Bitcoin vs. Gold: Why Only One Makes a Good Currency

 

Don’t get me wrong, this article is certainly not about bashing gold. I love gold and think of it as highly valuable.

Gold is lustrous and malleable, which makes it great for sculpting into jewelry or even art. Gold leaf is created for decorating areas of the home, adding to paintings, or even to decorate haute cuisine and confections.
Gold is edible in very small quantities and Ayurvedic masters advocate it’s great healing powers when administered properly.

Gold is also an efficient conductor of electricity and is used in the building of numerous electronics and even aerospace technology. It serves this purpose masterfully due to the fact that gold simply does not tarnish or corrode and is highly durable, therefore it will not interfere with the electrical conductivity over time.

Gold can even be added to glass to create windows that provide climate controlling for a building. There are many wonderful and valuable industrial uses for gold, indeed!

 

However, I strongly feel that unless a catastrophe were to happen and we needed to start all over again in terms of civilization, that gold is not a viable contender for use as a currency. Gold is more of an investment than anything else. The imputed value of gold fluctuates in a manner that would make it difficult to purchase with due to it’s physical nature, as opposed to digital currency, like Bitcoin.

Bitcoin does have the ability to be broken down almost infinitely into fractions to allow for wide fluctuations in it’s value. Because it is digital, it is extremly simple to transfer it anywhere with online access. The entire contents of a Bitcoin wallet may also be stored within a mere QR code which would function as a debit card of sorts.

As long as there is internet, Bitcoin will be an undeniably attractive and practical method of conducting purchases. Gold as a currency just carries too many issues.

 

Gold is heavy and difficult to store:

Sure, if you only plan to own enough gold to fit into a fireproof safe that you have hidden in a place that you are sure that no one but you will find, then sure, gold is not so difficult or risky to store.

Many more precautions must be put into place for the casual gold owner to store their precious metal as opposed to Bitcoin. Bitcoin is highly secure and encrypted. There are massive amounts of security measures installed directly into the Bitcoin, itself. The only way that someone can steal Bitcoins are through a wallet owner’s lack of personal security measures.

It is highly recommended that one’s Bitcoin wallet, if stored on the computer, itself, should be stored and ran on a separate computer than the one you use for web browsing. It is probably wise to designate a computer that has been completely wiped and has a fresh OS installation, after the wallet is installed, only continue to use that specific computer for the purpose of using your BTC wallet.

Another measure that a lot of people take is to store duplicate backups of the wallet.dat files offline, or even create an aforementioned “paper wallet” in which you need only use the QR code to perform your transactions.

 

 

It would be aneurysm-inducingly complicated to use gold as currency:

Could you imagine trying to get change when purchasing something with a gold coin?
How would that happen, how would one determine the worth of the coins related to the worth of the goods and be able to estimate exactly how many grams of gold it would take to compensate?

Even if that could be easily calculated at any given time, what are the odds that the proprietor will have anywhere’s close to the change you should get in return?

Seriously… how would one make purchases online with gold? Unless it was stored in a bank, which I think most people would agree is the worst place for valuables, how would that happen?

These days, more and more purchases are made over the internet and the daily numbers are only continuing to grow, it is extremely important to have a currency like Bitcoin that can be used nearly effortlessly for online purchases.

 

 

Gold is an easier target for theft than Bitcoin:

It is extremely difficult for even a hacker to steal Bitcoin. There are, however, recent examples of unfortunate security breaches within the institutions where people chose to store their BTC. Those tragic incidents had more to do with the wallet holder’s personal security measures and choices.

There are many ways to keep Bitcoin very safe, especially when compared to how other currencies and valuables of great worth are commonly stored. The great thing about Bitcoin is that you become the master of your wallet’s security. All that needs to be done is a little research to understand the basics of keeping your wallet safe. If you are particularly paranoid, there are much more stringent methods that may be employed to increase your security.

I highly recommend looking up the topic of BTC wallet security on bitcointalk.org which contains a wealth of information concerning digital currency.

 

 

Bitcoin is not dangerous to mine:

As almost everyone knows, it is a huge production to mine gold efficiently. Usually, a team of highly skilled miners doing hard labor for hours out of the day, will be lucky to find an ounce without highly sophisticated and expensive equipment.
Another problem with gold mining is that it usually requires an incredibly huge waste of water resources, something that is just tragic to think about.

Bitcoins, however, only need some moderately expensive equipment for efficient mining. What is even better is that the mining machine does all the work! All you need to do is set it up, turn it on and forget about it. The only significant expense thereafter might possibly be the electricity used, depending on the type of mining rig(s) you choose to set up.

These days, Bitcoin miners are making gold miners look like Don Quixote.