The two most important properties of Bitcoin

[Danica22]

Gold and bitcoin are two different asset in different classes, therefore, there is no reason to compare both of them because they have their own separate pros and cons. Gold is a natural resource endowed by nature while bitcoin is a man made asset in the form of a currency. Gold has been in existence for a long time which has made it to be the number one safe haven asset.

Bitcoin is an intangible asset, while gold is a tangible asset. They are two very different assets but it is hard to understand why people constantly like to compare them and deliberately claim that bitcoin is better.

However, I prefer bitcoin to gold because it gives the the opportunity to be my own bank without anyone notice that I have 1btc in my wallet.

That is the reason but not the main reason, the top reason why we choose bitcoin is because its return is better than gold.

Gold supply is not limited because there are still place  in the world with large quantities of gold beneath the earth but people have found out of such places

But the problem is that mining and processing gold into finished products is very expensive, and that is why for thousands of years, humans have not mined all the gold on earth. The higher the cost of gold mining, the higher the value of gold.

[Ishicryptic]

The two most important attributes of Bitcoin are that it is decentralized because no government or institutions can control it, it is a hedge against inflation because it has limited supply. These qualities have made it a store of value and that is why it's adoption is increasing massively.

Bitcoin comparison with gold I can say that they are both stores of value but gold is a natural asset while Bitcoin is a digital asset and that means that their origins are very different. Bitcoin has some advantages over gold that can make it's adoption to surpass gold in the future. Gold is a physical asset that can mandate you to be carrying it around for safekeep and to sell which is risky but Bitcoin is digital, it is in the Blockchain which nobody can steal from. Also Bitcoin is easy to sell and buy from the comfort of where you are unlike gold that you need to carry physical to point of sale or buy.

[TheUltraElite]

We are comparing against gold again?

I keep saying, both have their own pros and cons, hence investing in both is important. Not just gold, one should also look into stocks, commodities and real estate. Keep altcoins out of the question and then you have a portfolio to keep.

Bitcoin is having some problems with governments in some countries and taxation rules which are outrageous. These are hurdles that we need to cross before we can have a seamless bitcoin use system.

[HistoLock]

Gold is scarce but it has no limited supply. Bitcoin has limited supply.
Gold is not easy to save. Bitcoin is easy to save if you read and understand about it.

These are the two areas that bitcoin is better than gold but gold has good side also as it can be used as jewelry and others. But what makes gold expensive today is what people think about it. Also exactly what makes bitcoin expensive today. That it is an investment. That it is scarce.

Yes, it is true that the supply of Bitcoin is limited. Bitcoin is a valuable asset in terms of investment, but gold is difficult to store. I think if we talk about Bitcoin and gold, Bitcoin is better than gold. Gold is currently ahead but Bitcoin is not behind, big companies invest in Bitcoin. Since the market of Bitcoin fluctuates, it will have a higher price than gold in the future. Gold is only used by people as jewelry, but Bitcoin has more uses, Bitcoin is best for investment.

[sunsilk]

Bitcoin was created to not to be just a store of value - but an alternative to fiat.

And one day, there will be more people seeing it that way rather than just a store of value

We already saw it that way, but today, more people just see it as a valuable store of value. And many don't want to use it as an alternative to fiat.

The fees are fine, and they're at the lowest, and it's the best time to use it as a payment if ever someone needs to use it for paying.

Not too many want to pay their Bitcoins as a payment but to keep it as a store of value because the price have been increasing and we're in a bull run.

[Mrbluntzy]

Bitcoin is ultimate in its uniqueness, it is not to he compared with other important assets which can also be a key assets for diversified investment, but the natural properties and characteristics of Bitcoin already makes it special the properties are very visible for anyone to see but left with a choice to adopt Bitcoin or not. Bitcoin is important in many ways not just in the two ways you considered it to be too important, in terms of mobility, simplicity, and divisible.

[CryptoHeadlineNews]

1. Bitcoin is a neutral asset
2. Bitcoin is a store of value

In a nutshell, those are the two most important properties to describe bitcoin.
It's what distinguishes bitcoin from any other crypto and makes it totally unique
from anything else IMO. When someone asks me why I invest in bitcoin, that is what I tell them.
 
