Bitcoin vs Gold Debate Settled

[Hydrogen]

The supply of gold is finite.

Wanted to take a second to say gold can be produced from mercury via nuclear reactor.   

The supply of gold can be inflated. ATM it is not cost effective to do so. Perhaps this could change in the future.

Chrysopoeia, the artificial production of gold, is the symbolic goal of alchemy. Such transmutation is possible in particle accelerators or nuclear reactors, although the production cost is currently many times the market price of gold.

Gold synthesis in a nuclear reactor

Gold was synthesized from mercury by neutron bombardment in 1941, but the isotopes of gold produced were all radioactive.[12] In 1924, a Japanese physicist, Hantaro Nagaoka, accomplished the same feat.[13]

Gold can currently be manufactured in a nuclear reactor by the irradiation of either platinum or mercury.

Only the mercury isotope 196Hg, which occurs with a frequency of 0.15% in natural mercury, can be converted to gold by slow neutron capture, and following electron capture, decay into gold's only stable isotope, 197Au. When other mercury isotopes are irradiated with slow neutrons, they also undergo neutron capture, but either convert into each other or beta decay into the thallium isotopes 203Tl and 205Tl.

Using fast neutrons, the mercury isotope 198Hg, which composes 9.97% of natural mercury, can be converted by splitting off a neutron and becoming 197Hg, which then decays into stable gold. This reaction, however, possesses a smaller activation cross-section and is feasible only with unmoderated reactors.

It is also possible to eject several neutrons with very high energy into the other mercury isotopes in order to form 197Hg. However such high-energy neutrons can be produced only by particle accelerators.[clarification needed].

In 1980, Glenn Seaborg transmuted several thousand atoms of bismuth into gold at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. His experimental technique was able to remove protons and neutrons from the bismuth atoms. Seaborg's technique was far too expensive to enable the routine manufacture of gold but his work is the closest yet to emulating the mythical Philosopher's Stone.[14][15]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_of_precious_metals#Gold

....

[Shasha80]

For me, since 2017 Bitcoin has been the winner, as Wozniak said, nobody can change mathematics. This makes Bitcoin have a fixed supply,
which of course Gold doesn't have. Moreover, looking at the performance comparison of Bitcoin and Gold this year, it is clear that Bitcoin is
better than Gold. So for me the Bitcoin vs Gold debate is over.

[jostorres]

Well, technically he is right. Because we do not know the exact number of golds in the world, we know that it is finite and we know that there isn't that much left neither, so that is totally understandable to say that gold will not be too much more and it is finite and scarcity increases the price just like bitcoin.

However there is no doubt in the world that there could be some more gold found somewhere around the world, not a huge sum obviously, you are going to find mountains of gold anywhere in the world, you are lucky to find gold at car size, most of the time not even that, all the ones that are mining right now are already figured out, even if not in calculation yet, we know it is there. It means gold will be found in small amounts and not exact number just yet, which I can understand. Possibly another option is humanity is going towards space, who knows maybe there is gold to mine there as well?

[figmentofmyass]

The supply of gold is finite.

Wanted to take a second to say gold can be produced from mercury via nuclear reactor.   

The supply of gold can be inflated. ATM it is not cost effective to do so. Perhaps this could change in the future.

this isn't a perfect analogy of course, but it's worth pointing out there have been a couple bugs in bitcoin's history (2010, 2018) that did/would allow for supply inflation.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Value_overflow_incident
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5035144

the inflation can be forked out of course, but it would be a mess.

[Ucy]

The supply is scarce though or locked/hidden somewhere(esp in the earth) people can't easily access.
Digging it out of the earth will likely not be that sustainable or safe for the earth considering the large population of human and our "consumption" appetite.
Better to use "string of numbers" for representing values and gold as an optional material for preservation of the values/numbers, and as an optional medium of exchanging the value/numbers.
This and couple of other things make something like Bitcoin better money.

[nemey]

As you can see in the chart, it is clear which one is better and which one to choose. In my opinion, Bitcoin will be able to make big profits faster with a high risk. And gold is indeed a stable price and low risk, but it will take too long to get a big profit.

[MUG1WARA]

both are different and in my opinion it is not debatable, gold has a much more stable value and is also a real thing that we can see while bitcoin has an indeterminate value and we can only see it as a number

[proTECH77]

Can we announce bitcoin the winner. Or would it be premature.

Yes, we can announce bitcoin the winner base on the result we saw during the pandemic that make many currencies devalue during the process which was making bitcoin price increasing in the exchange market. Gold is not yet improve since we came back from pandemic, despite the year remain 13 days to end the year 2020. Bitcoin is still pumping in the market, nearly to reach $25k despite what covid-19 has caused in the world economy .

[jtipt]

both are different and in my opinion it is not debatable

True, but for different reason. I don't know why but everyone always seems to forget that gold is just a piece of metal, whereas bitcoin has much more use case than being a store of value. The only similarity bitcoin and gold share, in my opinion, is thier rarity. Everyone always say bitcoin is digital gold but in reality bitcoin is much more than just a "rare thing" with value.

