[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.