Bitcoin is just a better version of gold.

And in addition to the comparison you just made about Gold and Bitcoin  above is the fact that while Bitcoin has a limited supply, gold on the other hand, it's supply is unlimited. Because it's every month we keep hearing on the news about countries or empires discovering their hidden gold reserves, which in most case are always hundreds to thousand tones of gold. Which is one factor that has made it's price unmatched to Bitcoin that is just 16yrs and yet it's value has already skyrocketed to $118k per BTC. While secondly, another difference is that as a newbie, you can easily fall victim to buying fake gold, unlike Bitcoin that is digital and it's transaction can always be confirmed on the Blockchain.

[Abiky]

1. Bitcoin is a neutral asset
2. Bitcoin is a store of value

In a nutshell, those are the two most important properties to describe bitcoin.
It's what distinguishes bitcoin from any other crypto and makes it totally unique
from anything else IMO. When someone asks me why I invest in bitcoin, that is what I tell them.

It makes it easy for most people to understand IMO, to boil it down to those two simple points.

What makes bitcoin a neutral store of value?

1. Bitcoin is truly decentralized, meaning no person or small group of persons
    can unilaterally control it.
2. Unlike fiat and all the countless millions of shitcoins out there, bitcoin cannot be printed out of thin air.
3. Unlike fiat and all the shitcoins, it wasn't made to enrich its creator (Satoshi never profited from bitcoin).
4. Unlike ethereum, bitcoin does not have an unlimited and endless supply.


Comparison to Gold

1. Gold can also be a good neutral asset and store of value. But unlike bitcoin,
    you can't send and receive gold very easily. Delivering gold through the mail is very risky.

2. To buy and sell gold, you have to travel to a gold exchange. Depending where you live,
    you may not have one nearby. You have to physically transport the gold, which is a security risk.

3. Storing gold in your house is no better than storing large amounts of cash.
    Banks do not normally accept gold as a deposit, so you just have to store it in your house.
    That is a major security concern. Bitcoin solves the self-custody security problems of gold and cash.

4. Buying and selling larger amounts of gold can be a challenge. You always worry if you are
    buying real or counterfeit gold, and verifying its authenticity isn't always easy.

5. Bitcoin is used for digital payments, and adoption as a payment method is growing.
    Gold is not convenient as a payment method, and hasn't been used as a medium of
    exchange for hundreds of years, at least not in the modern world.

6. Unlike bitcoin, gold is not easily verifiable. A government can tell you it has two thousand tons of gold.
    But that claim is impossible to verify without you being there in person to see it for yourself.
    Which the government will never let you do. And even if they did you won't know if the gold bars
    are actually solid gold or just gold-plated. This is a problem with gold all over the world including the US
    which has not provided proof of its reserves in decades, despite orders from the courts and Congress to do so.
    They just simply ignore it.

Bitcoin is just a better version of gold.

Despite Bitcoin being superior than Gold, many investors prefer the latter for serious, long-term investments. I guess it has something to do with the fact that Gold's been trusted for centuries. BTC is fairly new to the world, with just 16 years of operation. It has advanced quite fast, but it's still extremely-volatile. Gold is much more stable.

Believe me, the time will come when BTC will eventually surpass Gold in market cap. The yellow metal will slowly lose investor appeal, as it shift its focus solely into jewelry and electronics. The future is digital whenever we like it or not. That means physical assets/commodities such as Gold and Silver will become a thing of the past. But we're talking about a very distant future where neither you or I will be alive. A lot can happen by then. With "Wall Street" deep in the game, mainstream adoption for Bitcoin will only increase. Just my two sats.

[GreatArkansas]

(...)
Gold is not easy to save. Bitcoin is easy to save if you read and understand about it.

I like this phrase of yours. It is just basically telling that Gold is traditional, and Bitcoin is already modern.
So for me, the most special feature I can see with Bitcoin compared to gold is that Bitcoin is intangible, which really outstand in our modern days now especially we already have internet.

