Bitcoin Forum

Sick and tired of watch those "back it with gold" or "gold is better" or, even worse, "gold is the primary currency" threads?

Well, those may come only from those who fail to understand what is gold and what is a currency/bullion.

Let's start to what is a currency: A currency is a symbolic value we attribute to things, so we can trade specific things by converting them into that abstract symbolic value which the seller than can convert into another specific thing he needs from someone else. Otherwise we would need to direct trade and expect the one holding what we need/want was willing to trade it for something we've - on most cases this just means trade will be a pain and most likely fail.

To set this symbolic value many things had been used along the ages, the oldest still in use in the Euro-Asiatic region (keep this in mind before you think gold to always be a currency, outside Euro-Asia gold had only use for jewelery, reason why you don't find Mayan gold coins, nor Inca gold coins nor sub-saharian ancient gold coins) is gold. But that's the only trade value of gold: Being old in the market and other than be resilient to erosion, has pretty few to none of other "that special" properties and nothing has any intrinsic value.

Because we live in a "money sees, monkey does" world, by being old as currency, gold, gives its speculators some sort of extra-confidence; like saying «if gold hadn't failed for all these centuries, it will not fail now». But the speculative market is just that, speculation, there're no safe winnings not even with gold, for someone to buy low and sell high, someone else had to buy high and sell low.

Bitcoin is yet new, as the technology needed for it to exists is also new itself. But there's no reason to back one currency with another just because the other is older.

I#m sick and tired of the gold threads, so I'll start a gold thread.

agree entirely. Both are entirely separate if you ask me. BTC is going to be used for commerce on a global scale and doing instant transactions. Gold on the other hard is more of a store of value/investment.

Bitcoin is the future one world global currency of the world. There are no competitors to it. Fiat currency has its issues and was useful at one point but these days its obsolete. Going to be phased out for the new and efficient system of doing trade and thats bitcoin.

Most people don't realize that money like technology evolves over time. Started with basic seashells and commodity based money. Then moved to gold/silver and coinage. Then trade bills emerged. Then we had goldsmiths and bankers. Then banknotes and ultimately fiat. Now we are entering a new age of money - digital money.

Now we are entering a new age where digital commodities produced laboriously is used as currency.

A miner will not securely mine new bitcoins commodity if the effort involved is more costly than the worth of a bitcoin commodity used as a currency.

A paper/script currency counterfeiter will not be disturbed by the fact that the effort incurred in the counterfeiting action of the script/paper currency is less laboriously than the worth of the script/paper currency.  Counterfeiting however will stop abruptly if the effort in counterfeiting is more pricey than the worth of the counterfeited script/paper currency.

I'd rather move my wealth in a easily-concealed flash drive, than try to cross borders with a heavy clinking suitcase. Digital wealth makes a lot more sense when you have to GTFO.

On the other hand, I do like shiny things...

Shiny bitcoins!!

http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/6396/goldusb.jpg