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Comment by eloff | Hacker News Reader

To play devil's advocate here, Bitcoin might be a kind of digital gold. It suffers less inflation (supply grows slower), is more divisible, and is easier to move and store.

People might argue gold has other uses, but they don't move the needle, and anyway, so does Bitcoin.

The thing is gold has thousands of years track record as a store of value and as money or something to back money. Bitcoin obviously does not, and it remains to be seen if it can replace gold in that way. I don't see central banks stocking up on it yet.

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This is a fair observation, but every time this comes up, I have to wonder, what advantage does Bitcoin offer over gold?

- Gold has no dependency on electricity, computers, or any energy source. Bitcoin ceases to exist without these things.

- Gold has a lot of practical uses and applications as a material. Bitcoin has none.

- Gold is a naturally occurring element. Bitcoin is not.

The only advantage I've ever been able to see is that Bitcoin ownership can be transferred electronically compared to gold that must be moved. However, being able to be moved electronically also means that it can be stolen electronically. A bad actor in North Korea has the potential to steal a person's wallet credentials and transfer Bitcoin out of their possession. They can't do this with physical gold.

Gold is not a perfect store of value - it doesn't serve a fundamental need like food or a blanket - but it has served it's purpose over the millennia and I don't see how Bitcoin is improving on it.

I gave four ways it improves over gold in the first couple sentences. Easier to transfer was one.

I'm with you, in that I'm very skeptical Bitcoin could replace or supplement gold in that role. It's not impossible though.

> Easier to transfer was one.

I can hand you a piece of gold and the transfer is done. No 74 character address, no keys, no official public ledger of the transaction happening, just a transfer of value between two parties.

Moving gold across the ocean is expensive. You can only do it so many times before you've expended the full value of the gold. Bitcoin is much easier to move around by comparison.

Keep in mind the vast majority of gold holdings and transactions are between central banks.

> I can hand you a piece of gold and the transfer is done

And how can I easily verify it's really 100% gold?

Really not easily. Bitcoin is superior in that way.

> I have to wonder, what advantage does Bitcoin offer over gold?

I don't think that gold can be sent over the internet or be invisibly held/transported in a brain wallet.

We store most of our value in our human bodies and buildings we erect on land.

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