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Comment by mminer237 | Hacker News Reader

In the last 5 fives, gold's highest price was 60% higher than its lowest point. That is indeed pretty volatile.

Let's see if Bitcoin is comparably volatile…

Oh, it's highest point was only 1920% higher than its lowest point. That's definitely the exact same as gold. /s

Also, that ignores that gold has been a store of value for millennia. It's almost synonymous with wealth. In a total financial collapse, if all modern technology dies, you can be sure gold will still have value. 99.9% of people have no idea what Bitcoin is besides funny computer money.

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Even if people WANTED bitcoin in a total financial collapse, what scenario collapses all normal fiat currencies and doesn't touch a system that requires cheap power and niche hardware and internet connections?

Gold has a perception of wealth but history makes clear what it actually is. For example, the hordes of gold the Spanish plundered from the Americas directly contributed to the bankruptcy of the monarchy.[1] Because they hadn't actually seized/mined "wealth" - they'd simply inflated their currency away without any commensurate expansion in productivity.

People who believe that it would be "easy" to trade gold for other goods have also clearly never tried - since the entire modern banking system came into existence on the basis of the sheer difficulty of directly trading gold for other goods. No one knows how to value gold, they don't know what it's worth other then a brick is probably a lot. If they could, then the fake jewellery scam wouldn't be as successful as it is[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_revolution

[2] https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/just-say-no-walk-away-fake-...

Even better, the influx of gold from the New World was preceded by the period called the Great Bullion Famine where Europe-wide shortages of silver and gold led to long periods of deflation across the continent!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Bullion_Famine

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