Quote from: cypherdoc on May 10, 2013, 05:45:18 PM

the gold bulls are desperate.

your question prompted me to call my local coin dealer down the street. the markup for a Kruggerand over spot is 4%. it's been that for years back when i was buying in 2005.

One sample does not represent the population.

It's also amusing that accusations of Bitcoin being a pump & dump are vociferously rejected while the same argument is turned on gold. The principle of wealth protection stands for both.

As derivative instruments develop more widely for Bitcoin, the distinction between an actual Bitcoin holding and such instruments will cause the same difficulty in distinction between the asset and its representations that we're seeing with gold.

Paper claims are nothing. Physical monetary metals are not extinct, nor will they be in the immediate future. If that were the case, Bitcoin would've already come to dominate all aspects of finance and would probably be valued in excess of USD$40mm per BTC.