Bitcoin Forum

Hedge fund boss: Bitcoin over gold? Are you kidding?

Hedge fund manager Paul Singer is "shocked" by Bitcoin's rise, especially given gold's fall.

"There is no more reason to believe that bitcoin will stand the test of time than that governments will protect the value of government-created money, although bitcoin is newer and we always look at babies with hope," Singer wrote in a letter to investors of his $23.3 billion Elliott Management on Jan. 27.

"If you want an alternative currency, check out gold. It has stood the test of thousands of years as a store of value and medium of exchange," Singer added.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/02/01/cnbc-bitcoin-gold/5038763/

He's quaking

I never understood economists view of Bitcoin.

Gold is completely useless to me. I can't buy anything with gold. Nobody accepts it as payment.
They also use the word bubble a lot. Apparently they don't see the difference of bitcoins and the price of bitcoins.
The price of bitcoins can be a bubble. The technology behind bitcoin can not.

I also think they underestimate how fed up people are with government controlled currencies. They certainly did a controlled dive into the financial crisis.
Same with so called trusted services. If a service is "trusted", it has backdoors. People are not the horde of sheep they thought they were, and now they act surprised.

People think that gold is useful. They think ibm will come to them with a million dollars and not spend the money developing an alternative. Same with those catalyst metals.

I personally don't like gold because it's actually fairly abundant with limited usefulness... much of it is held in big vaults by large governments. Silver is more useful and less abundant and I prefer that. Plus lower price is easier to barter with 90% US circulated silver dimes for example.

I prefer minor metals and platinum group metals though a lot of them have already made their moves. Tellurium is one that made big moves, but not one I was willing to work with because of it's side effects should you happen to come in contact with it and have it absorbed into your body... a nasty garlic type body odor that can last for weeks or months!  
 
Here's a fun one to play around with:

http://www.disappearingspoons.com/

Gold is a currency of very limited utility in this age of the internet.

Can you send gold through the internet to pay a bill or transfer gold to a friend in another country? Can you pay for goods on Overstock with Gold? No, and you never will be able to.

Even in the real world - can you use gold over the counter to pay for goods? Can you walk around with a pocket full of gold while out on a shopping trip and be safe? Gold is an asset class only because it is a sought after commodity for jewellery. If we didn't use gold in jewellery it's value would be lower than that of copper. There are many rare elements that are worth next to nothing because there is no demand for them. Bitcoin is becoming an asset class because of it's utility. In the near future it will be in demand as the virtual currency of exchange. So just like gold it's asset value will be based firmly on it's desirability by the wider public. Not everyone wears gold but soon almost everyone will be spending bitcoins. So it is both the new Gold and the new virtual currency to topple many monopolised aspects of the closed-shop FIAT network.

Gold? Come on man :D Let's say fiat dies and I have a gold coin that used to be worth a few thousand - how will I ever divide it? Scrape some dust off it every time I want to buy something? Melt it? Gold is dead as a payment method, it has only store and sentimental value, like art.

Gold is beautiful. That's all it needs. Humans have and always will value beauty. Like fine art, etc. Gold will always have value and will be around long after bitcoin is gone, whether you like it or not.

I think he's right on hi view about gold.


For bitcoin it seems he just thinks its strength is its libertarian aspects (no gov backing/no central banking)  but he might fail to realize how great it is for spending money in the internet age, it's benefits in international remittance,  benefits in microtransactions , and the fact that more and more places continue to accept bitcoin as a payment option which continues to give it more benefit.   I'd be curious to pick his brain on it,  he really didn't say too much about bitcoin itself , I'd be curious to find out what he really knows or undertands about the benefits that bitcoin does offer.

The author has this on his wikipedia page: "Fortune described Singer as "a passionate defender of the 1% and a rising Republican power broker"."

Is it any wonder that he's singing the tune that supports his chosen team? The fact is that, if I remember correctly, he's a big pusher of gold paper. Not physical gold, but paper that says you have some interest in gold. Gold is sliding and his butt's a puckerin' because he's been pushing that paper for a long time.

