BTC vs physical gold price potential

[mindrust]

Bitcoin is much smaller than gold in terms of market cap and it is also much more useful. That means bitcoin has much more room to grow unlike gold which reached its full potential. I am saying this because gold don't really have much real world use anymore other than being used in jewelry and electronics. Bitcoin on the other hand, is a world currency. Millions of people send and receive bitcoin to purchase and sell stuff every day. This is no joke. Bitcoin can easily double or triple the market cap of gold.

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[Party24*7]

Bitcoin is much smaller than gold in terms of market cap and it is also much more useful. That means bitcoin has much more room to grow unlike gold which reached its full potential. I am saying this because gold don't really have much real world use anymore other than being used in jewelry and electronics. Bitcoin on the other hand, is a world currency. Millions of people send and receive bitcoin to purchase and sell stuff every day. This is no joke. Bitcoin can easily double or triple the market cap of gold.

Gold is still used a lot in the world, it still an asset trusted and sought by not only people but also all countries who hoard as much gold as possible. In the future, bitcoin may become like gold or more, but for now, it is not comparable to gold. The world population is 8 billion people, and 8 billion people all need gold, but with bitcoin, that number is only a few hundred million.

[Flexystar]

Gold existed since thousands of years. It was being used since AD and BC era of the human history. It’s logical to think that humans have extra ordinary attachment with the Gold for sure. Over the time we are putting huge efforts into extracting the gold from earth crust. We have heavy machinery, putting high amount of investment to acquire the lands, put huge time and efforts in the entire process.

It’s definitely costly process which adds up value to the Gold. The second most important factor that is giving value to the Gold is: it’s elemental properties making high use of Gold in technology and people around the world having its possession.

This gives demand to the next biggest factor when it comes to the value addition.

Moreover the predominant asset always becomes thing of social status and that’s what Gold has done so far.  

When it comes to Bitcoin, things are relatively naive. People are just understanding the technology and its use case fairly slowly. It will take time for mega adoption of the bitcoin just like what I explain about the Gold above. I think we should never compare thousand years of history with the decade old technology.

[drwhobox]

Your point about taxation is really interesting. I wonder if governments will eventually try to regulate BTC more heavily to prevent people from avoiding taxes. It's definitely something to keep an eye on. But for now, I'm excited to see where BTC goes and how it evolves as a store of value

Different government has different style of putting tax on assets. From where I am for gold we have to pay taxes to the government if we want to trade the gold legally. There are other ways to avoid tax, we can prevent tax by trading p2p but this not the right way but also it is not restricted.
With bitcoin we don't have to pay tax for that because bitcoin possession is already banned in my country, which made every transaction of bitcoin and cryptocurrency is illegal for us.

[ItsCrafty]

Gold is real money and one county currency rate depends upon number of gold available,exports and imports of these countries. human relationship with gold is too old and before these paper currency gold and silver used for buy and sell.

World is changing into modern era and first gold transaction changed into coin currency and later then paper currency which is only receipt for gold. now Electronic money are using most of the countries.

In this modern world Bitcoin technology is more powerful than gold and its adoption is too fast. in 13 years we have seen si much money flow into btc. Hardly ten percent of people would have invested in btc and price increased more than gold. suppose that 80% people start investing in btc then what will be Bitcoin price at this stage. we cannot denied the value if Gold but if we talk about price potential then its obvious that Btc is more powerful.

[Lucius]

~snip~
Hardly ten percent of people would have invested in btc and price increased more than gold. suppose that 80% people start investing in btc then what will be Bitcoin price at this stage. we cannot denied the value if Gold but if we talk about price potential then its obvious that Btc is more powerful.

We can't even talk about 5%, let alone 10% of people, which would be 800 000 million people at this moment. At best, only 2% of people are in some way involved in Bitcoin, and all those who think that some mass adaptation will happen obviously do not think that more than one third of people do not have access to the internet, one part has access that is occasional, and the largest percentage of people who have heard of Bitcoin have a negative attitude towards it, which stems from the attitudes of their governments.

[Lorence.xD]

One of the biggest reason why everyone favours Gold over Bitcoin is due to its existence. I had read somewhere that Gold trading started in the 17th century, we are living in the 21st century. Just imagine the trust Gold has generated in the mind of human in so many years.

Whereas Bitcoin is a decade old commodity and is somewhat complex to understand, doesn't have a physical existence. I assume by the end of this century it would gain the same trust like Gold had gained among humans.  

Even now if you have gold you can be considered rich like bars of gold. The major difference between gold and Bitcoin is that you just simply buy or trade golds and invest in physical form. Which can be similar to the Bitcoin but the difference is the way you have to do those mentioned in the gold, like in trading you'll have to understand deeply about it since it's complicated like the market it's much volatile.

