(not to act like im above it all, i still have my gold-plated pokemon jigglypuff trading card from burger king in 1999 and i often use golden paint on model kits).
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? How come his Bitcoin holdings - now worth more than $100 billion dollars - have remained untouched since 2010? How can any one human resist that kind of temptation? I would be digging landfill sites if I lost my wallet worth $100 billion. The launch of Bitcoin also coincided with the 2008 financial crisis. The first block had the text: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" embedded, etc.
None of the altcoins have this level of myths and legend. You need this kind of supernatural story to start a new fiat, digital gold, religion, and whatever collective fiction you can think of.
Apparently the first popular stablecoin can't be beat either, despite its sketchy origins and a lot of bad press.
If beyond a certain point, only fame matters, it's kind of depressing from a technological innovation point of view.
I too would retreat to the farthest corners of the earth never to be seen again if I had misplaced 100 billion dollars.
It s superior to currency because while (for example) the US dollar will always have value as long as you pay taxes with it, there is not a limited supply
It is superior to bartering because while (for example) a chicken has value due to its utility as food, it naturally disappears (because you ate it or it died).
Gold and other precious metals sort of sit in the middle ground as the "next best thing" to almost everything that humans want. So it remains a useful means of preserving and communicating value.
The true value of gold is quite stable over time (since new gold is mined at a slow rate). Fiat currencies are constantly being debased. Hard assets fluctuate up and down relative to gold.
In contrast, Trump has been making noises about wanting to replace Powell as chair of the Fed, because Powell won't dance to Trump's tune. I do not want a world where Trump can determine (even if indirectly) the value of the dollar, or the interest rate, or anything in that vicinity.
So I trust the dollar a lot less than I did six months ago. In contrast, gold doesn't care what Trump's policy is.
https://www.space.com/astronomy/earth/earths-next-mini-moon-...
All the Germans who had great gold reserves in 1930 still ended up fighting in WW2. Hell, many of them were Jewish and had that gold stolen and sent to the Swiss for safekeeping by the Nazi state. The danger to their society was not hyperinflation, it was a hostile government sending them to die for stupid reasons, and literally like a hundred people, or fewer, choosing out of utter stupidity and an insane ideology based purely on ignorance, forcing everyone into a bad situation.
There is no safety, of any kind, under authoritarianism. Gold will not save you.
That useful property was well known (and notably, other currencies such as shells and precious stones lacked this). In addition as others have said, gold was both scarce and had a low melting point. However, other metals had these properties too, and sure enough, some cultures did anchor their currencies on metals other than gold.
We are not "just instinctively attracted to shiny metals". FHN.