The fact is that the 1% can jump in on Bitcoin at any time (and many probably already have) so he can say what ever he wants (or what ever he's being paid to say). His clients are still going to have their own brains and can tell the difference between a useable currency and something that sits burried in basements and vaults for that day when the SHTF and they suddenly realize that gold sucks as a currency.  When the SHTF in reality, medicine, munitions and munchies will be more valuable than gold.  But, in the mean time, a lot of people will get ripped off by these pitch men and their 'mainstream platforms'. (Remember how hard Glenn Beck was pitching gold on his show?  Yeah, that turned out to be a company that was ripping off little old ladies. Something you really can't do with bitcoin.)

Pieces of shit like him also charge a huge premium. If you want gold, at least buy at bullionvault or kitco not some scam

the investor wants people to buy his gold, so that he can cash-out of gold. but more and more people are turning to bitcoin and leaving him with less buyers, meaning he has to lower prices to get rid of his heavy asset.

i feel sorry for him in ways, he has probably spend millions on warehouse storage, security, transportation, just to secure his assets, yet the rest of us get to secure our assets with a random jumble of characters on the keyboard, as if a 2yo was given a keyboard and asked to play with it for 2 minutes. such is the beauty of bitcoin, when gold investors waste their money on security and advertising, but we get it all "free-ish"

and as for the "test of time".. the romans were around for 1300 years, they were refered to as the most elite force in the world.... but where are they now?

Gold has an intrinsic value beyond just being relatively rare and pretty to look at. Its industrial value as a crucial element of electronics, sensitive circuits, and other modern innovations give it a values above and beyond that of a mere luxury item.

Same goes for diamonds, although many people are only aware of the 'luxury item' aspect of it - some of the initial designs for mirrors and equipments in the SDI research (defunct, but still produced numerous branching off topics of research that benefited us later on - that's how scientific innovations work) included natural and artificial diamond as a component.

Bitcoin's 'intrinsic' value depends entirely upon its decentralization, security, ease of usage and ability to more easily reach people.

However, you can see how each and every one of those ideals (backed by technical aspects of bitcoin itself) is meeting obstacles every step of the way.

Is the crypto community dealing with them and advancing crypto in a positive way? No.

Instead, we see bitching and moaning about the 'rah rah rah fite da powa' bullshit that alienates many if only by their sheer infantile mentality and shallow motivations behind their complaints.

There's a reason why even someone like this hedgefund boss has an edge over your average bitcoiners. To the common public, crypto participant is a daydreaming ne'er to do well sitting in front of his computer with delusions of hitting it big someday.

If you want crypto to actually grow, start acting professional.

TLDR - check yourselves.

Gold as a alternative currency, well good luck on that one, ever bought something with gold ? ever bought something with gold online ?

Gold is an excellent store of value but really sucks bad as a currency and that is why it has been replaced a long time ago with paper, you just don't carry gold around to pay for stuff, much too risky and as a merchant you just dont except gold as payment either, you need a lot of expertise to determine whether the gold is real or not and how much gold exactly of what purity your customer is offering you, and even if you have the expertise it consumes a lot of time to check all this, chances of getting conned are just too big. No gold really sucks bad as a currency.


Another quote from the article that was not in the OP:



Right and with bitcoin you don't ? Think right now it cost more to dig the bitcoin up then it is worth at current market prices, this guy just demonstrated he really has no clue about bitcoin

gold as the alternative?
so we know you cant simply swap gold for pizza, electronics or anything in a retail store. so thats minus one point as a "currency"
now lets think about using gold to send funds abroad

so i go to a gold store, with $1000 that i want to send to a different country for relatives to cash-in and pay bills.

1. prices are 5% above spot at the local venue (kinda like bitcoins at times)
2. car fuel to go from home, to the local venue and then to a post office/delivery company, then back home, thats not free
3. i now have to package it up (small cardboard box, protective box filling) thats not free
4. postal charge, insurance. thats not free
5. customs charge for the relatives to receive. thats not free
6. car fuel costs for relatives to go to their local venue to sell the gold back into their fiat
7. the local gold venue wants to make some profit, thus he offers to buy the gold at 5% under spot price (kinda like bitcoins at times)

so with all that the amount the relatives gets is well under $900, and i would have paid well over $1000 after costs included. ontop of this the delivery time would be unhelpful in an emergency.

so gold seems useless at this task.

so where does gold get to be a currency?? i treat it as a commodity/product

Gold is very much is a commodity. It is similar to bitcoin in the fact it only has value because we put value onto it. Bitcoin has much more uses in a modern world, but I can see why some people will choose gold over bitcoin. Gold is a tangible item, while bitcoin only exists in the digital world. That scares off a lot of people.

