value?

[1]https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_f...

[2]https://etherscan.io/gastracker

[3]https://jaredstauffer.medium.com/what-is-xdai-how-do-i-use-x....

A pittance for the Gold transaction if your facilitor is feeling generous. Leave the Gold where it is, and issue a writ on the change of ownership. Rely on the Fiat system to ensure your value moves the way you need to.

Everyone who tries to make the argument that moving physical Gold is the same as a Bitcoin transaction is deluding themselves. They're conflating the logistics of commodity transfer with transfer of ownership. These are completely different things.

>How much does it cost to move 17 tons of gold? What is the risk involved in transfer?

How much does it cost to verify 17 tons of gold is not counterfeit? How long would that take?

You can comfortably bet your family's life that Bitcoin is not counterfeit about an hour after a transaction.

Intrinsic value has nothing to do with cost of transaction.

So VISA and MasterCard have zero intrinsic value as companies. Does not pass the sniff test.

All value is tied to scarcity and gold is less scarce than bitcoin.

If we find a million tons of easily mineable gold tomorrow the price will dip below copper's. This can't happen to Bitcoin.

It is incorrect to take the average transaction fee and use that number to say it would equal the transaction fee placed on a transaction placed at 1b+ of value. It's fine to be a vocal proponent of cryptocurrency, but there's no need to use disingenuous information to prove that point.

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