BTC is scarcer than gold.

[StarKay]

I don't think there's any competition going on between Bitcoin and Gold. Gold has been a treasure for thousands of years whereas BTC is not even up to two decades.

I think the focus should be on making Bitcoin as popular and acceptable as Gold because as of today Gold is still miles ahead of Bitcoin in terms of adoption and popularity and many people still don't understand what Bitcoin is all about.

[salad daging]

indeed in this case it is quite true but in this case I don't think it is suitable for comparison although indeed in these 2 things they have something in common, namely they are suitable for investment.
but for the supply of btc and gold maybe I don't want to compare things like this because they are not very suitable for comparison.
gold is a real wealth of nature today and indeed their existence is enough to make people suddenly rich but in this case bitcoin is still something that is risky and indeed even though bitcoin's strength is far superior in terms of volatility but the comparison of things like this is too far to compare anything unrelated

[aoluain]

To be honest jewelries are the only real usage I see for gold myself. I suppose we can't wear a BTC as a necklace.

Lol... I guess we would have seen musicians with them BTC teeth.  

Well, BTC and gold have got lots of differences and similarities too. More notably, we could say BTC is indid following the gold path. In the senses that, it started as money but its lack of proper used case has made it more of an asset. Gold stands an asset now which ever form it is found. You could resell when ever and still get the value.

snip...

Dont forget Gold has its uses in Medical, Electronics and Scientific areas.

244,000 metric tons of gold has been discovered to date, 55,000 tons of gold are left.

But there is still a lot of gold left in the universe. There is gold on asteroids for example. One day these will be minable. So the gold supply is not as limited as some may think.

I could start with the fact that's not even 100% certain how much gold is still available to be mined. I don't know how accurate the current estimations are.
Then, yes, gold does exist in space, and I would not be surprised if it would get attempted to be mined from there, if it will be proven to be more useful than just getting hoarded by the richer entities (especially since such a move could melt its current price).

snip.....

While I do agree that Bitcoin is scarcer than the total gold in the universe, especially according to our perception, I would not try to prove this because.. what to compare: kg with BTC, gram with satoshi, atom with.. what? since "tomorrow" the community could decide that one satoshi is too big (compared to whatever paper money) and we need more digits after the decimal point, and 16 looks just fine for the job.

I think one day 1 BTC will enter the $xxx,xxx zone then the $x,xxx,xxx HODL BTC

This goes to speculation area

Scarcity wise Golds supply is indeed unknown. Nobody knows when the next vein or
large deposit is going to be discovered, and Bitcoin is obviously the opposite to this.

Why do we not compare Bitcoin to Palladium or Platinum instead of Gold?

Actually, if you search rare metals on google, Gold doesnt register!

[Mr.sprin]

gold is the result of natural wealth, no human knows how much gold is still in the bowels of the earth while btc is made by satoshi with a certain amount so comparing btc with gold in my opinion is unethical.

[noorman0]

-snip-
With BTC it's another story. We all know there are only 21,000,000 coins and 3-4 millions are already lost forever.

The lost gold must also be counted. Because gold miners only mine where there is a pool. Gold will not be recycled when it becomes dust flakes during the forging process or is formed into jewelry.

Talking about scarcity, it's still weird that the gold stock predictions (which you think) are immeasurable but banks don't try to balance the value of each minted dollar with the actual amount of gold backing.

[tbct_mt2]

Bitcoin is 21M in total supply
Gold is infinite in total supply

Scarcer or not, people can do the simple comparison between them. In addition, it is more convenient when you use Bitcoin for transactions, payments, etc. It is portable too with your wallet, a backup in a notebook, paper sheet, steel sheet, USB, hardware wallets ...

You can not carry your gold bars around and say it is safe for your gold bars as well as your life.

[davis196]

244,000 metric tons of gold has been discovered to date, 55,000 tons of gold are left.

But there is still a lot of gold left in the universe. There is gold on asteroids for example. One day these will be minable. So the gold supply is not as limited as some may think.

Yeah, one day it will be mineable. Probably after a thousand years.
After several centuries, the people will have so advanced technologies, that they won't be needing precious metals like gold and silver anymore.
Mining gold will become pointless, because gold will become cheap or worthless. Mining gold on asteroids and other planets will be 100 times more expensive, which would mean 100 times more pointless.  

However, gold is hard to move around, weighs a lot, it's hard to sell or buy, it's not practicable.

Gold is hard to move around, if you want to move a ton. Moving small parts of gold isn't a problem for anyone.

With BTC it's another story. We all know there are only 21,000,000 coins and 3-4 millions are already lost forever.

There is no Bitcoin in the whole Universe, except on Planet Earth.

