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Comment by tnel77 | Hacker News Reader

I personally find Bitcoin much easier to send to family than a chunk of gold, and Bitcoin’s block reward results in a far more favorable inflation rate than many currencies. There’s more to money than these two aspects, but they are IMO solid positives for Bitcoin.

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You're obviously talking about supply inflation there, because price inflation (the more usual definition of inflation) measured in bitcoin has been about 250% over the last year.

What would a family even do with bitcoin or a chunk of gold?

In the USA? Not much. Bitcoin is a decent choice for sending your money across borders though! It could also be a gift if you think holding it long-term would be valuable. I remember my grandma buying me bank bonds as a kid for the same reason.

I usually send money across borders using Wise.com or wire transfers. What am I missing out on with bitcoin?

What are the associated costs with those services?

Probably lower than with Bitcoin.

Really? I wasn’t aware you could send $1k for Pennie’s like you can with Bitcoin. Very cool!

You mean the equivalent of $1k based on the spot price of bitcoin? But I don't have bitcoin and my recipient doesn't want bitcoin.

If I send $1000 USD to my friend in Australia using bitcoin how much AUD do they receive? And what does that process look like?

A fraction of a percent.

Not too bad. Bitcoin would probably only be worth it if you were moving larger amounts.

Fees

I have sent money across borders countless times and it arrived just fine. No need to give my money to shady exchanges like FTX.

You don’t have to use an exchange to send a cryptocurrency. I personally use them to buy crypto, but then I send my assets to a hardware wallet asap. From there, you can send it anywhere you’d like.

Chunk of gold - go down to the local gold broker pay a fee to get dollars. Bitcoin - pay a fee to get it exchanged for dollars so that you can buy something before it loses it's value ($60K -> $17K).

Or just use dollars.

What if they were on the other side of the bull run where it went $3.5k -> $65k? Why only focus on the maximum loss scenario?

They likely saw the $65K and listened to all the people that said it was going to $100K and never sold - watching it plummet. The "what if" scenario is pretty useless considering the entire point of any currency is to maintain value - which allows the predictable purchase of things creating an efficient market.

One of the original arguments for BitCoin was that it would maintain it's value during inflationary periods - clearly something it has not achieved. The justification for BitCoin seems to be a moving target - depending on whatever the perceived problems are - Dr BitCoin's economic cure all.

Would you trust any asset to hold its value if it goes 20x in a short period? I feel like Bitcoin will be less volatile down the road when adoption has picked up.

Aka it’s less of a crazy speculative investment and more of an actual currency.

The problem is that BitCoin is treated in a speculative manor which is generally not a good thing for currencies. Currencies are also traded but the fluctuations are generally small - when they start to get big (think Argentina) the country has a problem. An please don't say Dr BitCoin's magic elixir will fix all that because it has already demonstrated it can be forked (creating new bitcoin out of nothing) and lose value in an inflationary period. Both things touted as reasons to support it. Currencies serve a purpose - primarily to allow the exchange of goods and services. As far as I know I cannot purchase much of either with BitCoin without first converting to $$$. So it is not really a currency now or likely ever will be.

That would arguably feel worse for the sender. "I did what?!"

No thanks :)

Yes, let's focus on the *positive* returns of Enron, you guys.

If you have some spare unwanted chunks of gold i'll happily take them off your hands.

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