But with traded funds, this allowed gold to be owned without actually owning it. Similarly, if the bitcoin trading funds are approved, this may be an important news for developers.
These two sentences do not compute IMO. Bitcoin really isn't that hard to buy, and it certainly isn't hard to store. For some people, it'd be even harder to buy shares in the btc ETF than it would to acquire actual bitcoin.
gold is a physical thing and the buying and storing it is hard, and the more of it you have the harder it will be to buy and store.
I don't think either buying or storing gold is hard. You can pretty much buy it at any coin shop, eBay, or on precious metals websites like providentmetals. As far as storing it, there's risk of it getting stolen but unless you own a massive amount (which most people do not), you can just keep it anywhere. A safe would be ideal but even that isn't necessary. I don't get the part of your post that I bolded. Buying gold doesn't make subsequent purchases more difficult by any means.
Anyway, do we really need another bitcoin vs. gold thread? It's kind of been done to death by now. And by the way, gold is currently under $1200 ($1193 to be precise) and doesn't look like it's going to recover anytime soon. In fact it's been either dropping or flatlined since 2011, and that doesn't strike me as a great investment or even a good hedge against inflation. Silver is doing even worse.