BTC is scarcer than gold. I think one day 1 BTC will enter the $xxx,xxx zone then the $x,xxx,xxx HODL BTC

Utility and demand are as important as scarcity(or maybe even more important).
You can have a scarce resource/asset, but if this asset is useless and has zero demand, the value/price would still be zero. Scarcity doesn't matter in that case.

[Lucius]

Bitcoin is scarcer & also better than good in every conceivable way. You can’t take $1,000,000,000 worth of good on a plane in your suitcase, can you. Bitcoin is the future of money, gold is a dinosaur as a store of value. You also can't pay for many things directly with gold.

As I wrote in a previous post, there is no doubt that the transfer of value through Bitcoin is incomparably faster and easier than when it comes to gold, but there is also no doubt that gold is very easily understood by the average Joe than Bitcoin which is why the market cap of gold is $11+ trillion. This dinosaur may be a thing of the past for some, but it will be a long time before Bitcoin approaches the point where it will become equal.

As for payment, I have never seen anyone accept gold as a direct way to pay for anything (although some say that in some countries there is such a practice), but here we can not make any comparisons between something that exists in physical form and something that exists in the virtual world.

[kryptqnick]

Op is right that there's gold outside Earth and that makes for a potential problem regarding treating it as scarce because it might get possible to mine it. Also, I believe we don't know for sure how much gold there is even on Earth, right? Isn't it possible that some new reserve would be discovered at some point? So we don't know the real total supply of gold. As for Bitcoin, we do know it for sure, even though we don't know how much BTC was lost (burned, lost private keys, accidentally sent to altcoin addresses etc). We can be pretty sure there will never be more than 21 million BTC. But I don't think we can reasonably compare scarcity of something digital with something physical. We can measure BTC per coin, but how shall be measure gold, and who's to say that it should be measured in this specific way? Or do we measure it by value in USD (obviously, disregarding everything outside Earth), but then the price of BTC changes quite drastically. So they are just to different to be compare, apart from the fact that we can't know the total supply of gold and the rate at which the circulating supply would increase, while we know these things about Bitcoin.

[Cryptmuster]

Bitcoin is 21M in total supply
Gold is infinite in total supply

Scarcer or not, people can do the simple comparison between them. In addition, it is more convenient when you use Bitcoin for transactions, payments, etc. It is portable too with your wallet, a backup in a notebook, paper sheet, steel sheet, USB, hardware wallets ...

You can not carry your gold bars around and say it is safe for your gold bars as well as your life.

Carrying gold is not safe, no one does it, just like no one carries their ledger with them. All meaningful investments love silence and secure storage. I personally think that bitcoin and gold are good investments. Gold has been time-tested, it has only become more expensive over the centuries, and this is an indicator for me. Bitcoin is still relatively young, but has already gained a reputation as a good investment tool, so there is nothing wrong with investing in gold and bitcoin.

[Nrcewker]

BTC is scarcer than gold. I think one day 1 BTC will enter the $xxx,xxx zone then the $x,xxx,xxx HODL BTC

Maybe Bitcoins value will become more than $xxx,xxx . Who knows the future?
Yes what we can do now is act smartly and predict the future.
If possible, we should buy as much Bitcoins as we can for the long term, no matter what’s the price of Bitcoins.
Many have already predicted, so do I am saying, in the next 3-5 years, you will be considered as a Bitcoin millionaire if you have atleast 10 BTCs in your wallet.
But these dumb people lately are panicking and selling their Bitcoins at the current point of time.
Nevertheless wise people have always known the concept of Bitcoins, and I am sure they are buying as much Bitcoins as they can right now.

[qwertyup23]

While this is of course true I think it’s important to note that there are many more differences when it comes to comparing bitcoin and gold. Personally I can’t stand this comparison and don’t understand why so many people are so quick to compare the two. Gold is a physical asset, a metal, and used for a lot more things than bitcoin is, such as use in cars, electronics, jewelry etc.

I guess this kind of comparison is somehow obvious as a lot of people refer BTC as the "digital gold" where its inflationary value are similarly alike to gold's limited resources.

The problem with BTC is that its supply is nearly capped to 21 million, whereas gold, while the latter is a non-renewable resource, has the potential of increasing its supply by constant discovery in our ecosystem. With technologies advancing as years passed by, there are tons of potentials being discovered by the world into learning if gold is truly that "scarce" as many had believed it on.

Unlike in BTC, everyone knows that its supply is limited and by the year 2140, all of these BTCs would be mined completely.

[Dunamisx]

There is no Bitcoin in the whole Universe, except on Planet Earth.

Of course bitcoin is a digital currency which is created by man and awarded as block reward through mining while gold is a natural element that nature blessed humanity with, what guarantee do we now have about the presence of gold on other planets, earth has all the best of living creation which is human and we have develop the whole economy to the suitability of making use of a digital asset like bitcoin to make living worth it, everyone can have access to bitcoin despite it worth and it can be easily acquired with maximum safety unlike gold.