[tbct_mt2]

I like this phrase of yours. It is just basically telling that Gold is traditional, and Bitcoin is already modern.
So for me, the most special feature I can see with Bitcoin compared to gold is that Bitcoin is intangible, which really outstand in our modern days now especially we already have internet.

Gold is older than Bitcoin but both gold and Bitcoin will continue their existences and none of them will kill the another asset. The world population is huge enough with many human generations, and basically the older generations are less likely accept new technologies, new investment assets like Bitcoin while very oppositely, the younger generations will be opened with new technologies like blockchain and new investment assets like Bitcoin.

Vijay wrote a book, The bullish case for Bitcoin that is open access on Medium. His book provides many insights and in his book, he made very insightful comparison between Gold and Bitcoin.

[Scarlett_23]

Gold is scarce but it has no limited supply. Bitcoin has limited supply.
Gold is not easy to save. Bitcoin is easy to save if you read and understand about it.

These are the two areas that bitcoin is better than gold but gold has good side also as it can be used as jewelry and others. But what makes gold expensive today is what people think about it. Also exactly what makes bitcoin expensive today. That it is an investment. That it is scarce.

Gold is a precious metal. But it is not limited. Sometimes shiny metals are also considered gold, but they are not gold. But Bitcoin is limited. No one can make more than twenty-one million of it. Again, no other currency of its equivalent has come into the market in comparison.

Therefore, Bitcoin is more expensive than gold. If there is more gold, it is very difficult to store it because it is at risk of security. It is considered a safe place in a bank locker. But its seed phrase is enough to store Bitcoin.

It can be carried anywhere in the world. Therefore, Bitcoin is the most advanced digital asset in the digital age.

[shinratensei_]

Bitcoin is just a better version of gold.

Are we doing this again?

There have been so many threads comparing bitcoin and gold, aren't you tired and what do you expect when you say this on the bitcoin forum? No matter what you say, there is one fact that you and those who are biased towards bitcoin cannot change. Gold is still the most treasured asset in the world and the only safe haven that investors will turn to in times of world turmoil, not bitcoin. Gold has a market cap 10 times larger than bitcoin, that is not going to change anytime soon and probably never will. No matter how large the gold supply is, it will never be enough to satisfy the world's thirst for gold, and they will not get bored of gold for that silly reason. The demand for gold will continue to increase and no other asset can keep up.

Yeah gold is the precious until we discovered technology to drill asteroid and then suddenly we got a moon sized asteroid full of gold and the price slashed to 1/4.
There are many space drilling company on the making right now. So, I want to bet on the limited supply of bitcoin which is safeguarded by math instead of fake sense of scarcity that gold has offered which could change in the near future for all i know. At the end of the day, people are free to choose their asset to invest in.

[Swordsoffreedom]

Yeah gold is the precious until we discovered technology to drill asteroid and then suddenly we got a moon sized asteroid full of gold and the price slashed to 1/4.
There are many space drilling company on the making right now. So, I want to bet on the limited supply of bitcoin which is safeguarded by math instead of fake sense of scarcity that gold has offered which could change in the near future for all i know. At the end of the day, people are free to choose their asset to invest in.

Stop fantasizing about mining gold on other asteroids. Because more than 5 thousand years have passed and humans have not yet exploited all the gold reserves in the earth's crust, let alone mining gold in places where humans cannot live.

Not to mention, mining gold from the earth's crust is inherently costly and expensive, and that is one of the reasons why the price of gold only increases and never decreases. Therefore, gold mining on other planets only pushes the price of gold up dozens of times, not reducing it as many people mistakenly believe.

More importantly, demand is the key and as we all know, the demand for gold is huge as it is used in every industry. If the world population is 8 billion people, then there are more than 7 billion people who crave and need gold, but that will never happen with bitcoin. Because gold has many use cases, utilities...while bitcoin, besides speculative purposes, what else can it do?

While we are bitcoin investors, but let's look at the big picture and be realistic.

[Rustam Meraj]

No doubt Bitcoin is neutral asset and store of value because it is decentralized means no one person or group controls it and it has fixed supply that can not be increased like regular money. And your argue that Bitcoin is better version of gold because it is much easier to move around and its ownership is transparent and easy to check and it is built for digital world we live in today. But both Gold and Bitcoin has their own advantages and disadvantages so some like Bitcoin to store and some like to store gold and some prefer both.

