[w0utert]

What does it matter why gold and silver became 2 of the most reliable stores of value. Fact is they are both in limited supply, they both are labour intensive to 'produce', they both have a tradition desirabilty, and they both have been used as a medium of wealth for as long as people have had access to them.

> There is nothing actually valuable about some rotten piece of metal, or at least, their industrial uses can't back up their price.

Not valuable compared to what? A string of bits identifying some kind of cryptographic hash? Give me a break. If you really think it will be Bitcoins that will provide for your well-being after a complete monetary collapse, sooner than tangible, hard assets such as gold, you should get your head checked.

Forgetting about gold for a moment, go check how many proven, explorable reserves of silver there are right now, and at what rate they are being dug up for industrial use.

> Good luck when the gold bubble pops.

People have been saying this since as long as I can remember. Wait until the bubble pops... It just shows a complete lack of understanding of what actually constitutes a bubble, in economic terms. But feel free to disagree, who am I to tell you how to manage whatever fortune you have managed to gather.

That said, anyone with a brain will make sure they diversify into different asset classes. Apparently you seem to think I'm a goldbug or something, but this couldn't be farther from the truth.

[eli_gottlieb]

Not valuable compared to what?

Compared to tally sticks, say, or bushels of wheat, or time-banked labor hours.

[w0utert]

You realize that 'money', in whatever form, shares that property with gold, right? Money only exists because it isn't really convenient to barter bushels of wheat for sheep, just so you can barter said sheep for the apples you need, but the sheep farm doesn't have. The only value money has, is what people will assign to it.

With that said, I'd recommend you to lookup some history of monetary systems, and see what systems survived for how long, and how they came to collapse. Just because bitcoins are digital, a product of technology, doesn't make them any different from tally sticks. It's just a way to exchange stuff without having to barter. Maybe bitcoins are much harder to counterfeit then tally sticks, but then again, it is probably also much easier to sabotage the systems required to trade them. In the end, the currency that sticks around the longest when all the other systems fail, will be the most reliable one to preserve wealth. It's a self-reinforcing process even.

Now go try and see how many bushels of wheat you can get your hands on with just exchanging tally sticks. Then try to buy some using gold.

[eli_gottlieb]

Now go try and see how many bushels of wheat you can get your hands on with just exchanging tally sticks. Then try to buy some using gold.

No farmers near me take payment in anything except United States Dollars.

[w0utert]

Well I think they would if you actually tried, but anyway, this is going nowhere. I was just making the point that gold has always had value, and has outlived every form of currency that has ever existed, and will continue to do so, just because there are no real alternatives for it.