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I don't understand much of anything you guys talk about when it comes to cryptocurrency but there's one thing I know about gold.

It has held a value as a medium of exchange throughout almost all of human history, including the rise and fall of all the worlds greatest nations.

I'll keep accumulating my little share of the physical and let others accumulate the digital. ymmv

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At this point in its lifecycle, bitcoin is quite expensive to mine. Electricity costs money. Bitcoin is the product.

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In the cycle of history, as every current favored currency starts to be debased, a new currency is put forth (by the same people that started the last currency, and the one before that) and people slowly, then very quickly run away from the previous currency to the new kid on the block.

It’s been the same thing in every great empire from Egypt to Rome, etc., sometimes they last a thousand years, sometimes only a couple decades.

Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

Quoted:
I don't understand much of anything you guys talk about when it comes to cryptocurrency but there's one thing I know about gold.

It has held a value as a medium of exchange throughout almost all of human history, including the rise and fall of all the worlds greatest nations.

I'll keep accumulating my little share of the physical and let others accumulate the digital. ymmv

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Accumulate what you want. Given the chance, and I'm not saying I'll be right, I'd buy bitcoin over gold for its versatility, functionality, and unconfiscatability....

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Prior to the 20th century almost every currency was backed by precious metal.  If the issuing govt debased them, they lost value.  The precious metals retained value and it didn't matter if you switched currencies or traveled to a different empire, gold was still gold and silver was still silver.  In the Americas, the Spanish piece of eight was used as a stable currency for hundreds of years, even outside of Spanish territory.  They were widely used in Colonial America and for many years after independence, and the US silver dollar was based on the piece of eight.

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At this point in its lifecycle, bitcoin is quite expensive to mine. Electricity costs money. Bitcoin is the product.

Francisco d'Anconia’s Speech on Money from Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (1957)
"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you
ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist
unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material
shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and
give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by
tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by
the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction
that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or
the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears not all the guns in the world
can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive
tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor--
your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of
hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that
moral principle which is the root of money, Is this what you consider evil?

"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator
and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try
to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it
for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions--and
you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that
has ever existed on earth.

"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength
do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's
capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of
those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools?
By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the
lazy? Money is made--before it can be looted or mooched--made by the effort of every
honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he
can't consume more than he has produced.'

"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the
axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to
prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to
trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor
that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no
deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money
demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their
own injury, for their gain, not their loss--the recognition that they are not beasts of
burden, born to carry the weight of your misery--that you must offer them values, not
wounds--that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the
exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity,
but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but
the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade--with reason, not force, as
their final arbiter--it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best
judgment and highest ability--and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of
his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what
you consider evil?

"But money is only a tool...

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@EOTWAWKI

Because just like a piece of gold will store your wealth, it won't keep you alive.  Gold as a currency is JUST that. a CURRENCY, like bitcoin.

Ayn Rand explained the concept of money fairly well here.  You might find it outdated, but it still rings true nonetheless...

The only reason you respect gold (or any other PM, for that matter) is because you are confident in the idea that so many others do as well and will also see your gold as valuable.  But this does not change the fact that currency is merely a tool of exchange and is only as good as faith backed between 2 parties engaged in any form of commerce.  This basic principle absolutely applies to BTC!  There are millions of people on this planet that see more intrinsic value in BTC than they do in gold.  As long as people have faith in the fixed supply and continue to use it as just that:  currency, i.e., a simple tool of exchange.  just because you can't physically touch or see it, it doesn't mean it's not there.

The FULL Money Speech....