> Gold is 'first place' and has been a symbol of value for most of our recorded history.
Actually it has not. Not in Mesoamerican civilizations (Aztec, Mayans). Also not for the Chinese, who used silver for currency (and gold for ceremonial purposes). Around the Mediterranean, gold became a currency 'only' around 500BC with the Lydians—which is a very long time after the first economic records we have, which take back to Ur III, the Babylonians (Hammurabi), Ancient Egypt.
And when it was used, there were periods of economic stagnation due to its fixed supply:
See the links in the post about the problems with deflationary currencies. See also the links of events that were made worse by finite/deflationary currencies; reposting:
It also cannot be hacked or tracked like Bitcoin. It works offline and can even survive longer than whole countries. The biggest problems are risk of theft and high taxation.
Bitcoin was supposed to be private and secure, so it more or less failed its mission. It is only presently easier to trade because of various gimmicks to warm people up to the idea of accepting it. Gold on the other hand has a long history of being a currency. Everyone in the world knows it is valuable, even if they don't know how much. The fact Bitcoin wildly swings around in value and requires special computer access and sometimes hardware makes it harder to transact with. If you don't care about privacy and security, and want ease of use, you would be far better served by a credit card than a Bitcoin wallet. And if you do care about those three things, gold is better. The only thing I can say positive about Bitcoin is that it is easier to carry across borders than gold. That plus the modicum of privacy it offers might make it ok for some. As for me, I don't think I could privately accumulate enough Bitcoin for that to be a real benefit to me.
Edit: I hit the limit for now so here's a reply:
>Was it supposed to be [private]? A currency with a complete ledger of transactions available for view by anyone in the p2p network is hardly secure by design
It was intended to be secure and private. That is, people can't steal your Bitcoin (theoretically) and the public ledger gives you some potential strategy if you did want to establish a reputation while dealing with anonymous people. Someone could also deal with you without ever knowing your identity, which makes it private. It would be fairly hard to identify Bitcoin users if their wallets were never linked to their identities, e.g. through an exchange. I don't know how other cryptocurrencies do their ledgers but I assume you are limited to querying the network about specific transactions instead of having access to it all. It could be done by having public yet encrypted transaction records as well maybe. Idk, cryptocurrency never appealed to me. I remember thinking my classmates were insane for buying Bitcoin at $70. The price movement we've seen feels like some insiders using it to embezzle money from reputable institutions who have been sold on the hype. We're in real trouble if the government starts buying it. We will be robbed blind.
Was it supposed to be? A currency with a complete ledger of transactions available for view by anyone in the p2p network is hardly secure by design.
Edit: thanks for the reply. In that sense that you are able to be only identified by a wallet address, that makes sense. I guess I meant that, unlike privacy-focused coins like Monero, there is a way to see who sent what to who (even if who is just an address) and to develop surveillance based on this.
Gold is 'first place' and has been a symbol of value for most of our recorded history.