Bitcoin and Gold
Bitcoin will eventually replace gold as a globally recognized “store of value”. Gold prices will go down 90-95% to the levels supported by the use in production as “reservation demand” for gold would essentially disappear.
When Bitcoin becomes the world money there will be little reason to own gold. Bitcoin is as limited, as fungible and as non-counterfeitable as gold. It’s even cheaper to verify, store, transfer and divide.
Gold is always as difficult to protect as it is to confiscate. It’s symmetrical. That’s why throughout history only the strongest were accumulating gold. Pirates were robbing merchants, kings were robbing pirates. In the end, massive amounts of gold are owned by the biggest governments and banks. Small folks can only reliably own as much gold as they can keep in their own hands. (In 1933 US government confiscated most of the gold owned by population as an “emergency measure” in a declared attempt to save failing economy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102)
Bitcoin is asymmetrical. It’s much cheaper to personally own it and keep safe, than it is for someone to come and confiscate it (regardless of the amount you have). If you buy some bitcoins from 100 random people, there’s no one except you to know how much you have. There’s no big shiny vault to attract thieves, no bank account for TLAs to peek into. You can perfectly back it up in 10 places, split the encryption key to 10 of your closest friends and even put some money in a “brain wallet” that has no traces anywhere at all.
A friend of mine, Steve, noted that gold-backed economy logically evolved into the mess we are now. Libertarians who advocate return to the gold standard do not realise that the gold standard was the reason of accumulation of gold in few of the world’s biggest banks and everyone else getting worthless IOUs positioned as “sovereign currencies”. Gold is heavy and expensive to handle: only the wealthiest can afford to save a lot of it. And equally to take it by force from less powerful.
Bitcoin changes all of that. Like cryptography, which gives everyone possibility to have privacy, Bitcoin gives everyone equal possibility to save money and use money as they please. Without worrying if someone takes it from them, or censors their transactions. Rich and poor can have equal protection of whatever they earned.
Yes, if someone is against you personally, they will find a way to get you. But massive-scale theft and controls become way too costly. Inflation and QE robs savers without knocking on their doors. Capital controls and bank bail-ins need a discussion with just a couple of bankers, not millions of actual depositors. Taxation happens automatically on the level of the banking system as it’s used both for storage and transfer of money. When everyone personally holds bitcoins, it’s much easier to protest against taxation if it’s unfair or ineffective, it’s possible to avoid capital controls and it’s impossible to redistribute wealth by printing more money.
Bitcoin economy is not a revolution in a sense of violent redistribution of wealth in a “fairer” manner. It is a leap forward by forgetting about how much was destroyed or stolen and focusing on how much can be preserved and protected. It’s a truly peace-making tool for the whole humanity. People who think about Bitcoin as only a money-moving tool, or a get-rich-quick scheme grossly underestimate it. It enables much more than what the web gives. The web gives us freedom to exchange information. Bitcoin gives us freedom to exchange everything.