The data itself may indeed be utterly misleading in the assessment of future risk (actually, any past data, for that matter), but its very existence is a factor that should be counted in. Gold being highly valued as long as humanity knows it has a lot of credibility in respect to its past performance (as a basis for forecasting its future performance). Bitcoin, on the other hand, having been "there" for just 2-3 years (I mean since it got out of total obscurity), doesn't have such basis, thereby any assessment of its future performance (based on past data) is fundamentally erroneous and bordering on sheer guesswork...
Yes but also gold is not a currency (no matter how many gold bugs come bashing at me)
Gold
is a currency. And it is not just one such "also-ran" among many others, it is the
best currency out there. You may of course turn a deaf ear to what I say, but would you call a gold bug none other than Alan Greenspan himself who confessed that...
Gold is a currency. It is still, by all evidence, a premier currency. No fiat currency, including the dollar, can match it
Google is your friend
If you were to buy/sell stuff at a shop with gold coins, you constantly need to carry with you an ultrasound detector , an MRI scanner and a scale to measure that the gold coins you get is .9999 purity.
With bitcoin you only need a smart phone and a link to blockchain.info , blockexplorer.com, blockr.io and if you are really paranoid then a few more links just to verify the transaction's authenticity.
With bitcoin you need all the technologies that humankind has been developing since it already started using gold (as money). Gold also needs some technologies, but those of two thousand years old would suffice in the majority of cases