【Advantages of Bitcoin over gold】
So let's talk about Bitcoin's advantages over gold today.
1. Gold is not as scarce as Bitcoin
Although gold is a precious metal, the Earth's gold reserves are actually about 60 trillion tons, but most of them are near the center of the earth and cannot be mined with existing human technology. Through crustal movements such as volcanic eruptions, part of the gold movement hides in the shallow layers of the earth's crust and becomes mineable gold. The scarcity of gold is mainly due to the high cost of exploration and mining, in the proven gold mines, the mining volume is mainly subject to the cost of mining, if the price of gold is reduced, the power to mine gold is insufficient, and the increment into the human financial system is reduced; If the price of gold increases, it will motivate humans to increase investment in exploration and mining, increase the production capacity of gold, and as a result, the price of gold will be diluted, so the price of gold will be relatively stable for a long time.
Bitcoin is a real scarcity due to the algorithm that the total cap will not exceed 21 million. In order to change this upper limit, it is necessary to make this "anti-consensus" hashrate more than 51% of the total computing power, which is no longer possible under the current scale of total computing power.
In the world of Bitcoin, code is law, and if the private key is lost, the corresponding bitcoin is permanently locked in the network and unavailable (at least more than 4 million bitcoins have been lost and locked). Therefore, the total amount of Bitcoin will only deflation.
For every 210,000 new blocks added to the Bitcoin network, the number of bitcoins rewarded by the block is halved, which is what we usually call a 4-year halving (210,000 blocks is about 4 years).
From the genesis block that began in 2008 to block 210,000 in 2012, each block rewards miners with 50 bitcoins.
From 210001 blocks to 2016 the 420,000 block reward halved to 25.
From 420001 blocks to 630,000 blocks in 2020, the reward was halved to 12.5.
The reward from 630001 blocks to 840,000 blocks in 2024 is 6.25.
By analogy, starting 840001 blocks in 2024, the reward for each block will become 3.125.
(This may trigger a singularity event around 2025 to start an eternal bull market)
Interestingly, bitcoin increments are getting smaller and smaller, but they will not change with the increase of total hash power (mining costs) like gold, no matter how much computing power humans pile up due to the increase in the price of bitcoin, it will only raise the production cost of bitcoin, but it cannot increase even 1sat of bitcoin increment. Therefore, Bitcoin has real scarcity.
Someone once said that Bitcoin can be divided indefinitely, so it has no scarcity, this is nonsense, first of all, Bitcoin can not be divided indefinitely, its smallest unit is sat, 1 bitcoin = 100 million sat. And there is nothing to do with fragmentation and scarcity, gold can be divided to the atomic level, and does not affect the value of 1kg of gold. People who fail to recognize this and insist that Bitcoin is not scarce with infinite division may be intellectually deficient. Stay away from him.
2. Gold is not as counterfeit-proof as Bitcoin
Now it is difficult to buy real gold, and we often even see news that gold bought from a certain bank can attract magnets. Even banks are not reliable, so it is too difficult for ordinary people to buy real real gold.
There can be no fake Bitcoin in the Bitcoin network. As long as it can be mentioned on the main chain network, it must be real Bitcoin, it's as simple as that.
3. Gold is not as stealthy and portable as Bitcoin
Some people say "prosperous real estate troubled gold", which means that gold has the characteristics of human value consensus and easy to carry (as opposed to real estate). But gold, after all, is a product of the physical world and is poorly hidden. Gold worth 10 million yuan currently weighs 27 kilograms. Imagine that during the war, you carry a heavy amount of gold that cannot be hidden, and everywhere you go is a naked piece of fat, and you can survive to a peaceful area without being killed by profit.
Bitcoin is different, using a brain wallet to control the private key, without any hardware, to achieve 0 physical load. Where people go, assets go. Even better, because people and bitcoin are one, you are no different from other refugees when you flee, and outlaws cannot know that you have assets, so there is no possibility of being targeted for money.
4. Gold is not as deliverable as Bitcoin
For example, Iran wants to buy a batch of materials from a British company, and because it cannot use bank transactions (US sanctions), it offers to deliver them in gold. Transporting gold from Tehranhei to London, then, requires a lot of armed security and a lot of transit time. If you use Bitcoin, it will take 10 minutes to go on the chain and 30 minutes to confirm the settlement. Outperform gold, a bulky physical medium.
Bitcoin has an overwhelming advantage over gold, the only disadvantage is that compared to thousands of years of human consensus on gold, Bitcoin is still a new thing, there are still many people who do not understand its advantages, and the overall human consensus is still at a low point. But it is also true that the current price of Bitcoin is still seriously undervalued, so we still have the opportunity to invest now. When the human consensus of Bitcoin rises to a certain stage, 1 bitcoin or even 0.1 bitcoin is an existence that ordinary people cannot climb.