I believe both of them are basically just proof that peak performance doesn't depend on centralization or decentralization directly. One of the major reasons why I said this is because both of them are totally different with gold being centralized and bitcoin being decentralized.
I don't see direct benefits of comparing them but if gold was decentralized and still was able to maintain it's high demand and importance then it's very possible it still would have grown this much. The centralization of gold was just a way to place more importance on gold by creating the condition of scarcity.
Of course, central banks are currently the main buyers of gold. However, many private individuals also own gold. People buy gold in both bars and coins. 🙋
By the way, central bank purchases of gold, in my opinion, do not make it a centralized asset. Currently, there are 193 countries in the world. Most of them hold gold in their reserves. Moreover, these are competing countries (for example, China and the United States). This global distribution, in my opinion, does not allow us to claim that gold is a centralized asset.
In many countries, gold is very closely associated with centralized organizations. Personally, I see this as a problem. For example, many private individuals store their gold not at home, but in the vaults of commercial banks (which are centralized organizations). In many countries, gold is centrally refined into bars at refineries and sold centrally (only through commercial banks with state participation).
At the same time, governments and institutional players are also looking to centralize Bitcoin.🤷 I really don't like this.
