[stuhood]

> physical security of storage media, information security of computations involving bitcoins

Only funds that you have daily access to need be vulnerable to the latter point, as physical security (air-gapping) is sufficient when you do not need to -send- funds.

> And it is much easier to accidentally lose bitcoins than gold, pirate tales notwithstanding.

Strongly disagree. Can you keep N redundant copies of your gold? Combined with secret splitting, you could require that at least K of N secure locations be accessed.

[chalst]

> Only funds that you have daily access to need be vulnerable to the latter point

I'm talking about protocol risk: e.g., the software that implements the protocol on some machine is flawed, so the cryptography can be effectively breached. Or there is some issue with the protocol, like but worse than the issue Kaminsky found with anonymity.

>Can you keep N redundant copies of your gold?

Have you ever found that your backups didn't contain what they were supposed to contain?

Gold gets stolen, but besides such things as costume jewellery, I think it doesn't often get lost.