"Bitcoin is digital gold" is something we've all heard as long as we've been snooping around in the rabbit hole. I recall when I first was first trying to wrap my brain around bitcoin, asked about it, and someone came back with their simplest answer: "digital gold". I remember thinking that was a snippy, snarky answer. Then, I started thinking, "You know, they're kinda right." It puts the focus of scarcity into a digital realm, which was entirely new in 2008 and '09. Just as you can't alchemy-up gold, you can't copy/paste bitcoin.
Recently, however, I'm thinking the digital gold concept is good but not entirely right. I think it might be backwards. Instead of bitcoin being digital gold, I think gold might be "golden digital".
"Digital gold" implies that gold is the standard. It implies that gold is what we ultimately want to hold and that bitcoin is merely a way to hold gold's value in an alternative, digital manner.
By contrast, reverse this thinking. The term "golden digital" implies that the digital, the bitcoin, is the standard. It implies that bitcoin is what we ultimately want to hold and that gold is merely a way to hold bitcoin's value in an alternative, physical manner.
To these ends, let's do a comparison.
Imagine a physical bitcoin made of gold. A typical silver dollar coin or one of the classic Casascius bitcoin physical coins both have dimensions of around 31mm diameter by 3mm thickness. The estimated weight, if made of gold, is 71 grams. So, 71 grams of gold can be easily assigned a USD value given the current USD-gold exchange rate.
But, what if that 71 grams of gold value was used to purchase BTC? At any given moment, the swapping-around rate would all be the same: gold value, BTC value, USD value. But, over time, which investment wins? In other words, would you be better off holding the 71 grams of physical gold as a tangible coin or holding that amount of BTC as "golden digital"?
I vibe-coded this tool to find out:
https://goldendigital.vercel.app
Pick a start date, compare gold versus bitcoin. There are some tweaks to flesh out, such as the date range only works back to about 2020 or so. But, it seems to be functioning alright and seems interesting enough. It's on.
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