[DonaldCryptoTalk1]

1. Bitcoin is a neutral asset
2. Bitcoin is a store of value

In a nutshell, those are the two most important properties to describe bitcoin.
It's what distinguishes bitcoin from any other crypto and makes it totally unique
from anything else IMO. When someone asks me why I invest in bitcoin, that is what I tell them.

It makes it easy for most people to understand IMO, to boil it down to those two simple points.

What makes bitcoin a neutral store of value?

1. Bitcoin is truly decentralized, meaning no person or small group of persons
    can unilaterally control it.
2. Unlike fiat and all the countless millions of shitcoins out there, bitcoin cannot be printed out of thin air.
3. Unlike fiat and all the shitcoins, it wasn't made to enrich its creator (Satoshi never profited from bitcoin).
4. Unlike ethereum, bitcoin does not have an unlimited and endless supply.


Comparison to Gold

1. Gold can also be a good neutral asset and store of value. But unlike bitcoin,
    you can't send and receive gold very easily. Delivering gold through the mail is very risky.

2. To buy and sell gold, you have to travel to a gold exchange. Depending where you live,
    you may not have one nearby. You have to physically transport the gold, which is a security risk.

3. Storing gold in your house is no better than storing large amounts of cash.
    Banks do not normally accept gold as a deposit, so you just have to store it in your house.
    That is a major security concern. Bitcoin solves the self-custody security problems of gold and cash.

4. Buying and selling larger amounts of gold can be a challenge. You always worry if you are
    buying real or counterfeit gold, and verifying its authenticity isn't always easy.

5. Bitcoin is used for digital payments, and adoption as a payment method is growing.
    Gold is not convenient as a payment method, and hasn't been used as a medium of
    exchange for hundreds of years, at least not in the modern world.

6. Unlike bitcoin, gold is not easily verifiable. A government can tell you it has two thousand tons of gold.
    But that claim is impossible to verify without you being there in person to see it for yourself.
    Which the government will never let you do. And even if they did you won't know if the gold bars
    are actually solid gold or just gold-plated. This is a problem with gold all over the world including the US
    which has not provided proof of its reserves in decades, despite orders from the courts and Congress to do so.
    They just simply ignore it.

Bitcoin is just a better version of gold.

Yeah exactly. Bitcoin really boils down to being neutral and a store of value. That’s what makes it stand out from fiat, altcoins, and even gold.

Neutral because nobody controls it, the supply can’t be inflated, and it wasn’t created to make the founder rich. Store of value because it’s scarce, easy to verify, and can be sent anywhere instantly without needing permission.

Gold did the job for centuries, but Bitcoin is like gold with all the flaws fixed. You don’t need to lug it around, worry if it’s fake, or find somewhere to stash it. You can move billions in BTC in minutes and hold it securely yourself.

Basically, Bitcoin is just gold for the digital age, but better.

[fruktik]

Bitcoin was created to not to be just a store of value - but an alternative to fiat.

And one day, there will be more people seeing it that way rather than just a store of value

There is too much control in this world. So Satoshi decided to create a tool for transferring value that is not subject to censorship by the authorities of all countries. This state of affairs still infuriates those in power. They foam at the mouth again and again claim that they do not want to perceive Bitcoin as an alternative unit on par with fiat. Yes, there are those who keep up with the times and accept this technology as something that meets the modern world.

[DanWalker]

Are we doing this again?

There have been so many threads comparing bitcoin and gold, aren't you tired and what do you expect when you say this on the bitcoin forum? No matter what you say, there is one fact that you and those who are biased towards bitcoin cannot change. Gold is still the most treasured asset in the world and the only safe haven that investors will turn to in times of world turmoil, not bitcoin. Gold has a market cap 10 times larger than bitcoin, that is not going to change anytime soon and probably never will. No matter how large the gold supply is, it will never be enough to satisfy the world's thirst for gold, and they will not get bored of gold for that silly reason. The demand for gold will continue to increase and no other asset can keep up.