What the gold/silver bugs fail to realise is that also you have plenty of undiscovered precious metals out there in the universe, you have asteroids with trillions worth of precious metals loaded into them, once we discover how to bring that back to Earth its all over and they'll have to find something else that has scarcity, this is why I think cryptocurrencies do actually make sense, even if the scarcity is artificial, it's absolute and in the developers best interest to keep it that way, they follow a strict set of logic, whereas precious metals don't.

There's also the issue of transportation and transaction fees etc. that cryptocurrencies address, but this is something that has been discussed to death and is only asked about by people who haven't done their research beforehand, I respect the position of using precious metals as currency but I think it's foolish to completely dismiss cryptocurrencies, there are too many benefits involved with adopting them, I don't see why we can't use both.

some people will always be stuck in the 'it's not physically real' argument. and they still will be, even when their pensions have 'btc loyalty points' included

 :D

"Economists" are puppets bought and paid for by the 13 Terrorist European Bloodlines of the Terrorist organization Illuminati. They currently control the scam U.S. currency.

Some high net worth "Economists" are the children of the 13 Terrorist European Bloodlines of the Terrorist organization Illuminati.

Now you know the truth.

You may have some points but the way I see it bitcoin doesn't need intrinsic value. That's a problem that doesn't need solving.

Also, the adoption bitcoin has seen in countries like Argentina, Cyprus, Spain, Iceland etc. is not based on an attempt to be professional. They need to bypass corrupt politicians and lobbyists. Iceland is doing better that they have in a long time btw.

Serving US interests abroad has done a lot of damage to these countries over the last decades.

The only daydreaming I see is those who believed in economical growth as if it was God himself, and still do.

I'd take Bitcoin over gold right now. Bitcoin's value lies in the sheer revolutionary concept of it. All this talk about intrinsic value is a moot point really.

The only reason they do this is because gold heavy fund managers like him & Schiff are in DEEP SHIT thanks to Bitcoin. They lost their clients 20%+ last year and all they had to do was have a tiny 1% hedge in Bitcoin and their clients would be smiling.

Right now their clients are leaving them en masse even though the clients are still long gold, they're all realising there's no point having a fund manager specialising in this space if he can't spot the risk/reward ratio of Bitcoin and at least hedge 1% there. 1%!? 1%...

They're about as useful as an ejection seat in a helicopter. Worse they probably even specifically discouraged some clients from Bitcoin last year and they're paying the price.

Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.

I like both, gold and bitcoin. Actually, bitcoin has conceptually a lot in common with gold: Both are mined, both are free money.

I think that every gold bug should also own some bitcoins. Only relying on tradition while being ignorant of future developments is risky, too.


ya.ya.yo!

You should have got a smaller coin. You can get, for example, 50g gold bars that are scored so they can be broken into 50 1g bars. 1g of gold is currently worth about £25, so it's a reasonably small amount to spend. More generally, one of the reasons gold has been a successful currency in the past is that it is ductile. It can be thinly divided; you can beat it down to gold foil if you want to. It's not as divisible as bitcoin, but it's as close as a durable, physical substance gets. Alternatively, if you are using it as a store of value, you can sell it to a broker in large chunks and get fiat currency - or bitcoin - back. It doesn't have to be spendable at a supermarket to have value.

I like both gold and bitcoin. Gold is especially a hedge against civilisation collapsing. Bitcoin kinda relies on having electricity and a working internet. Personally I still see bitcoin as high risk. I wouldn't put money in it I couldn't afford to lose. I'm more confident about gold.

Are you really implying that Bitcoin is the reason gold-heavy fund managers lost their clients 20%+ (also, what's your source on this number?) last year? I'm as enthusiastic as the next guy about the possibilities of Bitcoin shaking up the establishment, but don't you think the 25%+ drop in gold price (a readily available statistic) is the more plausible reason? I do.

Let's keep our feet on the ground with the reality of where Bitcoin is at here.

Brangdon, I agree. This product, for example, seeks to address some people's worries about the divisibility requirement of gold as money:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cNwaA5sNr8 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cNwaA5sNr8)

I just wanted to post a specific link so those who were interested could take a look; quite a cool idea.

