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As Gold Hits New Record, Some See Warning Signs of Civilizational Collapse
(www.newsweek.com)
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this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2025
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That thing sounds like it needs a functioning internet and communications system. If society collapses I wouldn’t bet on the blockchain being usable.
And gold? A huge percentage of which people hold non-physically?
It's almost like you can come up with arguments that NOTHING is safe without a functioning internet and communications system.
So......what's the difference here?
Do most people have bars of gold sitting around? No. Do most people have gold jewelry like wedding rings and earrings and necklaces? Yes. Can those bars of gold sitting in banks be easily melted down into coins in the event of a society collapse? Yes. Can Bitcoin be usable at all without internet and power? No.
Hmmmm, so in this collapse scenario, there's no internet or electricity, but somehow the infrastructure for melting gold, and the manufacture of things that require gold, just.....keeps on ticking?
My sweet summer child. These things worked before the internet and will work without the internet.
Priceless 🤣
Umm... fire?
You think if we go back to unga bunga times we're just going to melt down gold and start trading with each other?
That level of apocalypae and we will have way bigger and more urgent problems than trying to reimplement the gold standard in a world without electricity or internet.
Like yes, fire, yeah that's correct it melts gold. But you really think that's a strong argument for investing in gold over bitcoin?
Gold over Bitcoin? Yes.
Gold is also a shitty investment. But it's a slightly better investment than Bitcoin. It has tangible value.
You'd be much better off investing that money in your community and building a robust support network, a small co-op to grow food, and find a secure source of clean water. If the kind of collapse people are talking about in this thread happens, no amount of Bitcoin or gold is going to be worth anything. But grain and water will be priceless.
We're losing the plot here.
The apocalypse thing is a stupid thought experiment at the end of the day. I think it's fair to say gold would be better than Bitcoin in a total apocalypse scenario. But this isn't why people buy Bitcoin. It's not the collapse of civilization people are buying gold and bitcoin for, it's the collapse of the US dollar (and all fiat currencies).
For that collapse scenario, which is exponentially more likely than the literal apocalypse, Bitcoin is king. It's an objective fact. It's literally the most logical solution to that problem. This isn't to say that Bitcoin doesn't have downsides. It does. But that doesn't change the fact that it's inevitable. That's what most people can't seem to wrap their heads around
I have gold and can transport it. We traded gold before we had an international banking structure. We don’t need electricity or the internet for the trade in gold.
Crypto has no utility. It cannot be transported as it isn’t a physical asset. It cannot be used for any other purpose eg you can’t make a hat out of BTC or ETH. Gold and crypto are not the same when it comes to their usability as a currency.
No they're not the same, you're correct. You're totally incorrect that it has no utility. You honestly just don't understand how it actually works. I really, strongly suggest understanding
I have spent 15 years following crypto. I promise you that I know how it works. The fact is the fanboys are the ones who are mistaken as so much of that scene is built by people who either know fuckall about currency policy or are scammers.
Just to hold you accountable, kindly give me a brief explanation of how bitcoin works. If you know how it works, you should be able to explain it, and if you use Google to explain it for you, you'll defeat your own argument. So please, try if you don't mind?
Why would you have the right to hold me accountable? And hold me accountable for what?
I've created 16 blockchains and I'm one of Bitcoin's core developers. Just trust me.
That's what you're doing
That’s not at all accurate. It’s not surprising you are invested in crypto. Hopefully you can weather the loss of it.
Remember these conversations down the road.
And stop saying crypto. We are talking about Bitcoin.
It applies to all crypto.
Just because you say it doesn't make it true, and if it were true you'd expect me to be invested in other "cryptos" surely.
Do you think I'm invested in any non-Bitcoin crypto? Why would I draw such an arbitrary line between one and the literal rest of them?
Maybe, just maybe there is a difference.
And the same is true for yourself.
FFS buddy you think you have the right “to hold you to account”. Dial it back bro.
My arguments apply to all crypto.
Never mind, I found one but I had to look way back.
You said crypto has no utility. Which is awfully naive and I'm not even sure you really believe it. But you're not really making a strong case. You're just...saying it has no utility.
I have made arguments. You have ignored them or failed to understand them.
What can you use crypto for other than being a token? I can make things from precious metals. Heck I can write on paper bills. What can you use crypto for other tha being a coin/token?
What arguments? You haven't made a single argument, you've just been bloviating at random.
Tell me, what arguments have you made? Or is "crypto scam you dumb" the argument?
WHY is all crypto the same?
Objectively false
Lol sorry buddy but that's true. Followed crypto for 15 years and the space is filled with guys who never took an economics course
To be fair, you're not wrong about your point. But in this case it's a matter of being correct despite themselves.
And again, crypto is not equal to Bitcoin. Bitcoin is crypto, but only Bitcoin is Bitcoin. Maybe I'll be wrong, guess we will see
Again I would dial back the arrogance here as you are backing crypto.
