Gold has severe flaws. Physical locality makes it less secure and far more transactionally local, and thus more vulnerable to politics and less sound, than we can now achieve with Bitcoin, with good key management and taking advantage of its trust-minimized global settlement.https://twitter.com/MrHodl/status/991676293052813312 …
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Aztecs took gold tribute from their subject tribes. Spanish conquistadors looted the Aztecs. Sir Francis Drake looted Spanish galleons. Seizing gold vaults was a universal war objective. Many politicians have controlled monetary systems by controlling gold. Now we can do better.pic.twitter.com/pg33pZLJCK
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Probably the biggest flaw with the monetary metals (gold, sil er, and copper) is that they are costly to assay/validate. This led making people vulnerable to (i.e. requiring them to trust) centralized entities such as coin minters and bank note issuers, said trust often abused.
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Replying to @NickSzabo4
I agree that an indiscernible gold ingot can be more difficult to irrefutably test than bitcoin (performing a water displacement test is not costly & accurate in most situations.). Realistically though, almost all buyers of gold or bitcoin rely on centralised entities.
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Replying to @josephskewes
You exaggerate. I and many other Bitcoin users validate for ourselves. It's quite easy.
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Replying to @NickSzabo4 @josephskewes
Just compare the cost and steps involved to validate, secure and transport bitcoin vs metals. The benefits and cost savings when using bitcoin is enormous. Even the most bullish gold bug knows this but they might not say it publicly of course.
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Replying to @Lec29560622 @NickSzabo4
Joseph Skewes Retweeted Joseph Skewes
I don't believe it's that simple. I can independently transport (on my person) & transact a high value quantity of gold.
@roysebag makes the argument (rightfully) that bitcoin requires substantial infrastructure to do the same.https://twitter.com/josephskewes/status/1132093163114356738 …Joseph Skewes added,
Joseph Skewes @josephskewes"..behind the virtual act [transferring Bitcoin], what is, in actuality, enabling all of this to take place is massive amounts of physical infrastructure in the natural world, comprised of computational hardware, energy transformers, physical space, and human computer engineers." pic.twitter.com/9vMH1JkWIeShow this thread2 replies 1 retweet 1 like -
The idea that assaying or "validating" pure gold is a difficult task is imho a myth. The whole reason gold as an element ascended as money is due our ability as humans to employ kinesthetic, taste, smell (gold has no taste or smell) sense perceptions to validate it vs. others.
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Replying to @roysebag @josephskewes and
Holding gold in your hand, burning it with a lighter, biting into it, smelling it, tasting it with your tongue, exposing it to water, etc. are all very easy ways to decentrally and self-evidently verify it to be unique to everything else. X-Ray, chemical assays, are also cheap.
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Cheap, easy, reliable: pick one. Far short of being good enough for typical retail transactions. Why coins were invented millennia ago. With modern spectroscopy could do better, but would have to redesign form factor of jewelry to be suitable for random sampling & quick spectro.
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Replying to @NickSzabo4 @roysebag and
Consensus = vote . Democracies are a bad idea, especially when it comes to money. Gold's properties are hard coded into the organic ledger system that requires no power to maintain security.
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