Even if at risk to get burned... ;)

Gold has been a store of value (distinct rarity) eons before the Internet was invented, holds no counterparty risks, has no dependencies and is recognized literally worldwide, even in the most remote shithole you could imagine and by people who can't even read - let alone speak a language you've ever heard of. Its softness makes it extremely divisible, outside of that there were always "money changers" to suit everyones needs at a fee, nowadays typical coins and bars exist from 1 gram or less all the way to hughe certified LBMA bars for long-term storage for very wealthy beings.
It's there to stay and in its physical form will even outlast humanity as a whole if push comes to shove.
As Money is has become difficult to use because central bankers successfully guided people away from true money & value to percieved money & value within a mere 100 years.

If they're still alive, show your grand- or if possible even grand-grand-parents a gold coin - they will immediately recognize and acknowledge its value. Same of course is valid for Silver, for example.

Bitcoin is a few years old experiment (with unknown background, which is still wide open to speculation inbetween true extremes) that relies on its arbitrary set scarity, a functional internet connection (which most people don't realize is a high technological infrastructure requirement we've just become used to within merely two decades), a small working group to maintain its entire software and alot of permanently connected nodes and high profile miners to confirm blocks and make transactions work.
Note these are actually (considering where we come from) very high requirements for BitCoin merely to function. "Generation Internet" is absolutely unaware of this, they take this for granted.
Just to see how high the requirements are, just remember there are still alot of blind (non-internet) spots even for your "nearly every citizen on the planet has one" mobile phones - even in well-developed countries. Mobile cell phone masts seem "almost always there" but few realize what a gargantuan effort it is to keep these running. Cut off power grid for just 2 days - there goes your entire internet (unless you have an extremely expensive satellite uplink)... Talk to catastrophy responders or people in combat zones about what their typical cell phones were worth after a few days into the mess. The answers would surprise most people.
After that, look no further than a little more remote spots that naturally we wouldn't call the "developed world".
In short, a long long chain of requirements that modern people often take for granted like breathing clean air - unfortunately nothing of that is as granted as it seems to be, a single part of that chain breaking can interrupt the entire glory of hightech. The vast majority only realizes that when it is too late, sometimes just a normal hurricane is enough to do the trick. Then we're not talking Bitcoin, we're talking drinkable water, food and heat and (a true luxury) maybe electricity.

Since the Internet has long stopped being anonymous and efforts to store just about every single datastream for a certain timeframe of possible analysis are underway (look no further than your own governments, be it USA or the entire EU, Russia or China for that matter) and the only thing that holds the dam against complete mayhem is a SHA256 code segment....

Well, all I can say is that Bitcoin (in its current state) isn't exactly there to stay, there are lots of influence factors that can either degrade or nearly devastate it (which need colluded government efforts, but in these times this is something you can count on, if they feel threatened).

Gold or any other precious metal like Silver don't have any of these weaknesses and are meant to stay.
And as opposed to Money (Cash as we know it) or BitCoin and the likes, the truly wealthy and powerful people on the planet are absolutely into Gold.
Always have been, regardless what they say. Their "family" realms lasted many centuries because they know what value is and that it survives world wars or any changes in governments/regimes.
They don't care about money or bitcoin because they know these are merely tools that carry counterparty risks that are unacceptable over generational timeframes.
These come and go, precious metals stay.
The general population, however, has been broadly speaking converted into pure "functional worker/consumer slaves", many of which wouldn't recognize true value if you hit them on the head with it.
Almost as good as brainwashed slaves, who willfully accept any substitue (even arbitrary binary 0's and 1's) that cover their primitive consumtion needs or achieve "percieved wealth".
They're meant to be in no competition to their masters for true money (which would be in insufficient supply to satisfy global demand), that goal is almost achieved.

Gold is the money of kings
Silver is the money of gentlemen
Barter is the money of peasants
Debt is the money of slaves.

It's up to everyone self to locate an appropriate spot for BitCoin in that list.

the problem with gold it the state and others can seize it any time.

yes it does have cuter party risk in that your counter part can never get it, the govt/thief's can seize it, that worse than courter party risk, try walking though any airport with 1 million in gold, With BTC no worries.



Exactly you can't encrypt gold, gold doesn't even have the code segment.