[KaliLinux]

I don’t know which formula is used by those who give estimates of how much gold is still underground, but I hope it’s not something similar to what led us to speculate that 3-4 million BTC was lost. By this, I mean that this number is the result of an analysis that concluded that all the BTC that did not move x years was lost.

However, gold is hard to move around, weighs a lot, it's hard to sell or buy, it's not practicable.

It depends on the quantities, but I don't see a problem in transporting 1 kg of gold or a little more than that, it fits in an ordinary handbag - and it's worth 2 BTC at the moment. As for selling gold, I personally have no problem with that, there is a physical store on every corner that buys gold, or I can even sell gold by sending it by a special courier service to a company that buys gold.

Of course, I have no doubt that Bitcoin has its practicality when it comes to storage and transfer, but not everything is so impractical when it comes to gold. Still, I speak from my personal experience, it may be really difficult for someone to buy or sell gold, but for some, the problem is how to buy or sell Bitcoin - I have witnessed this many times.

I do have to agree with you in the explanation for Gold. In my location, there is virtually a store to buy and sell Gold in almost every major market and access to it is easy hence the continual trading of Gold by many that do believe it is easier to access than Bitcoin and don't still understand the benefit of it. That said, those that understand what Bitcoin is and how much difference there is for it in terms of Investment over a number of years will surely want to go the route of Bitcoin instead of Gold.

[AmoreJaz]

While this is of course true I think it’s important to note that there are many more differences when it comes to comparing bitcoin and gold. Personally I can’t stand this comparison and don’t understand why so many people are so quick to compare the two. Gold is a physical asset, a metal, and used for a lot more things than bitcoin is, such as use in cars, electronics, jewelry etc.

I guess this kind of comparison is somehow obvious as a lot of people refer BTC as the "digital gold" where its inflationary value are similarly alike to gold's limited resources.

The problem with BTC is that its supply is nearly capped to 21 million, whereas gold, while the latter is a non-renewable resource, has the potential of increasing its supply by constant discovery in our ecosystem. With technologies advancing as years passed by, there are tons of potentials being discovered by the world into learning if gold is truly that "scarce" as many had believed it on.

Unlike in BTC, everyone knows that its supply is limited and by the year 2140, all of these BTCs would be mined completely.

i can understand about the sentiments of ChiBitCTy here. gold is a tangible asset where it is a vital component in a lot of industries like electronics. we can't compare the usage of gold with btc. and also remember, you can't mine btc without these computer gadgets. so for me, it is not comparable. maybe in terms of value today but who can assure that in the future, btc will sustain its existence in the market. what if there is new technology created by the new gen? no one knows. the supply of btc may be limited but we have no idea about the continuity of its usage.

[cryptosize]

Relevant: https://robbreport.com/lifestyle/news/rare-psyche-asteroid-worth-way-more-than-the-global-economy-1234577976/

There is no Bitcoin in the whole Universe, except on Planet Earth.

What if an advanced alien civilization has an even more advanced cryptocurrency?

[wagmi]

244,000 metric tons of gold has been discovered to date, 55,000 tons of gold are left.

With BTC it's another story. We all know there are only 21,000,000 coins and 3-4 millions are already lost forever.

You are right!
Gold can be found any time maybe on Mars when Elon Musk decides to start a space mission.
Or we can find tons of gold on an asteriod, we don't know.

Only for Bitcoin we know it is truly limited to 21 Millions Bitcoins.
Coders have verified a limit of 21 Milions Bitcoin in Bitcoin's code.
It's really proven.

I like Gold but I also like BTC

[hZti]

244,000 metric tons of gold has been discovered to date, 55,000 tons of gold are left.

Are you sure about that number? That would mean that we have maybe 15 years before there is no more gold to mine. I think actually there is way more gold and also there is a lot gold in old electronics to be recycled. But of course also a lot of gold simply lost forever because it ends in the trash.

[Asiska02]

Gold is a physical asset and Bitcoin is a digital asset. I just can’t get the comparison of the both. The total bitcoin to be mined all around the world is known already and which i don’t think any changes can effect that, while gold being a physical asset is already in deposit in the earth planet which they can be increase in it under the earth surface, no one can tell. Its total quantity is not known, only hypothesis about it which is not proven to be the true fact yet. BTC is certain and the total amount of it is known already while gold is not.

[Zilon]

BTC is scarcer than gold. I think one day 1 BTC will enter the $xxx,xxx zone then the $x,xxx,xxx HODL BTC

This analogy looks somehow accurate judging by the total Bitcoin that will ever come into existence and the amount that has been lost forever already,  we will find out that only 21million-3million=18million (in which more will still be lost) will ever be available for earth usage not including the more coin that will be lost as time keep flying . Hodling might just the only cure to catch up with the future Bitcoin price surprises