[felipeko]

There's a difference about Gold's rarity and Bitcoin's.

Gold is rare on its kind and rare on its abundance. It may be hard to mine more gold, but it's way harder to find another gold-like commodity.

Bitcoin is only rare in the abundance sense. It is hard to mine more bitcoin, but it's pretty easy to find a (arguably better) substitute for what it does.

I can agree with it being better (having more utility) than gold, though. So I'd agree that the sum of all e-coins will surpass gold, but I see no reason for Bitcoin to do it alone.

[WorldMaker]

Bitcoin definitely isn't rare in kind as we've already seen how relatively "easy" it is to fork. Could just fork Bitcoin infinitely as one way to deal with its supposed scarcity.

Bitcoin isn't even rare in the abundance sense if you consider that how hard it is to mine new coins is merely a function of a mathematical curve that can be adjusted as a software change. Certainly any change to the mining difficulty and/or coin pool ceiling would be hugely controversial, but it's not like it's mathematically impossible merely politically improbable, for now.

[derekp7]

The thing that is rare is the total amount of mining nodes behind bitcoin. That is what you are buying into, is mindshare. Of course the mining nodes are mostly profit driven. If another coin had a higher profit margin, the miners would switch over to that coin.

[WorldMaker]

That rarity too is also software controlled based on the difficulty curve. Bitcoin doesn't have to boil the oceans, it could make mining easy enough again that transactions could be mined in a coffee break on an average person's smart phone's GPU.

As I said, the scarcity of Bitcoin is much more a political structure than an inherent nature of Bitcoin. The miners control Bitcoin so much as anyone does and it is their political intent as much as anything else that creates any scarcity in Bitcoin at all.

[pfisch]

Forking bitcoin doesn't create more bitcoins. It creates something else that is not bitcoins any longer that will not be accepted anywhere.

[WorldMaker]

The philosophical and political reality of what makes a "real" Bitcoin that people can accept is outside of the question of scarcity. The fact that a Bitcoin can be endlessly "duplicated", at the whims of software developers and/or miners, regardless of how likely or improbable they may be able to be "spent" should definitely give people some pause in their Tulip mania that Bitcoins are not by their nature inherently a scarce commodity. They are scarce only so far as the political reality in which they are transacted continues to keep them scarce.

[pfisch]

But they are in fact different. Maybe not as different as gold vs silver but similar in that gold and silver also have completely artificial values driven by hype.

[KaoruAoiShiho]

What do you mean gold is rare on its own kind? Aren't there tons of other pretty metals? There doesn't seem to be any unique property of gold (other than sociological) that would help it defend against competitors like bitcoin or any other new asset.

[sverige]

Gold is rare in several senses: In addition to being a rare element, it is the most ductile metal, the most malleable metal, and one of the best conductors of heat and electricity. It is very stable and doesn't oxidize. It is easy to alloy and easy to refine back to pure state. It is one of three metals that naturally occurs in its elemental state. It is the easiest metal to work for jewelry and other purposes. It is also very dense.

All of these properties are what made gold valuable sociologically. Silver is nearly as easy to work and refine, but it is far more abundant and it also tarnishes easily, so it is two orders of magnitude less valuable.

Platinum is also far more abundant, but much harder to refine, which is the sole reason for its high price. It is also much harder to work, requiring much higher temperatures to melt. It is a far harder and tougher metal than gold, which is why it is often used for the crowns in which precious stones are set, and as a plating material for gold.

Bitcoin is just vapor, good for nothing in a practical sense. It doesn't even have attractive designs like paper money. Fiat money is susceptible to going to zero value; gold will never go to zero, even in some total societal collapse scenario.

[mindentropy]

If a government pulls the plug on the internet won't the value of Bitcoin go to zero?

[felipeko]

You can't find another precious metal that will have the rarity of gold and it's "non deterioration" property, both that made gold what it is (it's also a really useful commodity).

But i agree that's not enough to defend against competitors like Bitcoin, but the same cannot be said of Bitcoin. Other than sociological factors (that are arguably much stronger on gold), there's nothing that would help it defend against others e-coins.

[gruez]

>You can't find another precious metal that will have the rarity of gold and it's "non deterioration" property, both that made gold what it is (it's also a really useful commodity).

platinum. i will agree that gold is easier to tell apart (it's yellow) than platinum. although realistically that's a moot point because you're going to want to do chemical tests when dealing in non-trivial amounts of precious metals.

[munchbunny]

Which is even more rare for when you need to deal with issues like environmental temperatures going over 800C.

The same argument applies to platinum: it has essential physical applications that are hard to replicate, so it will retain a high baseline value just on the merits of "we need it for essential hardware."