Haha, good ones...
Now seriously, you apparently don't know the term "counterparty risk". It means gold (or precious metals in general) is no IOU and holds no promise of some emitter that could make it become worthless or unacceptable for any reason if that promise is broken. As gold is true money, there is no need for any redemtion process ("as good as gold") dependent on counterparty promises to pay the bearer.
With larger amounts of gold, you don't use a civil airport like peasants and slaves, there are other ways if needed. With very large amounts of gold in a country excerting such slave-control measures, you likely already shipped and relocated with it into a more friendly part of the world anyway or are in the process of doing so - outside of the option of hiding it in deep storage to outlast such government, which it will easily do.

And I guess that gold doesn't have that code segment was a joke, as it obviously doesn't need any such manmade (single point of failure btw.) digital protection with a limited lifetime. Its "code" is its atomic place in the periodic table of elements, if you would want to put it that way. That's something no central banker or government in the world can change.

No. The reason the funds lost 20%+ last year were specifically the poor performance of precious metals. However had they hedged their gold position with a tiny bit of Bitcoin (1% even), (Exactly as Max Keiser suggested at the beginning of 2013) those funds would have showed a fantastic net gain for 2013.

I was thinking less about Singer and specifically Schiff and also Paulson.

Schiff hard asset fund 2013:   -25%           http://www.europacificfunds.com/hardassets_fund.html
Schiff gold fund:                   -17% (But Inception Date: 7/19/2013) http://www.europacificfunds.com/gold_fund.html
Paulson gold fund:         circa - 60%+        http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/11/22/john-paulsons-funds-clock-strong-returns-in-2013/


The point I'm making is that these guys who specialise in this monetary space not only missed Bitcoin but in Schiff's case and seemingly Singer's above specifically advised their clients against it. So yes the combination of being in charge of a fund that loses 20%+ and not hedging/causing your clients to miss the 4000%+ gains of Bitcoin in 2013 is a Big deal.   

Keep in mind that it is very common for hedge fund managers to talk their book. The older ones are less likely to take bitcoin seriously, but many hedge fund managers are very keen on the emerging cryptocurrency phenomenon. As regards gold, most hedge fund managers that did have significant gold positions actually profited very well by exiting their positions before the gold market hit the skids. Further, the likes of Schiff, Paulson, et al, are a vocal minority among professional money managers. They also preach to their own disciples and underperform many less vocal fund managers.

Gold and bitcoin are fundamentally the same.. They're both rare and limited (commodity).. Bitcoin is certainly not a currency in a traditional sense.. That's why the boss was wrong  :)

Bitcoin goes mainstream.
Bitcoin readily available to everybody with a smartphone. <don't get ahead of me>
Church accepts tithes via bitcoins.
Churches asks congregation for suggestions for a fund raising event.
Little old ladies suggest Bingo.
Bingo it is.
Then the Bitcoins-Accepted-Here gold plated plate is passed from pew to pew.

http://www.presbyterianendowment.org/sites/presbyterianendowment.org/files/lib/EGiving%20Rack%20Card%20Front.jpg

"According to their ability they gave to the treasury for the work 61,000 gold drachmas and 5,000 silver minas and 100 priestly garments and some satoshis."

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQyT9pTcYsehIpPFlyrfAD-M63FtRRL0ITPaKyXQoV3g-wGgKcm

Smartest. Words. Ever.

Bitcoin is a wonderful idea, getting ruined by a community that's composed of half anarcho-libertarians (of the silly variety), half get-richers who believe Bitcoin is the new Klondike.

Gold is only used because it doesn't lose weight, and can be transported easily. It doesn't degrade or chip away.

Could you imagine if iron was used instead of gold, a few million/billion pounds of iron losing weight due to rust  8)

The state can also seize bitcoin. That is what has happened with funds the Feds claim were profits from drug dealing on the Silk Road. Depending on your jurisdiction, they may be able to compel you to give up the passphrase to your wallet. If someone installs a keylogger on your machine, they may be able to seize it too. Nothing is perfectly safe.

If a consortium of Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other big names decided that crypto-currencies were a good idea and that Litecoin was their crypto-currency of choice, then I suspect Bitcoin's value would evaporate quite quickly. I mention those guys because they have big server farms that could use spare capacity for mining, there-by preventing anyone else mounting a 51% attack and also making themselves some money. Litecoin's hashing algorithm would probably suit those server farms better than Bitcoin's would. Even if they choose not to follow this route, you know they are thinking about it.

nobody is gona give a shit about gold when they realize we live in a techonlogical age

Invest in a hedge fund? Are you kidding?

Don't mean to bash anyone, but some of you are misinformed.

