How durable is Bitcoin, really? In case of major economic turmoil, the value of Bitcoins can drop to zero and stay there permanently.
This is very different from gold. In a truly apocalyptic scenario, gold also becomes nearly worthless. However, when society bounces back, the value of gold can be re-inflated based on the intrinsic value of gold.
In the case of Bitcoin, such a bounce-back is not as likely to happen, because it would be so tempting for people to just start an entirely new blockchain.
As durable as P2P network. In truly apocalyptic scenario I'll most likely be dead so I don't really care.
Resetting accounts to zero might be favorable scenario over getting killed over few pounds of gold in my basement and my suspected withholding of the information where is more.
>In case of major economic turmoil, the value of Bitcoins can drop to zero and stay there permanently.
It really can't. Bitcoin is used in over 100 countries. Economic turmoil in one, or even a few, country will not be sufficient to drop the price to 0.
The system becomes more robust every day. It's essentially a basket currency made of currencies proportional to all the proportion of people which use it in various countries.
After some more maturity there could not be a more robust currency scheme imaginable.
> In the case of Bitcoin, such a bounce-back is not as likely to happen, because it would be so tempting for people to just start an entirely new blockchain.
In such a situation, people could be categorised into two: those who previously held Bitcoin, and those who previously didn't. The ones who did would favour continuing with the old block chain, since they'd have more value there. Surely this alone would be enough?
This is very different from gold. In a truly apocalyptic scenario, gold also becomes nearly worthless. However, when society bounces back, the value of gold can be re-inflated based on the intrinsic value of gold.
In the case of Bitcoin, such a bounce-back is not as likely to happen, because it would be so tempting for people to just start an entirely new blockchain.