We’ve been through the Gold Standard. Economists and politicians are not eager to return to gold-backed currencies. In the digital age, we can create reliable banking networks of fiat currencies. Central bankers find digital currencies easier to manage than gold-backed systems. Bitcoin supporters pitch the Bitcoin Standard. It is digital native and supposed to be better than the Gold Standard. To make the case for Bitcoin, people downplay gold. Gold is just a shiny and scarce metal that people use for decoration.
But Bitcoin is still searching for its use case. We see gold was money. One of its prominent applications is jewelry. We conclude that jewelry is the secondary market that drives gold demand. From this conclusion, crypto builders think there may be a similar secondary market for Bitcoin. Our ignorance of gold history creates a gap. We have not found the missing puzzle piece.
Bitcoin has a quite definite use case, it was created to be a superior alternative to fiat currencies, it is not necessary to try to reinvent the wheel. It is reliable, hard money that cannot be censored.
What else do you want from a currency?
It took gold and metallurgy 30,000 years to transition humans away from stone tools. We’re still very early with Bitcoin.
We are still in the early phases, I still do not understand how there are people who want to find hard money elsewhere, it is the last chance they have to take the train to the success of several generations.
I'm not making a case against Bitcoin as money. I'm searching for a way for Bitcoin to become money. Bitcoin already has a use case, digital gold. But for it to become widespread money, we are not there. People have been searching for use cases through things that are built on top of Bitcoin: 2nd layer, side chain, smart contracts. There's Litecoin as digital silver. People are trying to make "better" altcoins.
My point is we've been searching in the wrong direction. For gold, it wasn't the jewelry use case that made gold money. It was the "dumb" metals like copper, bronze, and iron.