No, gold has one advantage over bitcoin: in the worst case scenario (where you survive, though a couple religions let you take it with you) it is a physical thing that is somewhat pretty to wear as a ring on your finger.

Bitcoin and the like are entirely based on the idea that somebody else will want them as currency forever. Gold is based on somebody will want ti for either currency or jewelry forever. That gives gold a slight edge.

I don't know if it is significant, but it is a factor.

I've thought about the idea that the value of a cryptocurrency is in its network. Since bitcoin has a large network it has some value that can't easily be copied or replicated. I have wondered if the value is actually closer to something like Facebook stock than gold.

Gold is also truly fungible, and has maintained some value for thousands of years.

Gold is also a pretty good conductor of electricity

Gold is at best Okay. There is a common belief that gold is a good conductor, but it has too high resistance. Look at the table https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_con... gold is 5 on the list, well behind copper (which is what we use), and only barely ahead of aluminum.

Yes, there will be only 21 million bitcoins.

Oops, fork! Now there will be 42 million.

Another fork! Now the maximum is 63 million. There's no such thing as scarcity for a virtual currency.

Post-fork, two coins like BTC and BCH are not fungible either from the networks or from a user's point of view

Then shouldn't every deflationary alt-coin also be valued like gold? You can see where this is going...

By that logic, gold would have crashed long ago and been replaced by all the other alt-rare-metals out there. It has not.

The network effect should not be underestimated. The world is filled with examples of inferior systems that exist simply because they have more momentum than others. Investors demand a “store of value” investment vehicle. Up until now, gold has led that role. Now Bitcoin will take over. Not because it is the best, but because it is first to market and has enough momentum and utility to replace it.

I remember when people used to pay real money for ICQ numbers, so the network effect argument doesn't really get me.

Shouldn't every resource be valued like gold? There's a limited supply of copper... You can see where this is going.

Gold is a weirdly sticky anachronism of a wealth store that never made any sense in the first place.

Gold has one good property, it does not rust.

Thus making tokens out them meant said tokens would last generations, and withstand the rigors of international transport.

As best i recall, gold and silver were rarely popular for domestic trade. There more common materials were used. They were instead used for international trade.

In the end people have come to confuse the token, a way to do trade accounting without an accountant always present, with the metal it was made of.

Gold make sense because girls like to wear gold on their fingers, in their ears... Copper is not useful for that purpose.

I know, that's why I highlighted the flawed logic therein. Sure, one can talk about bitcoin and blockchain as being revolutionary but every time someone with a finance degree writes something, they go by hype and not substance.