For sure they'll trust Bitcoin for many years, it's just too complicated for people to learn and study about Bitcoin. Even some people took years to understand Bitcoin and still keep learning everyday. If you ask a person to invest in gold they could actually do it on their own as they simply know how it works unlike in Bitcoin.

[WeThePe0ple]

OP you are limiting Bitcoin's potential by thinking it can only be as valuable as gold and therefore only attain a price of $650k.

Bitcoin is much much more useful than Gold. I mean if it wasn't, there wouldn't be much reason for it to exist.

Gold has a little bit of its market value in its use in electronics. Gold has a lot of its market value in jewelry and other uses of it for aesthetic or ceremonial purposes. But I believe most gold is stored in vaults and used simply as a store of value. Bitcoin doesn't have the electronics and aesthetics/ceremonial uses like Gold does, it only has the monetary use. But Bitcoin is orders of magnitude better in its monetary use case than Gold is.

Aristotle defined what money is. He came up with these 4 necessary criteria:

- a store of value
- portable
- divisible
- durable

The only money that meets these criteria is precious metal. Oil does not meet all 4. Neither does land. And neither does currency, because central banks print it to infinity so it ends up losing all of its value.

BTC outperforms gold in the sense that it scores better for being divisible. It's easier.

However as part of durability, BTC will not erode over time but I am extremely worried about hackers and governments taking down exchanges and basically stealing all of our BTC via the law or via raw theft.
I don't even know if it is safer to leave BTC on something like Binance or on a ledger, because both are attacked by hackers and by the government. That is hard to overcome.

I am currently checking out videos of ledger users and the amount of threats is ridiculous.
Thieves presenting themselves as Ledger staff. Address poisoning. Spam that results in a drained account if you click on it.
It never stops.

And if Ledger gets hacked again, everything is gone.

[spectre71]

They are two different beasts. I argue they both including silver should be in a a portfolio.

[thecodebear]

OP you are limiting Bitcoin's potential by thinking it can only be as valuable as gold and therefore only attain a price of $650k.

Bitcoin is much much more useful than Gold. I mean if it wasn't, there wouldn't be much reason for it to exist.

Gold has a little bit of its market value in its use in electronics. Gold has a lot of its market value in jewelry and other uses of it for aesthetic or ceremonial purposes. But I believe most gold is stored in vaults and used simply as a store of value. Bitcoin doesn't have the electronics and aesthetics/ceremonial uses like Gold does, it only has the monetary use. But Bitcoin is orders of magnitude better in its monetary use case than Gold is.

Aristotle defined what money is. He came up with these 4 necessary criteria:

- a store of value
- portable
- divisible
- durable

The only money that meets these criteria is precious metal. Oil does not meet all 4. Neither does land. And neither does currency, because central banks print it to infinity so it ends up losing all of its value.

BTC outperforms gold in the sense that it scores better for being divisible. It's easier.

However as part of durability, BTC will not erode over time but I am extremely worried about hackers and governments taking down exchanges and basically stealing all of our BTC via the law or via raw theft.
I don't even know if it is safer to leave BTC on something like Binance or on a ledger, because both are attacked by hackers and by the government. That is hard to overcome.

I am currently checking out videos of ledger users and the amount of threats is ridiculous.
Thieves presenting themselves as Ledger staff. Address poisoning. Spam that results in a drained account if you click on it.
It never stops.

And if Ledger gets hacked again, everything is gone.

Bitcoin outperforms all four of those things compared to Gold by a wide margin.

- Bitcoin is obviously orders of magnitude more portable than Gold.
- Bitcoin is far more divisible, in that it is entirely trivial to divide Bitcoin by Satoshis, while Gold is much harder to divide into precise amounts (break it and measure it or melt it and measure it).
- Bitcoin is a much better store of value than Gold because its scarcity is perfectly known and therefore it has much better scarcity.
- Both Bitcoin and Gold are durable, though I guess you could say Bitcoin wins this too because Bitcoin can literally never be turned into anything not Bitcoin, whereas it is physical possible to change elements into other elements but its hard enough that the ability to do this is neglible. So I would say Bitcoin and Gold are equally durable.


I'm not sure why you are associating hacks with Bitcoin durability. Hacking has nothing to do with durability. That's like saying Gold isn't durable because it can be stolen. That's not the definition of durability. And why are you so worried? You can store Bitcoin yourself, that's kind of the whole point of it! There is no reason you have to store your Bitcoin with an exchange or with Ledger or any specific thing. You can keep it yourself. But anyway, this has nothing to do with durability.

