nothing against bitcoin, but how has gold failed?
plot gold vs example the euro since its inception
see here
http://imgur.com/VTbRyDxhow do you see that as a fail? looks like gold is kicking ass to me.
Plus remember pretty much every central bank wants gold to fail, since a rising gold price causes nothing but headaches for them. Why invest in bonds, stocks, real estate or hold cash in banks if gold is crushing them all?
not saying bitcoin cannot be a big winner down the line, but I am sure gold will be a big winner a decade from now.
gold was not supposed to be a currency that you actually pay for stuff with. It was meant to be a check on central banks, forcing them to back their currency with something that cannot be duplicated infinitely, in other words they couldn't just print more gold. That is why gold was abandoned, it was causing them too many problems.
Bitcoin has the same property as gold in that way, in other words you cannot turn on your computer and just decide to print 100 bitcoins.
Gold has one and only one advantage over bitcoin that I can see, it has no counterparty risk. Bitcoin has some form of counterparty risk in terms of 51% attack. Others will say electrical grid/internet, but realistically if the internet / electricity world wide was off, last thing you would be looking for is your gold or bitcoins.