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RE: South Africa joins the party
I'm not sure that bitcoin qualifies as a store of wealth just yet. In my view, it's still too volatile. How can something that drops in value by over 25% in under a week be a store of value? Hopefully after the whole scaling debate is over, things will settle down.
I agree bitcoin has the potential to be an excellent store of value and should help people in high inflation regions but at present the volatility is just too high.
I think if your currency declined 50% against the USD in the last 5 years, you would prefer a currency that appreciated 2000% in the same period. Even if it has price swing of 20% in a week
and for all those Gold bugs. South Africa having lots of gold did not help
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_gold_production
Will Gold ever get it's place in the sun again?
Yes, when hyper inflation comes
I think cryptocurrency is taking its place now as a safe store of value
This is the point of this article. A country rich in gold is turning to cryptocurrency instead gold to store wealth
Yes, we are moving on with technology. Gold might come redundant in the future. Even oil too.
Oil is going down. I believe we are beyond Peak Oil already.
That is why OPEC is not cutting supplies and USD is tanking
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
Gold will always be here. To be used by central banks and people without computers or smartphones
Yip, I agree. Both will be there but the role it plays will be smaller and smaller.
In the long term I agree but it depends how often you need to use it. If you need to spend your wages on rent for example and they are worth 25% less today than yesterday, that is a real problem!
yes, its easier to convert bitcoin back to rand when needed than to convert gold to fiat money to pay your bills
Agreed that the volatility is not reassuring. However, in respect to a South African mindset Bitcoin sure seems like a plausible store of wealth. Especially when you take into consideration what has happened in neighboring Zimbabwe where $100 Trillion bills became the rough equivalent $1 USD.
If I were a South African, I'd sure sleep easier at night knowing I had some portion of my savings in Bitcoin. It sure seems like once awareness of Bitcoin/crypto reaches the far corners of the world (and with it internet access), everyone will be inclined to allocate at least some portion of savings towards the space. Just my two cents!
If value is not at all tangible and is based on a belief system then value can be stored in just about anything. the only reason gold price seem to have stability is because it is centralized, controlled and in the hands of a few. Bitcoin is a lot safer to hold than most if not all government currencies that exist today.
If the government fucks up the currency goes down and the community belief system that gave the currency value goes with it.
bitcoin has no government to fuck up the belief will fluctuate so will the value and so will the price. bitcoin is gonna be around for a while
Nope, just miners and developers arguing over what is best for it ;)
Good point. I think in this situation everything is relative. When you have a local currency that has dropped by 75% in the last 5 years, Bitcoin seems like the more stable option in comparison, even if it does have nauseating peaks and valleys.
If you apply regular smaller purchases at what seems a low spot, with a buy and hold strategy, the Rand cost averaging could take advantage of the volatility. That's what I'm doing anyway.