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Comment by 13of40 | Hacker News Reader

Not trying to claim any expertise in the matter, but couldn't you say the same for gold? Any of us would love to have a box of it, but you can't do squat with it at the grocery store or the gas station.

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I would love to come across a free box of gold, or a private key holding a large sum in bitcoin, or anything similar. HOWEVER, that is not because I would like to keep holding onto it -- just to convert it to cash and then convert that cash proportionally to cash/short term/long term investments.

I'd probably hold it as is. I wouldn't ever consider converting some of my hard-earned cash into bitcoin or physical gold, but for a no-cost investment I'll take the diversification.

and more importantly with no "large transaction" record, who is going to come after you?

It's not no-cost, there's an opportunity cost.

Gold is an nonreactive and pretty metal, which itself makes it valuable. People independently regarded it as valuable across different cultures for thousands of years.

Fun fact: Technically, you could buy $50 dollars of groceries with an American Gold Eagle. You'd definitely confuse the cashier though.

Most of the people holding gold in a serious sense never actually see or touch it. They delegate that to trusted entities who can provide all the physical security and auditing that an average person can't. I feel like there's a parallel with the blockchain, in the sense that actual bitcoin is "heavy" to move but you can to a lot of IOU deals on the fringe of it.

You can, but gold is a commodity and not a currency in any modern sense.

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