[meanwords]

In terms of value, BTC clearly wins over Gold and Silver currently, but I don't think this should be our primary focus because we are treating BTC primarily as an asset in this scenario and not as a currency.

Value can be subjective too though. Bitcoin might be winning in terms of USD value right now but if you look at the market cap, gold is obviously far ahead. To be honest, I don't think neither needs to compete with each other. They both have independent usage which can be an advantage if used right. It's just that, people are treating gold as if its only purpose is to be an investment.

[srcarreira]

That's a great interview in the link btw. Highly recommend. Wozniak's comments about the evolution of ground penetrating radar coupled with more efficient methods being devised to mine gold. Contrasting with bitcoin's mining being statically regulated by algorithm. That has always stuck with me as one of the smartest things said in the gold vs bitcoin debate.
After years of debate BTCitcoin is pulling ahead of gold on short term charts.
Can we announce bitcoin the winner. Or would it be premature.

I'm really glad to know that we finally won't hear more of this "debate" which was more of a endless argument.
That doesn't matter what is the result of this debate, to be honest.
I still see this as a speculation about something we don't know yet.
It will take another 10 years of bitcoin observation to draw a decent conclusion

[ChrisPop]

I think we are at a great moment in time, when Gold might no longer be considered the supreme asset that we use to hedge against economic crisis.

As Wozniak said, one cannot mess with mathematics. Once the numbers are in place, you cannot move them. Paired with the blockchain technology BTC is bound to be the highlight of the century IMO.

[jaysabi]

The extremely limited data point doesn't prove anything. The claim that the debate is "settled" is reckless considering you've started at an arbitrary point, ended at an arbitrary point, and have an extremely limited amount of data in support of the claim.  You can make the data "prove" any point you want with such disreputable tactics.

[Om.monata]

for the short-term chart bitcoin wins because the price is very fast increasing. but for bitcoin price resilience to lose to gold, gold is stronger and more stable than the price. So it's too early for bitcoin wins but bitcoin is potentially good in the short term

[Argoo]

both are different and in my opinion it is not debatable

True, but for different reason. I don't know why but everyone always seems to forget that gold is just a piece of metal, whereas bitcoin has much more use case than being a store of value. The only similarity bitcoin and gold share, in my opinion, is thier rarity. Everyone always say bitcoin is digital gold but in reality bitcoin is much more than just a "rare thing" with value.

Gold has been around for millennia and people are likely to always use it as a means of payment and storage of value. I do not yet see the possibility of replacing it with other financial instruments. It will take cryptocurrency a long time to try to change the existing foundations of society. Ten years in comparison with the thousand-year practice of mankind, of course, is still very little. However, its success is already evident as it provides people with new opportunities and conveniences.

[bearexin]

I would say there is no winner in this fight because they are bot winners against fiat if you ask me. Think about it, bitcoin has been great, crypto has been great, gold is usually great over course of many years versus fiat, whereas fiat has been always bad and it will probably stay bad.

This is why instead of trying to figure out if we would like to compare bitcoin to gold and see which one is better, I would say that the smart decision will be probably just putting bitcoin/gold together and make it fight against fiat if you ask me, that would be a lot more smart, I would say having gold as the big investment and having bitcoin as the currency would be a great decision for your life, just use bitcoin as much as you can (or any other crypto) for everything in life if you can, and put all your investments to gold, rest will be in crypto anyway.

[Silberman]

both are different and in my opinion it is not debatable, gold has a much more stable value and is also a real thing that we can see while bitcoin has an indeterminate value and we can only see it as a number

The only reason the value of bitcoin is more volatile while the value of gold is more stable is because gold has been around for thousands of years, people trust gold and a huge amount of money is already invested in it while bitcoin is a new technology that was developed only 10 years ago and that only now institutional investors are coming to the market and have begun to buy, once a great deal of the population of the world adopt bitcoin its value will become more stable.

[vaultman]

Gold has not only been used as money, but also has practical applications in life, so it will always be valuable, and bitcoin can only be used as cash. The only minus of gold is the fact that sooner or later scientists will be able to create it from other substances, or in some other way. I think that someday science will definitely come to this, but in the next 50-100 years gold will still be highly valued in the world, especially given the exponential growth of the world's population.

[sana54210]

I agree that gold is not really the enemy here, fiat is so there is no reason we should drop each other. That is what happens in capitalism, they find you an enemy to fight against to distract you from the real enemy. For example, they talk about how EMT's make 15 dollars an hour in USA so minimum worker shouldn't make the same amount and not change the federal minimum wage because of it, whereas the real problem here is not that minimum worker should not make 15 dollars, it is EMT's that should make more while minimum wage is 15 dollars.

Same here with gold, they tell us that gold is scarce and bitcoin is similar to it and if bitcoin could ever beat gold, we should not even try to beat gold, we should focus on fiat and how horrible it is and how unfair the system in fiat world is, that way we could potentially change something in crypto and help the traditional markets to become better.

[atjiat]

Perhaps I initially did not understand the essence of the issue and the confrontation between Bitcoin and gold, but I never considered Bitcoin to be gold competitors. These are the best assets a self-respecting investor can have. At the same time.