This article was originally published by Austin Litman on Proofofwork.ca
Bitcoin is Superior to Gold
This post is comparing Bitcoin to physical gold, not the stock. I will dive into the Gold stock scam in a future post. If you’re thinking about buying gold over bitcoin, buy physical gold only.
This post also assumes we know how much physical gold is on Earth, but that is not the case. The public doesn’t own transparent data, only data from the government they need to trust.
Property #1: Scarcity
- Gold: It’s valuable because it’s hard to mine and find. That is changing. NASA found an asteroid with $10 Quadrillion of Gold and other metals. Once that asteroid is mined (the USA is trying to be first), Earth’s metal values will dilute. There are several other asteroids like this, and technology advancements are accelerating in this field. Mining on Earth is also becoming more efficient yearly.
- Bitcoin: There are only 21 million available, and 19.21 million have been mined. This is coded, and nothing can change it. There is only about 8% of the 21 million supply left. This gets distributed at a pre-coded rate until the year 2,140; no more will be available after that. No other planets or asteroids can dilute the supply for your grandchildren.
Property #2: Portability
- Gold: If you want to take your wealth to another Country in the form of gold bars, it is challenging. When doing this with millions of dollars in gold, you can expect to pay tens of thousands in security or even more. Gold is heavy and not portable.
- Bitcoin: It’s digital, weighs 0 pounds, and can be sent by scanning a QR code.
Property #3: Divisibility
- Gold: It will take a lot of work to break gold into equal pieces. Imagine splitting $420 of gold equally between 69 people. There will be errors, and it will take many hours and dollars.
- Bitcoin: Infinitely divisible for any dollar amount you need
Property #4: Security
- Gold: Physical gold has been one of the reasons behind almost every war and invasion since humans invented plunder. If you kill another tribe, their gold is still there, and you can take it home. In modern times, there is very minimal security when travelling internationally with physical gold, which is stressful. You can only do it if you are already rich. Poor people can’t afford to travel with it since they can’t afford the security and are always at risk of it being stolen.
- Bitcoin: You don’t have any unless you say you do. If someone kills you, they can’t take your Bitcoin. If someone threatens you for your password, you show them proof that there’s a custodian of your password, and you don’t know it.
Property #5: Verifiable
- Gold: It’s easy to fake and hard to verify. There are reliable verification methods; you must trust them, though. Verifying thousands of lbs. can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
- Bitcoin: There is only 21 million Bitcoin, and every single transaction in the network can be verified by any human worldwide for free.
