Quote from: Brangdon on February 02, 2014, 04:47:37 PM

Quote from: bitgeek on February 01, 2014, 11:41:24 PM

Let's say fiat dies and I have a gold coin that used to be worth a few thousand - how will I ever divide it? Scrape some dust off it every time I want to buy something? Melt it?

You should have got a smaller coin. You can get, for example, 50g gold bars that are scored so they can be broken into 50 1g bars. 1g of gold is currently worth about £25, so it's a reasonably small amount to spend. More generally, one of the reasons gold has been a successful currency in the past is that it is ductile. It can be thinly divided; you can beat it down to gold foil if you want to. It's not as divisible as bitcoin, but it's as close as a durable, physical substance gets. Alternatively, if you are using it as a store of value, you can sell it to a broker in large chunks and get fiat currency - or bitcoin - back. It doesn't have to be spendable at a supermarket to have value.

I like both gold and bitcoin. Gold is especially a hedge against civilisation collapsing. Bitcoin kinda relies on having electricity and a working internet. Personally I still see bitcoin as high risk. I wouldn't put money in it I couldn't afford to lose. I'm more confident about gold.

Brangdon, I agree. This product, for example, seeks to address some people's worries about the divisibility requirement of gold as money: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cNwaA5sNr8

I just wanted to post a specific link so those who were interested could take a look; quite a cool idea.