If a cryptocurrency manages to pull off the software equivalent of "essential engineering applications," then the conversation about cryptocurrencies will change dramatically. As it stands, blockchains will probably prove to be situationally useful, but blockchain =/= cryptocurrency.

[felipeko]

You got me! :)

Now find a few hundreds more and we will be closer (not really) to Bitcoin's rarity of kind.

[ufo]

There aren't that many metals that behave similarly to Gold.

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

[toomanybeersies]

"There aren't that many metals that behave similarly to Gold" is not equivalent to "there are no metals that behave similarly to Gold".

You cannot invent a new noble metal. You can't fork an existing noble metal.

[scaryspooky]

Gold is insanely useful as a conductive metal.

[saalweachter]

Another critical difference is that there are commodity uses of gold. The price of gold will never go to zero; it might go to $100 or $10 per oz if all speculation and hoarding were removed from the market but it wouldn't go to $0.

[frgtpsswrdlame]

Sure but what's the importance of that fact? If I buy an ecoin at $1500 and it goes to zero and if I buy gold at $1510 and it goes to $10 it's the same loss. I guess what's the real importance that gold has a floor which is marginally above zero and bitcoin doesn't if both of those floors are far below the current price level.

[saalweachter]

It's valuable because you can, if you do some research, make some pretty educated guesses about what the floor is in the gold market. That tells you whether you are risking 10%, 25%, 75%, or 90% of your money while speculating.

And, uhh, if you don't know why having a good idea of your potential downside is useful when investing, maybe consider finding a trustworthy financial adviser?

[jstanley]

And what's that got to do with bitcoin? If you're going to assert that gold can't go to $0 and imply that bitcoin can, you need to also give a good reason why bitcoin can go to $0.

[fastball]

At one point in time, Bitcoin was worthless. Therefore it is provable that it can be worthless.

At no point in history has gold been worthless.

As far as you and I know, gold has had worth as long as society has had the capability to get it.

[erikpukinskis]

False.

At one point Mussolini was alive. Therefore it is provable that Mussolini could live again.

Sorry, try again.

At one point, these grains of sand were in this glass. Then I poured them into the ocean. But they were in the glass so they could be in there again.

Except no, no they couldn’t. The 2nd law of thermodynamics makes many things non-repeatable.

[fastball]

You are making the opposite claim to mine, they are not comparable. Try these on for size:

  Before his birth, Mussolini was not alive. Therefore, it is possible that he could not be alive again.

  At one point, there were no grains of sand in this glass. Therefore it is possible that there will be no grains of sand in this glass again.

Thermodynamics is really not the tool you should bring to bear in this conversation. Entropy dictates that eventually everything will be worthless, and that includes Bitcoin. The price of Bitcoin is not an irreversible product of entropy, despite what some investors might wish.

[erikpukinskis]

Are you really standing by your logic, or are you just arguing with me for sport? If it’s the latter we can continue but I’m not going to repeat myself if you’re not going to listen.

[joering2]

Good reason would be broken or lost blockchain, then all these letters and digits are only worth a thumbdrive you stored them on.

I know it is hard to imagine because generally bitcoin is new technology, but also because of that - its not that it is impossible.

Meanwhile gold is gold; a physical object with very high temperature of vaporization.

[lsadam0]

We live in a world where the near-ish future could bring us asteroid mining. Something that could devastate the rarity of abundance of gold.

[felipeko]

That is true, and this should really factor in the decline of gold in the future, but this does not help Bitcoin against it's e-coins rivals.

And isn't Bitcoin hackable in a near-ish future with quantum computing?

[lsadam0]

Yes, in it’s current state it most certainly is. Though as I recall there are already proposed updates to address this threat.

[sumedh]

> quantum computing?

I have been hearing that for last 15 years.

[dahdum]

"So I'd agree that the sum of all e-coins will surpass gold, but I see no reason for Bitcoin to do it alone."

We could pick any number of gold-like commmodities, but like Bitcoin, gold has had a history of large expenditures to acquire it. Both are buoyed by that past.

So many tokens and blockchains are coming out with incremental improvements or niche capabilities, but in the end I think consolidation of market cap is inevitable. I think it ends up Bitcoin as store of value, Ethereum as contracts/api and a large amount of application specific token/chains. Most applications would be backed by ethereum (like most tokens are now), but ones like Ripple could definitely be top 5.

[joe_the_user]

Both are buoyed by that past.

That bitcoin is a (sort-of) working cryptocurrency and that bitcoin has a history are basically the primary arguments for bitcoin's continued value.

