Bitcoin Forum

In the media, and now on this forum, I have detected an increasing antipathy towards us "undeserving" early adopters.

This has been bothering me a little, so now I'd like to offer a rebuttal to the most common criticisms:


You just got lucky because you found out about bitcoin before the media reported about it


I have been a part time investor in new technologies for several years now.  I spend at least two hours a day reading scientific journals, digging around blogs and forums, watching shows, and networking in order to keep up to date with the latest trends. I work hard in order to be the first to spot promising investment opportunities.  I have sacrificed countless weekends in order to put my money into high risk ventures, most of which have failed so far.

Also, I have been a p2p enthusiast for over a decade.

In short, the fact that I found out about bitcoin as early as May 2010, and didn't wait for  the mainstream media to feed it to me, had nothing to do with luck. 

But perhaps I'm an exception, you say? Well, the day I  read Satoshi’s paper, I became a firm believer in the concept. I am passionate about bitcoin and optimistic that it will change the world for the better.      I immediately told my techie friends about it.  Not ONE of them saw the potential in it that I saw.  They just didn’t “get” bitcoin at that time. They even laughed at me when I sent money in an envelope to some dude in Canada for some worthless cryptographic keys. 

It turns out that I was right and they were wrong.  I even showed them the opportunity and they didn’t take it.

Still think that this had anything to do with luck?


You just want to get rich quick / It's free money / You didn't work for that money

See above. Investing isn't free. For every investment that pays off, like bitcoin, there are 10 investments where I never see my money again.

When I spent my first EUR 1000 on bitcoins, I knew there was a big chance that I would lose all that money. Losing EUR 1000 hurts unless you are super rich.  But I still thought is was totally worth it. Bitcoin means something to me.

Secondly, being a successful investor requires real skill.  You need to be able to see past the irrelevant details and you need an excellent understanding of markets, technology, human psychology, and so on.  I have a certain talent for those things, but it’s a skill that required hard work and lots of painful trial and error to develop.

Thirdly, holding on to my bitcoin investment required significant emotional strength. When the price hit $0.5, my first temptation was to sell all my bitcoins, but I resisted. Then it hit $1, but I resisted. Then it hit $5, and all my loved ones started pressuring me to sell them immediately. I ignored them. Then it hit $10, and I almost sold them, but stopped myself in the last moment. My financial advisor told me I was a fool. Only when it hit $20 I finally cashed out part of my BTC.  I am still fighting the temptation to sell more of my bitcoins every single day.
 
Finally, few people ever got rich from working alone.  Some people sell their work for money 1:1, and that’s fine.  But some people are smarter than that, and instead of selling their work, they use their work to set up systems that leverage other people’s work.  That’s what virtually every business owner in the world is doing!  If you are anti-bitcoin because of that aspect you should also be anti-business.   


You are just a speculator and have contributed nothing to the bitcoin system.

Right from the start, I really really wanted bitcoin to be successful, and not just for my personal financial gain. 

Unfortunately, I suck at programming and have poor entrepreneurial skills.  So I contributed with what I’m good at:  by investing. That’s what division of labour is all about!

But how does investing promote bitcoin? If there hadn’t been early investors like me, there wouldn’t have been a stable initial value. This value gave the second wave of investors confidence, which increased the value again, which created even more confidence and so on.
Also, an increase in value promoted mining which made the bitcoin network more secure against early attackers.



So next time you ask, “why does this punk deserve to get rich off bitcoin?”
Let me summarize for you again:

hard work
being proactive
sacrifice
courage
skill
wisdom
meaning
passion
optimism
emotional strength
creating value

+1

I'm not an early adopter, and I currently have less than 50BTC, BUT, I agree with this post.  People who got in early did so without any guarantees of any kind.

For every Google and Facebook, there are thousands of failures.  We must not be mad at people who invest into a successful business, merely because we didn't.

I don't see why you should feel like you have to defend yourself for seeing an opportunity before other people.  Ignore any haters who try to bring you down.

yep, nice one, Pretense .

I have only only one question for "late adopters". How many of "early adopters" will have balls to hold on to their bitcoins to the point when one can start buying mansions and island and football clubs?

This is a loaded question, is it not?

I want to get to know you.

