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Comment by diegocerdan | Hacker News Reader

The function of Store of Value (SoV) of any money is acquired by common belief of it's worth. It happened with gold in a very long time-span. People holding gold would not benefit of the increase of price as it took too long.

Gold... what if this common belief can be upgraded to a better form of money?

Bitcoin is energy quite energy intense and slow in the number of transactions but gold has many drawbacks too! It's a heavy rock, can't be easily split for payments, you have to spend efforts in custody and can't be transferred digitally.

Bitcoin... what if this common belief can be upgraded to a better form of money?

Ethereum is way more complex than Bitcoin but solves through clever engineering most of it's drawbacks. Let the Market decide which form of money is best.

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I spoke about crypto speculation, and I was explicit about that. I choose not to debate speculative claims about crypto's potential for becoming a useful "store of value" or "currency for commerce" at this time and in this place.

As to letting the market decide things, I lived through the Bre-X scandal, where the market decided to invest in a fake mine, and real lives were ruined. I believe in regulated marketplaces.

Canadians are overly protective of market places. It's my money -- not yours. I'll trade it or speculate it as I want.

The common belief of worth is where similarities between bitcoin and gold end.

What you list as drawbacks of gold are exactly the thing that preclude it being so easily weaponised for scams/fraud/rapid-wealth-redistribution.

You call bitcoin a SoV but further down describe it as a form of money. You also have an implicit assumption about what makes a "better" form of money. I'd like to read a bit more about what defines "better" in your opinion.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/bitcoin-dimensions-of-mo...

> The common belief of worth is where similarities between bitcoin and gold end Sure, it's also enough.

> You call bitcoin a SoV but further down describe it as a form of money. The primary functions which distinguish money are as a Medium of Exchange, a Unit of Account, a Store of Value: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money

> I'd like to read a bit more about what defines "better" in your opinion. There is definitely a list of features but I would argue that being hard money is the most important feature. Meaning hard/sound where the nominal amount of money does not change.

Bitcoin in definitely hard but Ethereum does even better by being deflationary. As network transactions are slowly reducing the total amount in circulation.

Other nice features of Bitcoin/Ethereum vs Gold/Dollar are: digital, non-seizable and no third party risk.

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