We could make an educated guess, however. Gold has intrinsic value, which gives it a significant advantage over a tiny arrangement of bits in an ocean of them.
It does, but that only establishes a low floor on the price of gold. If it had no value as a store of wealth, it would plummet in value to a tiny fraction of what it is actually worth.
Bitcoin has a floor of 0 in theory.
I would also guess that makes gold better as a store of wealth. But given that the price rarely ever approaches that floor means it might not matter. And bitcoin is harder to steal (at least you don't have to pay someone to guard it in a vault), easier to divide and transact and verify ownership. I don't claim to know how it will turn out.
I wonder about the value of gold. You might buy gold, but can you actually, physically hold it and own it?
As far as I know, the only way you can buy gold is if you either buy jewelry or are a jeweler to make said jewelry. Otherwise you’re just buying stocks which could theoretically be lost in the digital wind.
Depends on the weight of the coin, but 1+ oz. can be as low as 1% above spot (bare gold price), where 1/20 oz. can be as high as 10% above spot. So 1-10% markup for most purposes
It's better in some ways and worse in others. It could be a lot easier to hide a key than a gold bar. You could still use bitcoin to buy your way to freedom, and there would be a black market for it if there's any way to get online, which there will be. The value is supported outside the country.
It's not clear to me that gold is superior in that use case.
Aside from some industrial uses, gold really has no intrinsic value aside from cosmetic. And cosmetic use is really just shared appreciation. There's really no reason btc couldn't offer shared value as medium of exchange in the same way fiat currency serves. Just depends on enough people who agree to use it.
Your aside is an extraordinarily large aside and yet you casually toss it in there.
Humans have a nearly unlimited desire for luxury goods and always will, quite predictably. They lust after jewelry accordingly and have for many thousands of years. Nothing about that will change. The aesthetic demand for gold will remain so long as people continue to desire luxury goods.
If you drop the price of gold low enough, people will start rampantly decorating their walls and consumer goods with it. It has potent intrinsic support under the price, as much as anything can. It will remain scarce and desirable.
Most gold isn't used in jewelry either, so it didn't derive much value from a fringe use.
Ironically we go to huge effort to dig gold out of the ground, purify it, and form it into blocks and coins. Then we dig a new home in the ground, bury the gold in there and put guards outside the door. Someone here pointed out how aliens would be scratching their heads over our behavior if they could see it.
There's no such thing as intrinsic value. Gold has value because humans value it. Humans value it basically because it's shiny and somewhat rare, but the value is something we project onto it.
It is a fringe application, regardless of downvote. Usage in electronics is probably less than 1% of the demand for gold. That's the very definition of fringe.
We could make an educated guess, however. Gold has intrinsic value, which gives it a significant advantage over a tiny arrangement of bits in an ocean of them.