I'm very new to bitcoins and investing in general, but I want to learn a lot more about it.  While I wish I had gotten in on bitcoins early, the fact is I didn't and nothing will ever change that.  Everyone always says "Well, if only I had invested in google/microsoft/IBM when they first started, I would be rich right now."  But the thing is, anyone can say that.  Hindsight is 20/20 as they say.  The people who do profit like this are people like you, who listen, learn, wait, risk, etc.  Its one thing to say "if only I had..." and its another thing to actually start doing something about it.

I still have a lot to learn and I don't have much capital to work with, but I try to learn as much as I can from those with wisdom like yours.

The people who make real money are those that make the waves, not ride them.

dont let the haters pull you down

Thank you for this.

Pretense you say you're an early adopter but why is this your first post in the forum??

Why have you waited more than 2 years to post a so well elaborated post as this one?

Good point.

I blame Apple, these "haters" are just hipsters on a Macbook somewhere sitting in a Starbucks.

It took me a while to jump on board, even after reading the whitepaper and thinking the same thing.  Nice job articulating the difference between those who do and those who wait and see.

If the pricing you bought your coins at was similar to the pricing of the infamous 10,000 coin pizza, 1000 euros would have bought you roughly 550,000 BTC.  Hello, $8.8 millionaire, good to meet you.  ;)

May of 2010 wouldn't have been quite so favorable as all that, but it's not chump change.

'grats on your luck, i hold no hard feelings toward you (but of course i wish i had been as lucky too)

No you bloody bastard. I have been curious about encryption and decentralized currencies most of my post-pubescent life. I heard about Satoshi's paper over a year ago and found it intellectually interesting, but didn't sink my teeth in it until recently. I like to think I am technically adept or economically savvy, but really I am only a follower. I am jealous. I am kicking myself for not exercising my passion, for not having the insight, for not being true to my own values earlier. You represent everything that I admire and my hatred of myself is targeted at you. I have always been last to be picked for the team and I have come to expect that someone will pity me and take me along. I want someone to help me make me feel a part of something greater than myself, for I know I am really nothing because I take no responsibility for my own welfare. But the world owes me just as you owe me. I have been bashing bitcoins ever since but don't want to be left behind. The only reason I am in this at all is because I hope others will be jealous of me one day, of my one bitcoin, because I am too chicken shit to invest time into mining, risk more of my paper money, or to produce something others might be willing to buy from me with bitcoins.

+1

I guess the pizza transaction was overpriced then, even for valuation of BTC at the time?

+1

Well, depends upon how you look at it.  There was more than one pizza bought around this same time, by the same person, and for the same amount.  However, this transaction presumedly included other costs besides the actual pizza.  These famous pizzia transactions are what formed the basis for valuation at the time.

you know if I knew about bitcoin earlier on I would of joined not just for the money aspect. But I think its a cool Idea. I used to give my cpu time etc to folding, seti, etc.

But hey I wish I got in earlier but well I did not and the only person to blame for that is me. But I am still here giving out what little my gfx card can do. And well using the funds it makes to invest into more hardware.

Congrats on your work and also on being lucky and wise enough to make it count!

I only found out about bitcoin a month ago and literarily jumped onto the bandwaggon instantly - reading Satoshi's paper and ending up transferring some serious money to buy BTCs with hard cash that very same day.

Of course I am a little bit mad at myself and also at my even more tech-savvy dad for not even having heard about BTCs before. At the same time however, I do consider myself lucky enough to be a quick adopter and believer unlike so many of my friends who found out around the same time as I and still choose to sit on their hands... albeit admittingly jealous at me for not having had the guts to invest themselves when there still used to be a single digit dollar denomination.

This fact alone proves that it takes more than just early knowledge about bitcoins to make it rain now - it took and still takes courage, foresight and decisive action. Without it, we would still be sitting on the sidelines, cursing about Bitcoin's shortcomings and its unfair distribution towards the early adopters.

Last but not least. Even though you may not consider yourself an entrepreneur, you could very well still become one by investing your BTCs into important Bitcoin ideas - hence potentially ending up backing an otherwise fragile startup with some serious coinage, only then turning it into a legit business.

In that sense, may luck, courage, foresight and decisive action continue to guide your path. I have nothing but respect for you.

Still waiting for these 2 answers.
Your profile says you registered in the forum today !! Why did you took so long? What happened today?

Maybe he wasn't annoyed enough to bother registering and writing up a huge long post about it until today?

People need to understand that hard work doesn't necessarily justify high pay. It's all a matter of value and this man's early investment in Bitcoin's happened to be very valuable.

