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Are Bitcoins Now More Valuable Than Gold?

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by Stefan Wieler, GoldMoney:

Introduction

The price of Bitcoin seems to have exceeded the price of gold for the first time; however, this comparison is completely arbitrary. Gold is measured in weight, while Bitcoin, much like currency, is an abstract form of money and can only be measured in units of itself. One Bitcoin is worth a lot more than 1 gram of gold, but a lot less than 1 tonne. Despite Bitcoin’s stellar performance in 2016, the size and depth of the cryptocurrency market is dwarfed by the $7 trillion gold market. Gold remains the only true global money with a size and volatility comparable to that of fiat currency.

View the entire Research Piece as a PDF here…

Bitcoin – or cryptocurrency itself – is the most exciting monetary experiment in modern times.

Unlike fiat currency, it can’t just be printed, and it mimics the scarcity properties of gold in that it needs an enormous amount of energy to create one coin. The energy-proof of value is what links gold to the primary industries and allows it to maintain its purchasing power over incredibly long periods of time. Without it, any form of money will inevitably be corrupted over time and decay. Bitcoin has some of the same energy-proof of value that makes gold far superior to fiat currency, which can be created with the stroke of a key. Bitcoin, also like gold, is a global currency that may be universally accepted in the future. Even USD can’t make that claim.

Bitcoin has some qualities that are not shared by any other form of money, most notably the potential total anonymity in electronic transactions; however, some might feel that aspect that may prevent the universal adoption of Bitcoin as money. Today, the global stock of Bitcoin is just $20 billion (despite its price rally) and its transaction volume is tiny, even when compared to more exotic currencies. That said, as the adoption of Bitcoin increases, governments may no longer be happy with the fact that it can be used for anonymous transactions and may prevent legitimate businesses from accepting it as money if they see this as a threat. Only time will tell. In the meantime, Bitcoin remains the only alternative to gold (and other precious metals) for savers to escape the built-in decay function of fiat currency otherwise known as inflation.

Bitcoin is currently in the limelight because it has apparently exceeded the price of gold for the first time on some exchanges (although at the time of writing, Bloomberg still shows an average price of Bitcoin hasn’t crossed the gold price yet, but it seems just a question of time). We have no doubt that this will lead to a barrage of headlines in online media, and some mainstream outlets will jump on the bandwagon as well. After all, they already widely reported on a claim made by the Winklevoss brothers in mid-2016 that Bitcoin’s volatility had apparently fallen below the volatility of gold, and thus Bitcoin had become “better at being gold than gold”. We rebutted this claim and surely Bitcoin’s volatility shot back up to 100% shortly thereafter.

Bitcoin has rallied almost USD500 last year and USD100 in the first two days of 2017 alone. At the time of writing, 1 Bitcoin was trading at USD1,135, while 1 oz of gold was trading at USD1,164. To some, it may seem like Bitcoin is about to be more valuable than gold, and though this is of course conceptually incorrect, it probably won’t stop the media pundits from publishing the headline anyway.

Gold and elements can be measured by weight (oz, g, kg, t). Mass and weight are the measuring units endowed by nature. Fiat currencies, or any other abstract commodity or money (including Bitcoin), cannot be measured that way. An abstraction can only be measured in units of itself. Gold and silver are therefore the only form of money today that are traded in weight. Fiat currency on the other hand cannot be measured by anything other than other currency, at least since Nixon ended the convertibility to gold in 1971. In that respect, Bitcoin falls into the same category.

Thus, when comparing units of gold to units of Bitcoin, one must first define what unit it is measured against. Is it grams (currently USD37/g), kilograms (USD37,000/kg) or tonnes (USD 37 million/tonne)? Or are we measuring it in the rather obscure measure of troy ounce (USD1,157/ozt), which, apart from exchange traded metals, is not used for anything else?

Hence comparing the price of 1 Bitcoin vs 1 troy ounce of gold is a little bit like comparing the shares of Seaboard Corp. (USD4,179 per share) to those of Apple Inc. (USD116 per share) and concluding that Seaboard Corp. is worth 35 times as much. Clearly, measured accurately by market cap, Apple is the largest and most valuable company in the world and worth 126 times as much as Seaboard Corp.

Read More @ GoldMoney.com



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    • Lissy

      Only one correction…I hear the Bolivar is now being measured by weight, as it’s value is so depreciated that it would take so long to count them, they just weigh them! Lets hope our dollar is not on it’s way to the same demise!

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