Bitcoin isn’t a hedge against anything, it’s a replacement for the current monetary system.

Trading some vegetables is one thing…how do you make a pencil, without money?

Yes, gold destroyed every other softer money: glass beads in Africa, silver in India and China, and countless other examples throughout history: hard money destroys the wealth of those holding soft money.

The problem with gold is it was too slow for the 20th century. It had low salability across space. That’s where banking, gold receipts, and later currencies took over. They had greater salability across space than gold. The tradeoff was that gold had to be centralized into banks. This required trust, that there was actual gold to back the receipts for gold. Eventually humans being humans, that trust is violated. Bitcoin requires no trust. It’s like moving a gold coin at the speed of light - no receipt, or currency backed by it, is required - it is a bearer asset. It can remain decentralized, like physical gold coins, yet move at light speed anywhere. It solves the salability across space better than currency, and is even more salable across time than gold.