I've seen many people make new accounts in order to be anonymous. If you were such an early adopter that still held most of your early Bitcoins, would YOU broadcast that fact?

Remember, we're talking MILLIONS of dollars, here.

I knew about Bitcoin, but didn't act on it earlier. I have no one to blame but myself and I have nothing but respect for the early adopters. The tough part will be holding onto them when the price plummets and when the price goes through the roof.

Greatness is risky. Millionaires have a far higher incident of bankruptcy. When you swing for the fences, you strike out more often.

The question is:
If you have a one in three chance of winning ten times your bet, will you take it?

Any decent poker player would dive at the chance, provided the size of the bet matched his bank roll.

We are ALL still early adopters.

hahah XD funniest post I've read today! Thank you for putting a smile on my face :)

Odd to be some other person - a moderator wow! - trying to answer some simple questions made to a fellow member.

I totally agree. I used to be wasting time on seti too. I'm having a high hope with bitcoin.

Fortune favours the brave.

Or as my CO used to say many moons ago (in more literal translaction): "Lady Luck smiles to those who are prepared".

Bravo.

All I can say (again) is that Bitcoin is a marathon not a sprint.

Well yes, i had no idea that bitcoin existed until some months ago. As soon i discovered it, i liked it but... you need to be lucky to DISCOVER it.

+1

No, you have to be interested in the subject matter to discover it. Your discovery rate is directly related to your interest, pursuit, intelligence, and perhaps like most anything else tiny bit of luck.

Seek and ye shall find. Put your head in the sand and you'll discover sand.

Ye well i find a lot of things but bitcoin was VERY very well hidden

Slashdot is one of the biggest sites out there... anyone with even a remote interest in encryption/p2p would probably at least check their headlines now and then...

...and if you took note when they ran the very first Bitcoin story, 1 BTC was still worth less than $0.04.

I saw that story, installed bitcoin briefly, but didn't 'get' it until a year later when they were up to $1.

I had a chance to get involved when the prices were low but passed on it. That's the nature of this stuff. Lots of investments I (and a lot of people) could have made with perfect hindsight. I see no reason to hate the people who got in on the ground floor. It happens.

Respect.



How much money did you make?

Unless somthing major happens, in a year or so from now, i'm expecting that people that buy now, if they didn't spend the majority of what they bought, they are gonna have made quite a profit, perhaps even similar to what people that bought an year ago made.

You make excellent points, but communicating them should have been unnecessary.  A sad world in which we live today.

I don't think that anyone has 550k BTC, according to the following list the richest address is less than 300k BTC, but maybe one person has more than one of these addresses?
http://bitcoinreport.blogspot.com/2011/06/bitcoin-top-1000-rich-list-6th-june.html

Yeah, you can't rely on that at all.  Every wallet has at least 100 addresses, and some BTC can be stored on each of them.

+1 and thank you!

I found out about bitcoin months ago and decided I liked the concept.

Recently (about 2 months ago), I took a second look; planning to buy some. I think the price as about $3 USD then. I still don't have any bitcoin. I want to have all of my ducks in a row first.

About one month ago I started signing my e-mail using gpg. Now that I have a public key, I can participate in a web-of trust. People can also send me encrypted e-mail (though I have not actually been able to reply with encrypted e-mail yet).

I investigated getting a safety-deposit box for my "savings" wallet; over 10km away from my house. While I was at it, I bought an external hard-drive so that I can keep an off-site back-up for my fileserver in there as well. I also bought a USB key for holding an encrypted copy of my wallet.

I also plan to use full-drive encryption on my laptop computer, and start using better password management. Password management will include a list of websites I have an account with and passwords stored in my safety deposit box. Since the information is kept in one place, I can then change those passwords periodically. For low-value passwords, I will likely start using a browser keyring as well.

Before investing in mining hardware, I plan to focus on network connectivity first. In particular, I plan on IPv6 connectivity, and hopefully finding a reasonably priced connection I am actually allowed to use. Because I no longer trust my ISP, all HTTP traffic will be sent down an encrypted tunnel. If I really am a multi-thousandaire after a year of holding bitcoins, I will likely invest in "big iron" boxes that would be mining only to protect the network.

Edit: I also plan on spending Bitcoin. I don't do online banking or use a credit card, so my transaction fees are quite high. Even if bitcoins are worthless in a year, I expect bitcoins to pay for themselves after only 10 transactions.

TL;DR: I am risk-adverse and am taking my time. I would not be surprised if I am considered an "early adopter" in two more years.

