Quote from: viljy on May 27, 2025, 05:41:30 AM

Quote from: serjent05 on May 26, 2025, 03:18:26 PM

Quote from: viljy on May 22, 2025, 09:33:49 AM

But with bitcoin, not everything is as good as with gold. Because Bitcoin is subject to control. First of all, the price of bitcoin can be controlled by large holders. The network itself is completely controlled by the miners. That is, it is enough to control the miners to control the network. Most of the mining facilities are located in the United States, where the government will have no difficulty controlling anything, including the miners too.

Does not this apply to any asset too? Just how you say Bitcoin price can be controlled by large holders, isn't gold can be controlled by large holders too?

No, this does not apply to gold. The price is set by the LBMA in London. The members of the association are large banks that are not large holders of gold, the maximum they can own is "paper gold", which has already been "issued" more than in all the mines of the planet. The point is that large holders of gold do not determine its price. Therefore, the price of gold has always been suppressed by bankers, at least since the 90s of the last century.

Several States are major holders. For example, the United States allegedly holds more than 8,300 tons of gold, of which 1,200 tons belong to Germany, and even gold from other countries in smaller quantities. The gold reserves have not been audited for many decades. But the United States also uses LBMA quotes, like China or Russia or others.

Bitcoin is certainly more convenient than gold in everything, but compared to it, the system is fragile. In fact, bitcoin has an important advantage - simplicity of transactions, since it does not require physical transportation or hand-to-hand transfer. However, this requires uninterrupted availability of electricity, miners with equipment, devices (at least a smartphone), stable Internet. That is, the functionality (and utilitarian value) of bitcoin depends on external conditions. The value of gold does not depend on anything. That's the difference. Gold can function in extreme conditions, but Bitcoin cannot. It's just that there haven't been any extreme conditions yet. But they can be.

Of course, in theory, we may face extreme situations in the future (such as no Internet, no electricity, etc.).

However, it should be noted that even during modern wars, electricity and the Internet usually do not disappear completely. Human civilization is so dependent on the Internet and electricity that people repeatedly (and very quickly) restore these important communication and life support systems.

From this we can conclude that if we (in practice) encounter a situation of critical long-term damage to systems such as electricity and the Internet, we will have much more serious problems than the inability to use Bitcoin.

And even gold will be of little interest to us during this period of time. Medicines, food, fuel and ammunition will become currency.