Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 1181. (Read 2032266 times)

I can confidently say that my bitcoin holdings are far more secure than my precious metal holdings.

You don't think it's *MUCH* better than 2011 or 2012?




Do you periodically put a moderate amount of "daily spending" gold in an online wallet or on your phone for day-to-day use? What app do you use? All I've figured out to do with my gold is show an old half-eagle to friends as a quaint token of a bygone era.




Indeed it is not a trivial problem. But it *is* getting much better. Armory is great for cold storage, there are several very usable, reasonably secure Android wallets for daily use, blockchain.info is great for online-spending money, etc...

Yes, web-wallets and poorly secured stuff still get hacked. But a much smaller percentage of the total float than a couple years ago, as a result both of people being smarter about it, and the existence of better tools. The days of 25,000BTC thefts from unencrypted QT wallets are hopefully over (condolences to allinvain).

you do know of course that being off by one character will not lose you your coins.

and sending from a cold storage wallet is trivial.

Any day now...

I've made my BTC holdings as secure as my PM holdings, but at the expense of making my BTC almost as difficult to use as my gold.

Obviously I see a lot of the advantages of Bitcoin in terms of mobility and it's a big part of the reason that I'm dinking with it.  I'm just saying that securing one's private key is not a trivial problem.  Those who think it is or treat it like it is may have the mis-fortune of no longer having the problem.  And again, this is borne out by a huge amount of evidence (which does not appear to me to be slowing down much yet.)

You know as well as I do that those issues are:

1) Exaggerated due to the immaturity of the ecosystem. The tools will (are) getting much better/idiot-resistant.

2) Present with pretty everything since the dawn of time. How much gold has been stolen over the centuries? Quite possibly most of the above-ground tonnage. Petty theft, digging up tombs, crusades, wars, you name it... The history of humanity is fraught with fighting over, and theft of, gold.

Ya...it can be transmitted at that speed of light right into some thief's control and it has happened with a truly impressive percentage of the currency base.

Everything has it's pros and cons.

More rarely, bitcoins can be transmitted at the speed of light right into the void of time-space by using a public key which is off by one character or fucking up on a script.  In this way it does have an analogy to gold which can go down with some sailing ship or be forgotten about in some treasure chest.  But gold lost in this way is vastly easier to recover than it's Bitcoin analog and recovery happens with some regularity.

But gold can be used (probably is used) to transmit bitcoins.

I like "analog bitcoin".

How about "gold is bitcoin 0.1 alpha"?

Wanna see how hard I can throw? 

Bingo. But it's worse. Analog signals can be transmitted at the speed of light. Gold cannot.

I think of gold as analog bitcoin.
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lol nice one

I think of gold as analog bitcoin.

That's the beauty of Bitcoin. It can have all the "hoardiness" of Gold while being extremely easy to transact with as well. Hence Gold 2.0.

That rant would likely apply just as much to bitcoin as it's current main purpose is very much the same hoardiness you attribute to gold.  Granted the current trend lines seem to be headed in the opposite directions for XBT vs Gold in that regard.  But long term who knows.

Definitely worth a dabble, though maybe not quite as interesting from a trading perspective as BTC/LTC. The ratios are where the fun is anyway.

Monetary-use premium? Where exactly is it used for money these days? Porcfest? A few gun shops in Arizona? A few village merchants in remote areas of Myanmar? 

I would say that right now it's "moneyness" accounts for a VERY small percent of its current demand, and it's "hoardiness" (similar to moneyness but little to do with transactional value) as well as its speculative value, is responsible for most of its non-industrial, non-convoluted-with-jewelry demand.
Does that make sense? Obviously something that is used as money is in demand to be used as money, and usually things used as money are also good for hoarding. HOWEVER - what we're seeing with gold is rather unprecedented - most of the world has completely abandoned it as a transactional currency. But much of the world still hoards it! Central banks (esp. eastern CBs), asians, libertardian American stackers, etc. The demand is not for gold as a transactional currency - demand would be much higher if that were the case - but for gold as a hunk of metal to hoard for various reasons - inflation hedge, SHTF hedge (however misguided that may be), deflationary store of value (as unsuccessful as that's been the past couple years.)

I'm not necessarily saying gold ISN'T headed for $0, but if even a small fraction of its former demand as a transactional currency were restored (in addition to retaining its value as a hunk o' hoardiness), combined with the artificial supply from the paper market collapsing (which it won't, ever) it would indeed make gold holders quite happy. It's a pipe dream, and it's not MY pipe dream, but it's one of many things that could happen, and that's why Goat has a small % of his portfolio in PMs.

Hmm. The answer is the same as to this question: "what percentage of his wealth does the average person hold in gold?".

It isn't any easier to answer, though.

My wholly irrelevant guess is somewhere in between 1.5% to 5%

On a side-note: what's the value of the last fish in the world?

The world and everything in it is 100%.

How many % is gold?

(Discussing about gold in dollar terms is not only wrong, it is impossible.)

How many % of total what? Value in the world stored in it?

I agree we should try to rid ourselved from measuring everything in USD. That's quite a project though, because tax authorities require that crap as unit of measurement for everything.

btw, still an awesome chart to look at:

http://pricedingold.com/bitcoin/

would've preferred them to use oz/BTC instead of mg/BTC, but whatever.

(what happened to this thread? 2 pages of pointless ego-fighting?)

question to the experts, though: some sources state "problems in emerging countries" as reason for the market drops last week. I have problems understanding that. Which countries?

Seems to me the USD dropped at the same time as equities and that other stuff, so it should've been something to do with the USD? Did the FED try to taper or something?

Anybody care to discuss the role of gold in mathematical terms? How many % of total? And will the total go up or down with the introduction of crypto and the resulting free flow of money?