Yeah gold is the precious until we discovered technology to drill asteroid and then suddenly we got a moon sized asteroid full of gold and the price slashed to 1/4.
There are many space drilling company on the making right now. So, I want to bet on the limited supply of bitcoin which is safeguarded by math instead of fake sense of scarcity that gold has offered which could change in the near future for all i know. At the end of the day, people are free to choose their asset to invest in.

The potential and value of gold is not determined by its supply but also by the practical applications it brings to the world. Most of the gold supply exists in the form of jewelry, luxury items and that is also considered a form of investment in gold. The remainder is used for national reserves, investment (ETFs) and industrial use. That is why I say that no matter how large the gold supply is, it cannot satisfy mankind's thirst for gold and they will not get bored with gold if they do not find an alternative.

Can Bitcoin be used in jewelry, electronics industry? Bitcoin will never be able to compare to gold in demand.

[henry_of_skalitz]

Are we doing this again?

There have been so many threads comparing bitcoin and gold, aren't you tired and what do you expect when you say this on the bitcoin forum? No matter what you say, there is one fact that you and those who are biased towards bitcoin cannot change. Gold is still the most treasured asset in the world and the only safe haven that investors will turn to in times of world turmoil, not bitcoin. Gold has a market cap 10 times larger than bitcoin, that is not going to change anytime soon and probably never will. No matter how large the gold supply is, it will never be enough to satisfy the world's thirst for gold, and they will not get bored of gold for that silly reason. The demand for gold will continue to increase and no other asset can keep up.

Yeah gold is the precious until we discovered technology to drill asteroid and then suddenly we got a moon sized asteroid full of gold and the price slashed to 1/4.
There are many space drilling company on the making right now. So, I want to bet on the limited supply of bitcoin which is safeguarded by math instead of fake sense of scarcity that gold has offered which could change in the near future for all i know. At the end of the day, people are free to choose their asset to invest in.

The potential and value of gold is not determined by its supply but also by the practical applications it brings to the world. Most of the gold supply exists in the form of jewelry, luxury items and that is also considered a form of investment in gold. The remainder is used for national reserves, investment (ETFs) and industrial use. That is why I say that no matter how large the gold supply is, it cannot satisfy mankind's thirst for gold and they will not get bored with gold if they do not find an alternative.

Can Bitcoin be used in jewelry, electronics industry? Bitcoin will never be able to compare to gold in demand.

Can gold be used for services that humans need, not the daily-daily ones, but many that are truly there and can be done using BTC?

[Abiky]

The potential and value of gold is not determined by its supply but also by the practical applications it brings to the world. Most of the gold supply exists in the form of jewelry, luxury items and that is also considered a form of investment in gold. The remainder is used for national reserves, investment (ETFs) and industrial use. That is why I say that no matter how large the gold supply is, it cannot satisfy mankind's thirst for gold and they will not get bored with gold if they do not find an alternative.

Can Bitcoin be used in jewelry, electronics industry? Bitcoin will never be able to compare to gold in demand.

Bitcoin can't be used physically because it only exists in the digital realm. Since it's "programmable", you can use BTC on "De-Fi" apps in ways that you've never imagined. You can set up a time-locked contract where funds would be available after a certain time period or when certain conditions are met. Can you do that with Gold? I don't think so. In addition, you can send/receive fractions of a Bitcoin (satoshis) in a borderless manner. No need to carry bulky, heavy bags when transporting (digital transfer) Bitcoin. It's extremely-portable. Gold falls behind in this regard. Not to mention, no one knows the exact amount of Gold in existence (max supply). There could be more than what we know. In the case of Bitcoin, everybody knows there will only be 21m coins in existence (fixed supply).

In many ways, Bitcoin is superior to Gold. The only thing is that you can't use it offline (sort of). At least, when deeming off-chain transactions "final". Maybe developers are working on a solution? It won't be long before Gold becomes history (as it loses investment appeal). See you in "Mars".

[Afs25]

While Bitcoin continues to be the most secure and trusted crypto, many altcoins offer better utility and faster innovation. In your opinion, should new investors diversify into altcoins or stay mostly in Bitcoin?