I failed to understand, why didn't you buy at $3 ? Did you expect that you would be able to obtain bitcoins more cheaply in the future?

I don't have a secure place to store my bitcoins at the moment. By "secure" I mean secure from attackers and data-loss.

I have been putting off setting up my computers properly for about 6 years now. Everything is predicated on getting the fileserver working with verified back-ups. I am optimistic I can be up and running by the 14th.

Just encrypt wallet.dat with a strong password, and keep the encrypted file in several places (dropbox, usb flashdrive, laptop, ...), if you're concerned that the computer where you create wallet.dat contains trojans or keyloggers, then create it on a clean install... Why would that be insecure from attackers or data loss?

You still didn't answer, why didn't you buy at $3 ?

Let's assume bitcoins are worth $7000 USD each in two years. The difference between buying at $3 and $20 is not that big a deal. I don't want a valuable wallet.dat on any of my machines until I am ready.

If I make over 10 transactions before the value drops to $0 USD each, the difference between buying at $3 or $20 is moot as well.

I am currently mining at about 670khash/s from a live CD. I am not sure what I would do if I actually processed a transaction by mistake. Likely make an offline wallet and send the coins to it.

Edit: Another reason I have been in no great hurry to purchase Bitcoins is market volatility. I started valuing Bitcoins at the 30 day weighted average price. Since the spot price is now 25% below that, I should be snapping them up :)

As is everything worthwhile in life.

Good for you if you made money investing in bitcoins.

Personally I do not mind what the price of bitcoins is, as long as it doesnt fluctuate violently. I "earn" my BTC by private services, and it works better than any other payment method right now (as long as I dont get goxed again, LOL).

A wise old owl once said, "Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy and Greedy When Others Are Fearful.”

Congratulations :)

it's a lousy goddamn point.

have you read this forum?

way to go, Pretense!

So you used some conjugation of "invest" at least 10 times in your post. Why can't bitcoin be a currency, not an investment? (Aside from programming design, of course.)

Is it because it wouldn't have caught on? There is so much praise for how bitcoin will revolutionize the world, but this could only be accomplished by promising wealth off of the fiat of others?

Still not sure that I understand your attitude regarding $3 vs $20, doesn't the ratio 20/3 remain the same even if the price goes to $7000 ? i.e. if you bought e.g. 200 bitcoins at $3 each then in dollar amount you would have $7000x200=$1,400,000, but if you buy at $20 each then you would have $7000x30=$210,000

i hope you meant 670mhash/s (not khash), but still if you're not using a pool then the chance of getting the 50 BTC reward is way too negligible.

And your comments regarding security were also a little unclear: if you said that you plan to buy, say, 500 gold coins for $1500 each, but first you need to prepare in advance a secure safe to put them in, that would sound reasonable. But for bitcoins, simply encrypting your wallet.dat with a strong password and storing it in several places is safe enough, no? You could even use deniable encryption with truecrypt if you're concerned that criminals and/or the government will try to force you to decrypt it.

I think what he's saying is this:

Let's say you were to buy exactly 100 btc...

@ $3 each you'd be spending $300
@ $20 each you'd be spending $2000

Now let's say they go to $7000 each... your 100 bitcoins are now worth $700,000, so who cares if you initially spent $300 or $2000 on them?

Currencies are, inherently, investments.

But you'd be more likely to buy $x worth of Bitcoin.

If you bought $3000 worth of Bitcoin at $3 you'd have 1000 BTC.
If you bought $3000 worth of Bitcoin at $20 you'd have 150 BTC.

At $7000 a coin:

If you spent $3 a coin, you'd cash out for $7 million.
If you spent $20 a coin, you'd cash out for $1.05 million.

I agree that's more likely... I was just trying to offer an explanation that matched Phillip's post, so people might see where he's coming from.

Really? I thought they were a medium of exchange. Just because they are used as an investment does not make them "inherently" one.

Business minds disagree with you.

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-currency-can-never-be-an-investment-2010-9

With exponential growth Bitcoin looks like a scam. I don't plan to exclusively buy and hold. So, if I bought at $3, I may have spent half already leaving me with only 100 BTC. If I buy at $20, the same goods and services would only cost 15 BTC, leaving me with 15BTC.

Having just typed that, the calculation looks even worse. Keep in mind the only way bitcoins will go up to $7000 each is if people actually spend them. Those 10,000 BTC pizzas probably paved the way for eventual dollar parity.

