We know to a pretty good approximation how much gold is in the earth, and where it is. That's not even a minor consideration for mining geologists and engineers anymore.
The primary limitation as of now is ore quality, which directly dictates how much energy is required for smelting, and we have a good idea of the decline curve thereof. We know roughly when it will be economically profitable to extract the stuff from seawater, which isn't too far off. In the end, it's a question of energy. Very similar to proof-of-work tokens like BTC, in that regard.
You are wrong about gold, either learn or drop that, its not central to your argument.
A lot of things are scarce. Some of those things are valued. Bitcoins may or may not be valued in the future, and if they are it is unknown at what price point they might be valued. Scarcity is only part of the equation.
Alright. I tried to do this. I'm certainly open to learning.
But it looks like I'm actually going to need citations from you because everything I'm finding so far confirms that we do NOT know how much gold exists in the earth, or where it might be found, or whether it will become economically feasible to extract it. All we know is that discoveries are slowing down.[0][1][2][3]
I've tried to read a variety of sources, from a scientific journal to a metals dealer to a mainstream news outlet to an industry-focused site. By all means, though, if you have citations for your confident claims that you're willing to provide, I'll be happy to read them too.
[1] There may or may not be large undiscovered veins left, especially under the ocean and in Antarctica (and we don't know whether new technology will make them easier to discover and mine): https://www.providentmetals.com/knowledge-center/precious-me...
If you're a cornucopian, and you're certain that new technology will unlock much more efficient smelting/separation/filtration/asteroid mining techniques, then sure, gold is virtually limitless.
If you're a realist, you understand that ore quality degrades as a function of the fact that we smelt the highest purity ores first, and that while (usually very small) new vein discoveries do occur, they occur as already understood as a statistical variance against a much much larger backdrop of averaging functions.
I'm not discounting the possibility of an extraction breakthrough - it's certainly possible. But revolutions of the kind you're assuming are certain to occur extremely infrequently.
And to that point, I'm a "very long term corncucopian", in the sense that a thousand years out, we will probably eventually realize the Minsky dream of nanobots that can act effectively as the Maxwell's Demon of elemental extraction. But I'm old enough, and have awaited the Singularity long enough, to realize that optimism doesn't make a science, and that this won't be for at least a few hundred years, at minimum. (I'll leave what 300 years of quantum computing work could do to 256 bit hash collisions as an exercise for the reader.)
And that's assuming that we even survive the coming climate and/or resource catastrophe that awaits 10 billion souls in 20 or so years.
Upvoting you because you are precisely me, 20 years ago before understanding how things actually work :)
I can see how this would affect one of the articles' points, that there may be gold it isn't ever going to be profitable to mine, but what about the other points that new veins are still being formed and we don't have any specific reason to believe we've found all the ones that would be profitable?
I'm definitely not meaning to argue with you. I ask that sincerely. I wasn't particularly interested in this subject before, but any time I have a chance to ask questions of someone 20 years ahead of me in anything, I try to make the most of it!
The argument is that Bitcoin not only has a provable total fixed supply & rate of future supply and that it has more utility than gold because it's easier to transfer and harder to fake.
> [Bitcoin is] the only thing on that list of inflation hedges that has a fixed supply.
Aha! That brings me to my next question. In what sense does bitcoin actually have a fixed supply? Sure, a loose coalition of people agree for it to have a fixed supply at the moment, but if enough of the miners, core developers, etc. agree they can change the rules arbitrarily, viz. hard forks.
Why should we believe that bitcoin really has a fixed supply, just because everyone has roughly stuck to the rules so far?
That's mostly a matter of economic incentives. It's technically possible but it's similar to the idea of a rich person lighting a pile of money on fire.
If a proposal to raise the cap is introduced, price would react negatively, hurting miners, and making it more (relatively) expensive to mine. It's unlikely there is any scenario where it is economically feasible to try to raise the supply cap.
Can you point me to some more thorough analysis of your claim? I've heard such things before but I've never seen it modelled and worked through. Until I see such an analysis I can't help thinking the argument is "we've thought about it a bit and it seems like it will be OK".
Does it? On what basis would one know that? Why should it benefit from inflation more than gold, say?