[m2017]

A peculiar comparison of btc and gold, however, based on it's total number. I don't think that the value of this or that asset depends directly only on the total amount of this asset.

There is potential for bitcoin to rise in price, I'm not sure if it depends on the ratio with gold. I don't see a direct correlation.

Gold has been used for centuries as a store of wealth. People's thinking has inertia, therefore, it will not be soon abandoned in favor of btc. Although, as we can see, many rich people invest in BTC, at least in order to diversify risks. Which is already a good indicator. Undoubtedly, over time, more people will choose btc over gold. If only because bitcoin allows you to increase wealth, while gold only saves. Human greed will push towards the choice of bitcoin.

Regarding the real amount of BTC available to the buyer, I absolutely agree. For a part has already been lost and it is not known how much more will be lost forever. Therefore, fewer than 21 mln. bitcoins will be available in total, and this further increases the value of btc.

Any government will dream of taxing btc and will try to implement it. If bitcoin is used without conversion directly for payment for goods and services, then they will try to collect taxes for this (I have no idea how this will be implemented) or simply such operations will be, in principle, illegal. Big Brother always wants a percentage of our activity.

[el kaka22]

OP is incredibly right, so right that I have been saying this for nearly 10 years now. I believe that bitcoin will be worth 10kg gold, that is true and that is exactly what it will be one day. This is both good but also bad. It is good because it means we still have 20x to go, but it is bad because it shows that we are not going to have 100x increase in bitcoin ever again (unless dollar crashes even harder than 2008 and 2021 combined) so all in all it's a fact, but not sure if it's a good one or a bad one.

We shouldn't really consider this as a big better great deal, it can be good or it could be bad but it is what it is. I think OP found out about something that should be considered as fact in every discussion.

[_BlackStar]

However as part of durability, BTC will not erode over time but I am extremely worried about hackers and governments taking down exchanges and basically stealing all of our BTC via the law or via raw theft.
I don't even know if it is safer to leave BTC on something like Binance or on a ledger, because both are attacked by hackers and by the government. That is hard to overcome.

Something that you are worried about, of course, has a basis, everyone definitely doesn't want to lose their money easily. But you have to really understand that bitcoin is a risky investment where you need to care not only about its price volatility, but not about its security. There is some good advice you should read if you are worried about storage wallets.

Reminder: do not keep your money in online accounts

If you are concerned about the best method to store your bitcoin safely, then you should pay enough attention to security advice. After all, binance is just a centralized exchange, it is not a secure wallet ^{[not recommended],} so have a wallet that gives you full custody instead of 100% trusting a centralized exchange.

[ajiz138]

Bitcoin is much smaller than gold in terms of market cap and it is also much more useful. That means bitcoin has much more room to grow unlike gold which reached its full potential. I am saying this because gold don't really have much real world use anymore other than being used in jewelry and electronics. Bitcoin on the other hand, is a world currency. Millions of people send and receive bitcoin to purchase and sell stuff every day. This is no joke. Bitcoin can easily double or triple the market cap of gold.

Because gold has been around for several centuries and of course gold has market capitalists because the majority of them already believe in gold because it has a relatively stable value so prices can grow even though it is small per year, they believe gold is used as a reserve asset because gold trade is far away. bigger and almost most of them already know than bitcoin.

Bitcoin has only grown for the age of corn and this has only started a decade but small adoption has begun to spread so that many understand the technology and also the benefits generated by storing bitcoin from time to time, bitcoin has a limited supply and we believe that bitcoin can multiply capitalists more than gold trading, every time bitcoin soars, the increase can be more than 3-5x or even more.

Bitcoin is a rare commodity and it is certain that it will never increase again in its supply.

[yazher]

Bitcoin is much smaller than gold in terms of market cap and it is also much more useful. That means bitcoin has much more room to grow unlike gold which reached its full potential. I am saying this because gold don't really have much real world use anymore other than being used in jewelry and electronics. Bitcoin on the other hand, is a world currency. Millions of people send and receive bitcoin to purchase and sell stuff every day. This is no joke. Bitcoin can easily double or triple the market cap of gold.

In terms of usage, bitcoins have more room for innovations and improvements and when they gonna start to adopt bitcoins as means of payment all around the world without any boundaries, the price will surely skyrocket and it might gonna reach the point where we don't even expect it to be. But as for it to go beyond the market cap of gold I don't agree about it in terms of the coming years because there is a lot to be done before that things will happen and I'm sure when gold sales will start to decline in the coming years, that's when bitcoins arise to its full potential.