The world used to operate based on a Gold Standard, it actually was an excellent alternative currency - but only when things were "good". The reason for its failure, was because the standard performed/performs poorly during a crisis. Firstly, physical gold wasn't transferred between persons. Gold certificates were used as paper currency in the United States from 1882 to 1933. These certificates were freely convertible into gold coins. So you could "carry gold around and pay for stuff". Now it failed after World War II and is often blamed for prolonging the depression because during a crisis, persons HOARD their certificates/physical gold (of limited supply) which would halt the interchange of money. Production prices would rise, wages would fall, and no one could afford a thing. Adherence to the gold standard prevented the Federal Reserve from expanding the money supply to stimulate the economy, in comes fiat. So stimulation here was a good thing (whenever is it not? :-p).

Bitcoin in essence is the cyber version of the gold standard. It operates based on the same principles, easily transferable, limited supply. Its only benefit right now is that it can be transferred easily between hands and is anonymous. Now if bitcoin were the main currency of the world, it would operate the same way as gold, but would fail horribly during a crisis as persons would hoard their bitcoin, and it would be the Great Depression II.

As a side note, don't view bitcon as taking over the USD and operating as the worlds currency, that would be naive. If you view bitcoin as an alternative to Gold/a store of $$, then you see its value. If bitcoin were to capture 5% of golds marketcap that would be $200billion. We aren't even close to that yet.

As opposed to now, where each round of stimulus pushes debt levels higher? The cure that is offered by central banks is false and hollow. Excessive credit creation led to the first depression and will do so again. We can sustain higher debt levels for now but not for long.

The elimination of FRB via divisibility should cure the problem of excessive debts in the future. That is what I hope.

The point of failure during the Great Depression was building FRB on top of the gold standard. Bad move. Led to bank runs and creation of fiat out of thin air which necessitated the formation of the fed to bail out everyone.

As FRB continued, it became obvious that fiat outnumbered gold immensely hence the USD had to be devalued relative to gold.  The problem was always FRB not gold.

False.

The significant hoarding occurred not because of gold but because of the Federal reserve which changed the US dollar into an inflationary currency from 1913. 

http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi


The creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913 gave the US an inflationary currency. This created a decrease in the personal savings rate and a loss of purchasing power. It also lead to the funding of many unsustainable and uncompetitive business models. (The roaring twenties.)

So when a crisis occurred - 1929

Many many people from unsustainable and uncompetitive businesses found themselves unemployed.
The unemployed and employed alike had little savings so they couldn't benefit from the increase in purchasing power deflation brings.
As a result the unemployed starved and the employed hoarded their income to spend only on necessities.

Had they had a mildly deflationary currency leading up to 1929... There would have been an increase in purchasing power & the personal savings rate. Only more competitive and sustainable businesses would have been funded.

So when a crisis occurred - 1929

Because of more prudent investment, existing businesses would be far more sturdy and the initial crisis would be less severe, leaving fewer unemployed. Those that were unemployed would have had savings which would increase in purchasing power allowing them to sustain themselves. The employed would have savings too, in addition to their income, both of which would increase in purchasing power, quickly giving them excess. This would cause them to spend & invest more and re-stimulate the economy, perhaps culling a few unhealthy business in the process.

Looking at the short history of Bitcoin, the early savers now have excess purchasing power. This excess purchasing power has been used to invest in hundreds of interesting start-ups & further develop the crypto-currency economy as well as being used to make purchases with the thousands of merchants that have been attracted to Bitcoin too. The growth in purchasing power also continually attracts new savers, speculators and investors alike into the economy. Of course there will still be a few excesses, but a few Shiba Inus being periodically culled is healthy.

umm, bitcoin IS gold 2.0.  It's combining gold with features required for money in a tech economy.  :)

*uhm*

In the investment/financial world, just remember one thing :
There is no such thing "as good as gold" (no substitute, no V2.0 nor anything else). There can be only one. That is gold as defined by its place in the periodical table of elements, physical in your own hands.
Anytime you think different, your investment is a) not gold and/or b) at risk.

Bitcoin in its present form can vanish/cease to function or take significant damage within a few days/weeks at anytime, gold can't. Small detail, big difference.
That's the risk you take on going with sexy & modern substitutes (which - don't get me wrong - can be highly profitable, but the higher the profit, the higher the risk usually was/is. Just never ignore or forget those risks or you'll eventually get burned.).