Gold’s a Great Store of Value – If You Never Need to Flee a Country

Rick Delafont

5 years ago

3 mins read

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Historically speaking, gold is the most enduring store of value asset the world has ever known. However, there’s a new kid on the block in the form of Bitcoin.

Whilst gold served its purpose in the days when taking a trip outside of the borders of one’s home country was a serious undertaking, the modern world is starting to make the precious metal look dated. In an age where technology allows people and information to travel much more readily than ever before, shouldn’t value be as easy to move too?

Brazilian Man Arrested for Travelling with Gold

Gold’s shortcomings have once again been exposed today. According to a report in Dutch publication AT5, authorities arrested a Brazilian man carrying around 15 Kg of gold, worth almost $800,000, in his luggage.

The man reportedly struggled to explain why he was carrying such a large quantity of gold. He was, therefore, detained.

In addition to the gold, authorities confiscated around US$750 and his mobile phone. Investigating the case are Dutch Customs and the Fiscal Information and Investigation Service.

https://twitter.com/BitcoinMunger/status/1235975723241877505

Whilst NewsBTC isn’t making the case that the officials either should or shouldn’t have seized the gold, the example clearly shows that Bitcoin possesses qualities that gold does not.

Bitcoin: A Scarce Asset for the 21st Century and Beyond

It wasn’t by chance that gold rose to the top of monetary technologies many centuries ago. Being almost impossible to reproduce and difficult to mine, the precious metal represents a sounder form of money than any competing monetary technology of the pre-Bitcoin era.

Gold served the planet well as a store of value. Although not entirely free from price manipulation, no single entity can suddenly decide to inflate its supply. This made it a great form of money – previously, the best.

However, the world is a very different place to what it was when gold was rising to prominence. With most people living their entire lives within a very short radius of where they were born, gold didn’t really need to be a great traveller.

These days goods, people, and even data can travel the world much more readily than ever before. Before Bitcoin, monetary technology had not really advanced to suit this new, smaller planet.

However, since Satoshi Nakamoto launched the first viable digital asset more than a decade ago, Bitcoin has been slowly but surely turning definitions of what money is and what it can be on their heads. It demonstrates that assets do not need a physical form for a market to value them.

Lacking a physical form also makes Bitcoin the most revolutionary advance in monetary technology potentially ever. As the above tweet highlights, had the Brazilian man favoured Bitcoin as his store of value over gold, perhaps he would have avoided his current situation.

Featured Image from Shutterstock.

Rick Delafont

Based in Europe, Rick has written about the cryptocurrency industry since 2016. He was first drawn to Bitcoin as a means of payment but quickly became fascinated by its wider potential implications. His interests lie in the political, economic, and social impact of the unfolding digital asset revolution.