[cypherpunks01]

The best case is an argument similar to the reason the US gold reserve exists. While the gold no longer directly backs the currency, gold is a neutral asset and wouldn't go to zero during wars/depressions, so could be sold strategically if needed to fund government in a dire situation.

The claim is that BTC is also a neutral asset, meaning it's not linked to any one government or economy, and it has certain properties similar to gold. And that the US should not let China or other countries stockpile this reserve asset first.

It's obviously not "necessary" for any government to function, but the claim is that the reserve properties would be strategically beneficial to weather the worldwide crises in the coming decades.

[peterldowns]

That's the best argument I've heard, thank you. I disagree with aspects of this argument but it at least makes some sense to me.

[r3ctilinear]

Absolute sovereignty is the important detail that brings the strategic reserve argument into complete focus. There are many types of wealth but none of them offer the level of freedom against censorship and external interference that bitcoin does. In an increasingly multipolar world bitcoin offers the greatest degree of self sovereignty for individuals and nations alike.

[SR2Z]

Bitcoin is vulnerable to 51% attacks, and before China banned it there were mining pools that were intentionally limiting signups to avoid hitting that number.

Then there's the throughput issue, the mandatory deflation, and a ton of other small issues that make it a terrible store of value.

Bitcoin is subject to far more limitations than folks normally consider and certainly does not offer more "self-sovereignty" than a pile of gold.

[r3ctilinear]

I have been using bitcoin since shortly after it's inception. I don't buy any of your spurious claims. Bitcoin survived the blocksize war of 2016 and it's only become more durable and secure since. 51% attack is now outrageously prohibitive. Gold is a fancy paperweight that's impractical to use. Adoption is happening hand over fist for a reason. If you can't see it too bad.

[dragonwriter]

> 51% attack is now outrageously prohibitive.

If there isn't a diversity of commodity suppliers of the best ASICs, then there are obviosuly actors for whom it is not prohobitive if a motive exists. Such actors exist even if there is such a diversity, really; the assumption has really always been that no one will have both the capacity and the motivatiom for carrying out a 51% attack.

[SR2Z]

> 51% attack is now outrageously prohibitive

No, it's not! It's almost happened in the past - Google it. The rapid adoption and deployment of ASICs around subsidized or cheap electricity makes it relatively straightforward for anyone with real resources to pull it off.

> Gold is a fancy paperweight that's impractical to use

Bitcoin (the core blockchain) can only process about seven transactions per second. Don't tell me gold is impractical!

> I have been using bitcoin since shortly after it's inception

Yes, and that's the only reason you seem to able to believe these things. Tell me, what can you ACTUALLY buy with Bitcoin without requiring a conversion to fiat currency under the hood? It's not just for tax reasons, it's because it's an awful store of value and would be disastrous for any modern, long-lead supply chain to rely on.

> If you can't see it too bad.

What I see is a "currency" with such terrible liquidity and deflationary properties that Trump is planning to sell off the US gold reserve to pay out these "Bitcoin billionaires" who would otherwise be totally screwed.

[r3ctilinear]

Since the July 2014 mining pool distribution wake up call (the likely "attack" event you're referring to and blowing out of proportion) Bitcoin mining has become more decentralized and more mindful of safe hash rate distribution. The hash rate has also increased to be 4.5million times stronger(!!!) since then. Winning an arm wrestle against a ~1ZETTA hashes/second distributed protocol with an interest in self preservation is SO not "relatively straightforward" that it's funny.

Gold is utterly impractical unless it's paper gold in which case you have limited sovereignty over it. People keep cutting open gold bars and finding tungsten! lololol

The TPS works fine for me. So does store of value. So does layer 2 transactions. A new global monetary standard has arrived whether you like it or not.

[rifty]

I think the one thing with crypto assets that differs it from other strategic reserve assets is that there is no baseline demand rooted in usage and consumption. If the US was in such an emergency position that it needed to liquidate the crypto, it could be worthless and unmovable because of lack of baseline demand at that time.

Although perhaps emergency purposes aren't the only reason to have reserve assets..

