Gold is not the"best" metal, yet it was the best metal at being money.
Bitcoin is not the "best" blockchain, yet it is the best blockchain at being money.
Discussion
@grok do you agree?
Name a better metal?
And gold isnt even the most scarce or most expensive, yet it is still seen as money or at least as a monetary asset. Point is, Network effects are very difficult to overtake. Golds network effect, and perceived monetary value, made it the best metal at being money, even though its not the best metal at much of anything
Ayoooo go look at gold's properties and then we can discuss.
There's no way you can be saying this.
I'll respond when I'm at my desk but ya bro please go look.
Guess i should rephrase my statement.
Gold is not the best metal at everything, yet it is the metal for money.
Like gold, Bitcoin is not the best blockchain at everything, but it is the best at being money.
In hard times, id rather have a sword made of steel than one made of gold.
Okay, I'm at my desk so I can type out a better response.
Gold is immutable, it cannot be tainted or destroyed. It can be lost and recovered through mining/extraction difficulty. This comes at a cost, that cost to yield is roughly 1 to 2% annually.
Gold is the best conductive metal out there. it's used in critical components like connectors and switches for it's high rate of conductivity. Gold is also malleable, a small piece can be hammered out into a relatively large sheet, hell whisper thin you could put it on food. Bitcoin mining requires gold for efficiency.
it is by far the best, most useful metal out there and it's also shiny. Come rain, sandstorm, earthquake, nuclear winter - gold will still be gold, still be recoverable at a PoW cost and will still have a market.
This is why it became money - not because it has scarcity or looks good, but because of all of these properties discovered over millennia.
I don't argue with the Pharaohs.
Before i argue these points, i do agree that gold was the best metal to be money, but i do not agree that it is the best metal,( i do acknowledge that as subjective). I believe that other metals were much more useful than gold during the time that gold was becoming money, but yes, gold's unique properties made it the best metal for monetary uses.
1. It can be destroyed. It will dissolve in nitric/hydrochloric acid, Platinum will not. Most metals need to be mined at a cost, some with higher cost/yield than gold.
2.It did not become money because of its conductivity, as that wasnt valuable during the time period we are talking about. Gold is less conductive than silver and copper, but more resistant to corrosion and oxidation. Gold is more reactive than platinum and others and less heat resistant while being slightly more conductive than those. All these metals can be used in electronics.
3. Gold is the most malleable metal, making it a great option for various uses, jewelry, decoration, and forming into coins being the most impactful at the time it was being adopted as money. Like i said, great properties for being the best metal money
4. It is not by far the most useful metal out there. This is a subjective statement. I would suggest that metals that can be used for strength in weapons, tools, buildings, vehicles, everyrhing, more "useful" than one that can make electronics more efficient.
5. Yes, It will likely always have a market of buyers. Its long history as a store of value will persist likely until it is no longer difficult to obtain, maybe asteroids or inter-planetary mining. Benefit of golds dominant network effect, not sure if thats the right term for gold but i think you get what i mean.
This is why it became money, still not the best metal though. It was the best metal for money at one point, likely that would be platinum now, but platinum is not quite good enough to overtake gold now that gold has already been established. And platinum was too scarce and too difficult to be used when metals were being adopted as money.
Great points. Thanks for taking the time to banter 🤙
It has good properties to make jewelry and shiny things that didnt rust or loose quality over time and to be used as a conductor in modern electronics, not so much to make weapons, armor, tools, buildings. Imagine the dude trading all his gold to hoard iron because it made better swords lol. It had enough properties to have value, and the best properties at the time to be used as money. The conductivity properties became more useful later on in its lifespan.
Titanium, iron, copper to start. Scarcity does not make a metal useful, it makes it good money. All these metals are much more useful than gold, and i would say better metals, but they arent better money.
Other blockchains are faster, more useful for other things, cheaper, but they lack other qualities to be good money
What?
Scarcity doesn't make anything valuable, even bitcoin.
Btw I think you need to study gold again. Idk how you can say iron, copper or titanium is 'better' than gold...
I'm not going to type it out
Yeah i agree on the scarcity thing, just one property of many that helps it be good money.
And platinum is better than gold at most of the things gold is good for, less reactive, more resistant to degrading, similar conductivity properties with more heat resistance. Yet platinum was never the most used form of money.
Gold had already established itself as money before platinum had a real chance. Even though platinum is more scarce than gold and has some better qualities to be money than gold, it wasnt able to overtake gold because gold was already established.
Something better than bitcoin may come along, better at being money, but it will likely not be able to compete with bitcoin's network.
PGM's have their industrial use cases but it's not correct in saying it's more resistant to oxidization or conductivity. Whilst, PGM's like chrome are used for stainless steel for example, it requires a rather cumbersome process and demand is low.
Gold is where it is because it's pooled to the top over 12500 years at the very least. PGM's are fairly new, and it's use cases like cathodes for ICE cars are also within the last century.
PGM's have a lot of value too - but we're comparing 12500yr to 125yr cycle - I mean, to be fair, 1980's saw the start of the PGM markets, prior to that the demand/use case was very low. It also looks like silver so this is why Gold is gold.