RE: Tone Vays vs Roger Ver debate on BTC vs BCH as 'hard currency'.
It's really not possible to "store value" if you don't have a high transaction quality. You are storing value for later use which will involve a transaction, not just to watch the "value" climb.
So if you want high quality on both fronts, you need the currency to be like a coin — a cash type transaction. Instantly and cheaply transferable directly from one person to the next, with the help of the P2P network to disincentive double spending.
Lightning network helps with some of this, but it can't be considered entirely on par with transacting directly P2P and settling each transaction directly on the Bitcoin network. These will always be two distinct classes of transactions with different security requirements and properties.
A lot of people consider themselves cheated by the developers and the rest of the community, that made the blocks get full on purpose and say the design Satoshi produced doesn't work. That in combination with being banned from places like r/Bitcoin and hit by waves of propaganda has turned people sour. It's not helping, but it's understandable.
Gold ?
No. How well established is gold as money in todays society and why is that?
We had a note based system for gold because it wasn't enough for people to only use it directly and eventually because direct use was banned.
If the cost of transfer is too high, you get that situation. Then you have to establish a different medium for the actual exchange, such as notes or a digital network to handle a custody based ownership transfer, without really transferring the now no longer used "coins". This immediately leads to routing and liquidity issues at best, regulatory capture at worst.
You don't buy gold or other commodities today because they store value well in this sense. The spread is too high and its cumbersome to get in and out. The state won't tolerate it if it should ever become a real contender to replacing ordinary transactions.
Most gold bugs hold it as a speculative commodity play, a hedge, or of course in case the world goes completely to hell in which case the downside of physical gold coins or even bars compared to paper notes/banks and the established law of todays society would be the least of your worries.
Subject was
Gold still has a $8 trillion market cap.
And did you store value in the sense described here? No. There are plenty of other commodities and stocks that work just as well for speculation.
That doesn't mean that you'll put all your money in them, does it? Think about why not. Why is that not practical.
I don't see any reason why you should give up one half of what makes sound money.
Gold has such a long history of value via speculation it's not even speculation anymore.
Please realize that the price of gold could drop vastly if new gold was to be discovered. In this sense, Bitcoin is a great innovation too.
But you can't rely on it merely having a huge price. It also has to be actually transferable. Directly. Else you will start to have issues.
Agreed, but I thought we were discussing that something can somewhat be store of value even if it's not that easily transportable or not.
Gold has other built-in utility like making jewelry out of it. That's how it became a great store of value. Remember though gold was a currency and store of value before fiat came along. Remember just 150 years ago paper notes were issued backed 1:1 with gold. I was just easier to carry the notes around than the gold bars.
I have studied economics my whole life. I'll just tell you that a good money drives out the bad. A extremely low cost scalable user friendly Cryptos will kill off the slow and expensive ones.
Next year if Bitcoin Lightening Network does not perform the market share will be taken away from better more user, friendly and scalable Cryptos.
Makes sense..