[sunsilk]

It's because that's been the standard of conversion for gold and bitcoin. The value of these currencies might go lower but I doubt it that they will entirely go to zero and utterly be destroyed. There can be changes in terms of monetary system but these two that you've mentioned can't just be gone too quickly just as we say.

Even with current news about BRICS that's trying to de-dollarized with their economies. It's gonna to be a work in progress and won't be just applied too quickly so as usd/btc, usd/gold, eu/btc, and eu/gold.

Also with their ability to print unlimitedly, they can still do such controls with it through interest rates and just like what US did recently and still doing some of its control based on how they want to value its fiat.

Yes and the major currencies are the ones that people have an idea about in regards to purchasing power. In order for a new unit of account to establish itself, it takes a lot of time. I addition to that Bitcoin is a brand new technology, which means that people who are not familiar with it also will have issues trusting it as the new unit of account. Apart from the fact that many won't be able / like using it. It's more likely that Bitcoin will find its way into the global society with the younger generations from today. Using a phone, using wallets and so on, that is something many of the older people don't do unless it is something like Applepay where they have an idea what that is about and who is behind it. I am not saying it is better, I am only saying that a lot of people have less issues trusting it.

Whether the USD suffers from inflation or not, too many people still find it easier to judge a good in pennies or USD than in satoshis. It's also not even easy for those familiar with Bitcoin as nobody can tell for sure where its price is going, but that also has an impact because people would spend less if they know their satoshis will increase in purchasing power over time. While uncertainty is usually not a good thing, the certainly that the dollar will further be inflated gives people something to calculate with.

People assume that by just having that alliance is going to be kick out dollars and just devaluate it too easy. It's not how it goes, I'm not an economist expert but looking at that will really take time and won't come in an instant as there's a process and there's more into it.

It's true that even if bitcoin is already mainstream these days, there are still people that are doubting about its capacity and even more with its usage because all they hear is that it's a dark market thing or a scammers money without further research so we can't blame them for that.

But by the time that all of these things happen all at once and they see that bitcoin is still standing firm then that shall give the assurance that it's one good alternative as a store of value and a unit of account.

[goldkingcoiner]

Physical gold is quite good and just like Bitcoin, it has a fixed amount, which means once all the gold has been mined, thats it. Gold ist used in many things, jewelry, chips, medicine, science and so on... So obviously people have a need for gold. That sounds like a wonderful currency.

But there are problems, as I see it. First, what happens if a giant amount of new gold is discovered? Or we start mining gold from asteroids in the future? The value will go down very quickly.

Furthermore, what happens once we no longer need so much gold because we have invented better materials? Also, lastly, gold is physical and heavy. That makes it hard to carry around much gold with you wherever you go. So unless you want to trust a piece of paper that says "the government gold reserves owe you an x amount of gold", you will find it hard to deal with as a currency in large numbers.

Same problem with trying to attach gold to BTC. You still need a third party "promising" that they will exchange an x amount of gold for your x amount of Bitcoin. The best middle man between gold and BTC remains fiat, unfortunately. If fiat fails, then perhaps your scenario of the 10kg gold to 1 BTC peg might happen. But again, what will the intrinsic value of gold be?

[GreatArkansas]

(....)
- I think this is only true when BTC reaches mass adoption like gold does now. But I think this has a good chance of happening because CBDC's will lose their value just like fiat currency. People will run to real stores of value like precious metals or BTC. BTC is more accessible than gold and so I expect more people to chose BTC over time.

When Bitcoin price also, I think we will start to experience a huge price hike for Bitcoin in the next short future same like Gold, Gold started from nothing.
As others say, Bitcoin is like a digital version of gold.
Take note also that when Gold started its Bitcoin ETF, that was also the time the price started to go up. So we should be aware of this kind of event too.

[landheer]

In my opinion, gold is a very valuable investment asset and its price always increases from time to time, and in my opinion, it has been proven that investing in gold has nothing to lose because the price continues to increase from time to time.
and the risk is not too high.

but bitcoin is a very valuable asset and many people have become rich investing in btc. but btc has a very high risk because of its unstable price. so many people also lose for investing in btc.
so BTC investment can potentially make big profits and can potentially make big losses.

but I personally prefer btc for investment, because in my opinion the price of btc in the future will be higher than gold.

[Pierre 2]

I feel like there is one obvious answer to this debate. Old/traditional investors can't give up Gold. Its the most well known investing method in history. Its physicality means its very convincing. When I argued with family member about finances lately, she told me she can buy cut Gold - worths a lot - instead of buying gold certificates directly. Bitcoin doesn't have this luxury. And Bitcoin investors are mostly between 18-30 or 35. Very young people indeed. So its gonna take very long for Bitcoin to capture high market cap.