I am helping out the network by relaying transactions. I know the odds of "winning" are something like 1 in 50,000. I plan to move mining to my laptop which draws only 12 Watts (and can be run from solar power if need be). (Edit: Why would I even bother with 670 milihashes/second? (In SI notation case is important))

As for security, I don't think I have any trojans to worry about. In the coming weeks I plan to play "musical computers", reformatting several disks. I am more concerned about making a costly mistake. Two months ago I don't think I knew about the possibility of just using a paper wallet/bitbill.

"Business minds" disagree with me? Likewise, business minds (i.e. me and probably most people) disagree with that author's simplistic semantics.

Don't get confused with the word investment. Just because something isn't a good investment doesn't make it any less of an investment. Just because something isn't purposely conceptualized around the dream of yielding a better return doesn't make it any less of an investment. All of your assets are technically investments. You're placing your future in them.

Fine. Do you agree then that the primary role of a currency is to be a medium of exchange?

If that is the case, why are there only 10s of trades per block when there are 50,000+ people mining for bitcoins?
Are most of those trades just trades from mtgox and tradehill?

Is Bitcoin safe as a currency when almost a negligible amount is actually used as a medium of exchange, and the rest used to speculate?

There is no end in sight for the investment aspect. Why would anyone ever spend?

We're supposed to imagine that in a year or two when the reward drops to 25BTC, half of the miners have to quit or that there will be 50,000 transactions per 10 minutes (at .0005)? [or twice as easy to over take the network]

If bitcoin can't act as a medium of exchange, it is going to fail.

Sure, of course, government-backed currency makes exchange practical, just as much as it serves in the role of regular people depending on its future worth.

Bitcoin is insanely speculative, for sure. As far as I can see, the vast weight of its current worth in USD rests -- beyond the novelty, hoarders, and speculative fantasies -- almost entirely on the drug market. What happens when they start using something else? The fact of the matter is that bitcoin will never exist as a complete currency in the way a lot of people here envision. Its entire existence is dependent on being able to cash out into 'real currency.' I don't see how that could ever change. There's absolutely no incentive for most merchants to accept it otherwise. ...and, yeah, actually making it secure and consumer friendly is a whole 'nother matter.

medium of exchange... shmedium of exchange...

This is a fairly simple concept. Fiat money are presently a decent 'medium of exchange', gold is historically a decent 'store of value'. At the same time fiat money are horrible 'store of value' and gold is lousy 'medium of exchange'.

It's a little miracle that Bitcoin actually has properties which make it (maybe only potentially yet) both decent 'medium of exchange' AND 'store of value'. It is just for some reason people tend to focus on one side or another and fail to see the big picture.

Perhaps one needs an INTP mind (or some serious effort plus knowledge of basics of crypto and economy) to get all the bitcoin's intertwined concepts and see how it is a nobrainer that bitcoin is way better than both fiat and gold.

Survival of the fittest at it's finest.

Why is gold a lousy medium of exchange?

Gold is historically a decent 'store of value'? Did you miss that a few decades ago, gold was the medium of exchange? It was printed on paper though, so perhaps that is confusing you.

As long as bitcoins are difficult to acquire and people demand them, bitcoins will have value. Giving out less to each person who mines as more people mine, and on top of that halving the amount given out every few years is unnecessary to retain value; it is necessary only to increase value. As fiat currency inflates, bitcoins would equally require more fiat to buy since they currently require fiat to produce. That would make it a safe hedge against inflation. Not so great an investment, but certainly a nice medium of exchange which is what bitcoin is advertised as. As it is now, it really is only an investment backed on the idea that it could be a medium of exchange. But that falls apart when people realize that the coins they mine serve to make every coin before it more valuable.

You can't eat your cake and have it too.

And what does survival of the fittest have to do with anything?

Why people have invented paper money in the first place?

Looks like gold bugs will eat me alive now, what a heresy "gold is not a perfect medium of exchange". Can you you teleport gold?

I find the "early adopters" bashing so strange. I took a bigger risk in buying early and so, as with any business venture, I stand to gain more. I think a lot of newcommers here simply don't understand the economics going on arround them.
If you are really into sodomy try day-trading with the big kids for real money. Try making a profit in commodities or currency trading. Unfair? Pfft. If you knew how your 401k money was being used, then you would really cry foul.

I apologize, but I just saw "early adopter" and got >9000 points of rage.
If the bitcoin system were fair, they'd either distribute it equally or just fundamentally change how you get bitcoins.