But it seems implausible to claim that this will allow bitcoin to become a store of value investment. I think it's clear those buying bitcoins today either are doing so with an eye to increase their investments through bitcoin's rise or are trying to get money out of some nation which prevents capital exports.

As a thought experiment, if a person knew for certain that bitcoin would have the same price in six months, would that person ever prefer bitcoins to a us savings account with the same amount of money? It seems to me no one would.

Moreover, if bitcoins are essentially always going to be speculative, this leaves that possibility of them always being possibly displaced by an equivalent.

[dahdum]

If you were in Venezuela you would certainly prefer to own Bitcoin if it had the same buying power in 6 months than keep local currency. Could be said of rubles and other currencies as well.

Even in the US, holding Bitcoin at the same buying power would be a hedge against inflation.

Of course the Bitcoin price in USD would still fluctuate, if it were pegged to USD there wouldn't be much use other than easier to move around.

[spookthesunset]

Or, as a much more probable alternative, the whole blockchain fad dies out as it should. The blockchain is a solution in search of a problem. It is cumbersome, slow, and an absolutely ginormous energy pig. The only thing it is good for is speculation and giving a particular type of libertarian an-cap a hardon. It is useless for mainstream anything.

[hyprCoin]

I respectfully disagree with your conclusion.

There isn't one company for internet searches and there isn't one provider for online video content. Why should there be just a handful of currencies?

The natural state of a healthy ecosystem includes competition and variety.

[dahdum]

75% of all searches are Google, 10% Baidu, and 8% Bing. Youtube represents the vast majority of online video content. Netflix the vast majority of on demand television.

I only mean to say a handful will capture the vast majority of market share/cap.

[hyprCoin]

Google is losing market share of searches last I looked. Baidu searches have doubled in percentage marketshare.

Youtube and netflix are both on demand television as are amazon instant, modern cable tv subscriptions, and a variety of specific channels (hbo, showtime, etc).

There will definitely be use case dominance, but they may not be the same whales as we currently see.

[atwebb]

For now, those companies were different 10 years ago, Netflix has it's own issues if my viewing options are the same as everyone else's these days.

[zaidf]

There is only a handful of companies for internet search, no?

[bradleyjg]

We could pick any number of gold-like commmodities, but like Bitcoin, gold has had a history of large expenditures to acquire it. Both are buoyed by that past.

I would have put that the other way around ("like gold, bitcoin ...") but even so the scale of the relevant histories are not even in the same ballpark. Bitcoin has had held value for seven years. Gold for more than seven thousand years.

[dahdum]

Gold has had some ridiculous swings along the way too, though I doubt anything like BTC.

The scale is incomparable, but every year the history grows and the likelihood of permanent acceptance increases.

[AnimalMuppet]

> Gold has had some ridiculous swings along the way too...

The Spanish pulled a large amount of gold out of their New World colonies. It reduced the price of gold in Europe... by 20%. That seems to me to be not much of a swing, given the magnitude of the event.

The biggest swing that I know of was when the US allowed the price of gold to move. The US held the price of gold at $35/oz from (about) 1932 to (about) 1975. When they allowed gold to float, it went to $200/oz, dropped to $100/oz, then went to $800/oz. But I'd ascribe that set of "ridiculous swings" to government messing with the market, not to gold itself.

Off topic, but too fun not to mention: An ounce of gold weighs more than an ounce of feathers. This is because an ounce of gold is a troy ounce (1/12 of a pound), and an ounce of feathers is an avoirdupois ounce (1/16 of a pound).

[badosu]

Off topic, but too fun not to mention: An ounce of gold weighs more than an ounce of feathers. This is because an ounce of gold is a troy ounce (1/12 of a pound), and an ounce of feathers is an avoirdupois ounce (1/16 of a pound).

As a native from a country that uses the metric system, this sentence is both amusing and saddening.

[kybernetikos]

Another interesting swing was Mansa Musa:

> Musa's generous actions inadvertently devastated the economies of the regions through which he passed. In the cities of Cairo, Medina, and Mecca, the sudden influx of gold devalued the metal for the next decade. Prices on goods and wares greatly inflated. To rectify the gold market, on his way back from Mecca, Musa borrowed all the gold he could carry from money-lenders in Cairo, at high interest. This is the only time recorded in history that one man directly controlled the price of gold in the Mediterranean.

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

[mtgx]

That doesn't make much sense. I think you set up a rather arbitrary definition for this.

Here's my attempt: Gold is just a "metal" just like Bitcoin is a "cryptocurrency." There are many types of metals and other materials. Some can directly replace gold while others have way different uses - just like cryptocurrencies.

[pishpash]

It's not even rare in abundance. Every fork (Bitcoin Cash!?) defeats its supposed non-abundance.