[laglad]

Your points are valid. IMO the key tradeoff b/w gold (analog) and bitcoin (digital) is extra resiliency vs usability.

If there were a systemic collapse breaking governments, knocking off power and telecom networks etc, gold would be immediately most valuable. But more quickly than fiat, bitcoin would be useful.

Power and telecom systems are more resilient to systemic collapse (& have more bouncebackability) than a functioning government and its currency. Some semblance of critical systems would come online whether put up by government, armies, warlords, cooperatives etc (See Somalia as an example). When those systems are online, bitcoin can be sent and received.

In short: in terms of usability: Fiat > Bitcoin > Gold in terms of resilience: Gold > Bitcoin > Fiat

Am I missing anything here?

[gwbas1c]

Paper currency is often used after the government backing it collapses.

[mywittyname]

Not only that, people will use anything as currency in the absence of fiat. Cigarettes, tea bags, polished rocks, etc.

[mikeash]

Are miners still going to be operating in this post-collapse environment?

[blocked_again]

Whoever operates is going to become rich. So someone will step up to satisfy the need.

[mikeash]

You need a hash rate at least vaguely close to the pre-collapse hash rate, or else the network will grind to a halt. Will they be physically capable of that?

[laglad]

This assumes a sudden collapse event happening within the 10 minutes that it takes to reset the hash rate. I'm struggling to think of global scenarios where that can happen so quickly.

What are the chances that collapse is a sudden event vs a cascading deterioration event?

[mikeash]

It takes two weeks to reset the hash rate, if the hash rate stays constant. If it starts dropping, the time goes up.

[laglad]

can you explain this further?