[cactacea]

Sold for what though? Dollars of course. But why not just print more dollars in the first place? Gold could be used to make payments directly and I don't see that happening with BTC.

This argument still makes no sense, what am I missing.

[ahel]

sold for whatever you want. Supposing the other party wants BTC (wild assumption) and you want 1Mton of lead, I guess the exchange would happen.

[alexashka]

Would bricks of gold really change anything in a dire situation? I don't get it.

I'd bet on aligning with people who know how to make use of bullets personally.

[tacon]

Since Russia is loading planes with bricks of gold to pay for imports and evade banking sanctions, they must think bricks of gold are useful in a dire situation.

[defrost]

With an obvious drawback highlighted on the 15th of March 2018.

[harambae]

I had to look this one up…

“Approximately 3,400kg of gold ingots break free from a Nimbus Airlines Antonov An-12 cargo plane and fall onto the runway at Yakutsk Airport.”

[bufferoverflow]

BTC is better than gold in many regards.

- impossible to counterfeit

- trivial to audit

- easy to transfer

- easier to store

- its supply is actually limited (unlike gold, which is near-infinite in the universe). Most of it has been mined. Its supply will actually diminish over time, as keys get lost forever, though it's hard to tell how fast that process is.

[1659447091]

And completely worthless in the event of war with attacks on power grids electronics etc. Gold on the other hand, I could trade for food.

[bufferoverflow]

If you are at a war where your whole electric grid and internet and SMS are completely down, you have much bigger problems than currency not working.

It means your bank accounts are gone, your credit cards are gone.

And how are you actually going to use gold as currency? Walk into a shop and shave off some gold at the checkout? And how will the store owner authenticate that it's actually gold?

Bullets will be a better currency than gold in that scenario.

[1659447091]

Trading jewelry for goods in desperate times is a thing. Even desperation in current times has examples of this. Pawn shops advertise in large letters that they buy gold.

But I agree, bullets are always a better currency; one of the positives (for people who responsibly enjoy firearms) living where I do is minimal restriction on such things.

[lesuorac]

I'm not sure war even needs to be that large for it to be a problem.

Basically unless its like China vs US then you don't need sell BTC to fund the country (even then I don't think you would; but if you never need to sell BTC its pointless).

If China vs US then realistically, China can and probably will cut a lot of the internet traffic between the two. Bitcoin only functions because of the public ledger; if Chinese miners aren't sync'd with non-Chinese miners then you have a double-spend problem and I can't see bitcoin not going to 0 pretty quickly.

[InfiniteTitan]

> And how will the store owner authenticate that it's actually gold?

Umm this is a solved problem. Believe it or not gold has been used as currency for thousands of years.

[bufferoverflow]

It's not a solved problem. Notice how you didn't actually answer the question of how a random store will authenticate your gold shavings.

Even banks and large jewelers fail to authenticate gold.

https://testyourgold.com/gold-plated-tungsten-in-russian-ban...

https://decrypt.co/34033/chinese-firm-dumps-83-tonnes-of-fak...

[InfiniteTitan]

Simply incredible. Used for millennia as currency but not a solved problem to determine what is gold…

[sadeshmukh]

Gold is similarly useless when it's heavy and hard to move. There is little chance of that, and Bitcoin offers advantages in ease of transfer, transparency of transactions, and lack of government interference.

[InfiniteTitan]

> Heavy and hard to move

This only applies to very large amounts of monetary value. $1m USD is currently under 24lb/10.7kg.

[latchkey]

Easy to detect if you want to "move" between countries. You wouldn't want to try to get that through an airport.

Bitcoin is just some words on paper (or in your head).

[fragmede]

Can you? What use is gold in the Mad Max era?

[dragonwriter]

> its supply is actually limited (unlike gold, which is near-infinite in the universe)

100% (to very many significant figures) of the gold in the universe has a sufficiently near infinite cost to deliver to the surface of the earth that it is irrelevant to any discussion of human economics; once that subset is eliminated, the available supply of gold is quite finite.