But, then again, life ain't fair either.
Congrats on your success of being there first.

posted by Vladimir:

1) Not a gold bug

2) Sarcastic replies to any question of your points severely undermines your points.

3) Yes, you can teleport gold -- sort of.  Digital gold, digital certificates backed by gold, etc.

Gold backed much of the early paper money.   The paper was not the medium of exchange -- it was merely a representation of same.

Gold bars, coins etc. can surely be thought of as having limitations as mediums of exchange, from transport to security to making change for them etc.   But the issue there is not the gold, it's the bar.   Fiat money is a decent medium of exchange, until you try to buy a Cadillac with boxes of nickels.   

What I mean is:  you're conflating the actual form of conveyance with the medium.   Gold is an excellent medium of exchange, because of its physical properties which make it uniform, fungible etc.  LBMA 400oz gold bars are not very good for paying for lunch at a restaurant, but this doesn't have anything to do with gold's value as a medium of exchange.   Buying a $0.50 pack of gum with a $100 bill, or trying to stick a quarter in the bill slot of a change machine also present problems, without affecting the value of the USD as a medium of exchange.

I hope that makes sense. 

So, again, aside from the settled issue of conveyance, why is gold a lousy medium of exchange?


Frank

gold is a lousy medium of exchange for all the reasons you're trying to gloss over, and a couple others.


yes, it does.  gold is simply not practically divisible.  $5.00 worth of gold to pay for that lunch is beyond our technical ability to mint as a denomination, and carry around without worry.  how do you carry around 1/300th of an ounce (0.0846 gm!!) of anything, without putting it into some (comparatively) massive support structure, like plastic or tempered-glass caddies?  and note that the caddy makes it easy to counterfeit:  who's going to pry open every 1/300 oz caddy to perform an assay?

how does one make change in gold for all the various price-points which exist in the marketplace?

the "physical properties which make it uniform, fungible etc." are exactly those properties which make it easy to counterfeit gold: i.e., alloy it.

one of the reasons gold coinage failed was the 'shavers':  the people who walked around with gold coin in a bag all day, jingling the coins together, and collecting the dust in the bag at the end of every day.  or who actually shaved bits off the coins with a knife.

i repeat:  gold is a lousy medium of exchange.  and not as good a store of value as most seem to think.

it's heavy, it's delicate, it draws violence like shit draws flies, it can't be hidden easily, it can't be transported across borders without being discovered, it can't be backed-up, and it can't be spent easily in any denomination.  frankly, just as a matter of simplicity, security, and convenience... i'd rather have USD.

posted by Jaime Frontero:

I didn't gloss over anything. 

I hate these kinds of conversations, because I'm not a "gold bug" and don't particularly care if gold is used as money or not; but I hate even more having questions answered with insults and non sequiturs, so let me address your response here as best as I can.


Digital gold has existed for fifteen years or so.  It doesn't solve the issue of physical conveyance, obviously, but then neither does cash for large purchases, or Bitcoins for anything offline, etc.  Cheques and later debit cards largely solved the problem of fiat currency conveyance in large amounts; a debit or cheque system for gold would solve the issue of how to pay for your lunch in gold.   As I have stated previously, conveyance issues are separate from the medium of exchange.


(conveyance issue)


I don't understand this statement.   Gold's uniform qualities and extreme resistance to chemical bonding making it virtually impossible to counterfeit gold.  Gold is easy to assay. 


I was unaware that gold coinage failed -- I was pretty sure it was abandoned due to the annoying tendency for gold to refuse to bend to the state's needs.  Shaving as a practie was a failure of coin manufacturing processes, corrected by the advent of reeding.  Sweating, which is the practice to which you are referring (shaking coins in a bag) has been around for as long as gold coins have been, and while not entirely fixed, is certainly mitigated by the alloying process.  Gold is not delicate -- this is absurd.  Minted gold coins with complex surfaces have delicate fine edges, but this is again a problem of manufacturing processes, not of gold itself, and is to an extent addressed by alloying.
 

Everything about this statement reads as problems with large-denomination gold coins and bars, which are means of conveying gold, not gold.  As far as the violence goes, there are few outbreaks of violence over gold in the modern world, yet no shortage of violence.  Maybe this is a problem with humans, rather than gold.   


Frank

didn't read OP eh?  It didn't have to do with luck.

Everything is luck if you follow the chain of causality deep enough