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Bitcoin is, currently, a little bit less expensive than physical gold for individuals to self-custody (custody costs and risks)

A little? Is he serious? Either he's assuming very low risk on the gold side or the cost of bitcoin hardware which is not required to secure bitcoin.

Maybe he's just being lazy in this summary but this seems way off to me. The cost of securing my bitcoin is low vs gold.

What am I missing?

I suspect "and risks" is doing a lot of work there. Maybe he's thinking that wrench attacks are on the rise and therefore self-custody risks are higher.

this is odd to me though. I'd guess the only reason wrench attacks for gold aren't a meme is that people assume gold holding isn't very widespread (although it must be more widespread than bitcoin holding).

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Yes I think he also means risks of people losing their coins from fucking up their self-custody which happens ALLL the time.

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That is a fair comparison for sure. People screw up things and its not hard to do.

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I suspect they may be somewhat comparable. Owning $100k in 1 oz gold coins is only about 20 coins. Pretty easy to move around and to keep secure. Not obvious that it's harder to secure than bitcoin. Bitcoin has a digital attack surface that gold doesn't. Depending on how you secure your keys, Bitcoin may or may not have a similar physical attack surface to gold.

On the other hand, it's much easier to move and secure a truly large amount of bitcoin than it is to move and secure a truly large amount of gold. But for individual households, bitcoin may actually be more risky.

I think where bitcoin does have an advantage is in how easy it is to verify and transact. Gold would be hard to transact with, because your trading partner needs to verify the gold content and you have to physically be present.

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This is a good point in bitcoin's favor. The value of the UTXOs does not make it any harder to custody or secure.

That said, its always trade-offs. I really don't like it when bitcoiners slam gold. Gold is pretty awesome. Don't get me wrong.

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If people bragged about their self-custody gold... believe me. There would be wrench attacks. The thing is... people don't self custody gold. Not at high rates IMO. I used to assume all these gold bugs had a horde of gold but the more I have listened to them most do not self custody any significant amount. Its all in ETFs or custody services. Sure, people have coins but its not like bitcoin.

Its totally doable to custody it but you better be armed, trained, and smart about it. Same goes for bitcoin but I can hide bitcoin MUCH easier and cheaper.

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I used to assume all these gold bugs had a horde of gold

This is my assumption too.

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I believe the assumption is incorrect. Not life changing numbers I mean. I'm sure plenty have maybe 5 figures in their safe. But beyond that... nah.

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