Gold can exist physically, cryptocurrency cannot.
So it's made of fairy dust, got it
What a wild thing to say about gold when you're arguing in favor of cryptocurrency.
It would be wild, if that's what actually happened
Edit: Do you have a charity picked out? Or shall I just go ahead and buy more Bitcoin?
Fairy dust, don't be ridiculous. It's Pixie dust.
Let me ask you this. If the hard drive that contains the private keys for your wallet is melted down to a liquid and allowed to cool, what is the value of that hard drive?
What would be the value of a gold coin given the same treatment?
Yes, you're correct. A melted hard drive would not have the same value as a gold coin melted down.
What is your point?
I answered your question so maybe you'll do me the honour of answering mine.
If someone breaks into your house and steals your gold coins, what value do they have to you?
If it burns down, how much will it cost to recoup all your gold back into a manageable, tradeable form?
If you burn down a library do the books still have any value?
The thing is, if I have a pile of gold coins, and a bunch of crypto in a private wallet on a hard drive and the house those things are in burns down, I'll still have the gold. It just won't be in coins.
All of that is kind of pointless because again, both of these things are terrible investments. You're quite astute to point out the flaws in gold but what's incredible is that you fail to see those same flaws, using the same logic, apply to crypto only in a more exaggerated form.
If you're worried about the dollar collapsing, crypto will not save you from that, any more than a pile of gold will. Do you think the banks will just lock their doors one day and everyone will still go to work in the morning? Do you expect that trade will still function in a normal, civilized way?
Crypto is built on so many dependant layers of technology that if the dollar collapses, crypto will be as valuable as a library on fire.
Ah, but if you can find the book in thousands upon thousands of libraries spread all around the world, has anything been lost?
Bitcoin is crypto. Crypto is not Bitcoin. I strongly encourage you to look into the history of money. What has been used as money in the past, why it was used as money....rai stones are my favorite example.
Bitcoin, if you are able to understand the mechanics of it, is the "hardest" form of money that has ever existed. History shows money always flows into the hardest asset available. It also shows what happens when that asset loses its hardness. This is why gold has been king for a long, long time.
Then along came Bitcoin (NOT crypto, there was crypto before and crypto after), and it used game theory, the internet, math, cryptography and programming to become the most elegant store of value ever invented, which is also the hardest form of money ever created.
I actually loathe Bitcoin, even if I admire it and buy it. It's an energy nightmare. No one will ever convince me that it's "green" in any meaningful way. And I'm a huge environmentalist. But I'm not an idiot. It's inevitable. It's already started. Fiat currencies are going to start inflating uncontrollably and the money is going to go somewhere. If Bitcoin is superior as a store of value to gold, and more importantly is harder than gold, it's got a long, long way to go.
Maybe you should look in to the history of money. Gold has not been king for a long time. It never really was.
Silver has always been more common as a standard. Gold and silver were frequently used in conjunction with each other, and neither of them have served as a standard intentionally since 1971. Well before any crypto. Using gold and gold alone as the standard is actually quite rare, and one time happened by accident.
Fun fact, at one point the Spanish thought they'd found an incredible amount of silver only to discover halfway across the Atlantic that it was some other shiney silver metal. They proceeded to dump tons of worthless plantinum overboard so as to not pollute the silver supply.
On Yap Island, giant circular stones were used as a form of currency. Everyone kind of just agreed on who owned what stones. At one point one fell off a boat and sunk, but because everyone knew that stone was still there, they could still assign value to it, and so it still stood in as currency. This single example is the closest real world example to crypto you're going to find. And even obscure rocks on a remote island are a better investment because pretending a giant rock has value doesn't depend on the Internet continuing to exist.
Salt, in various forms, has been used as currency and a standard of value. This is literally the origin of the word Salary. Roman soldiers were paid in salt. In Ethiopia they used bars of it as recently as the 1900s. In West Africa they even used bottle caps when coinage was scarce.
As it happens, bottle caps are a pretty good currency. They're scarce, labeled, not super common, light and easy to carry, and easy to count. Notably, they also do not require the infrastructure that created them to continue to exist to retain value. None of the currencies I've mentioned, and to be clear these were currencies not commodities, require any of the technology that created them to exist to retain value. Bracelets, bricks of tea, tally sticks, seashells, even fucking Parmesan cheese all have functioned as a form of standard currency and all of them were better currencies than any crypto ever has been.
Crypto is a commodity. Except it only has value within is existing infrastructure. It will be like never getting able to check a book out of the library. Quite honestly if you're going to trade commodities, it's one of the least monstrous commodities to trade. The exorbitant energy costs notwithstanding.
Just realized this is an extremely poor argument anyway.....maybe "does not" instead of "cannot" will be helpful in understanding.