Bitcoin is much ‘more than digital gold’

Andreas Antonopoulos, the author of Mastering Bitcoin, recently spoke about the core value proposition of cryptocurrency and Bitcoin being labeled as digital gold, in an interview for Monero Talk. Contrary to what several people in the crypto-community believe, Antonopoulos stated that the core value proposition of cryptocurrency was “choice.”

He said,

“It’s about network money basically it’s the ability to run money as a protocol, it’s the Internet of Money. And then that creates choice and freedom for individuals to choose how to use it because the Internet has knocked down all of the borders.”

The well-known author went on to list the five pillars of an open public blockchain, which are: open, borderless, neutral, censorship-resistant, immutable, and public. He added that these pillars were the representation of freedom achieved via decentralization. He further said,

“[…] the Internet of money […] caught my attention because then, you can fine tune and play with the various characteristics of money and explore many different approaches, which is what’s happened with the ecosystem of cryptocurrencies”

Subsequently, Antonopoulos spoke about whether he considered Bitcoin to be digital gold. This has been one of the most common notions in the space, with Grayscale Digital even promoting the #DropGold campaign and prompting investors to invest in Digital Gold: Bitcoin.

“I think Bitcoin is digital gold as much as cars are a super-fast gasoline ingesting horse. It’s a metaphor and that metaphor only stretches so far before it’s meaningless […] the definition of digital gold, I think, puts Bitcoin into a bit of a kind of niche that is narrow.”

He further stated that Bitcoin was much more than “digital gold,” adding that it was neither digital gold nor digital cash. Antonopoulos stated that it was still in the stage of discovering what Bitcoin really is. He said,

“[…] what is cryptocurrency related to gold? it’s a whole new thing and all of the words we had for analyzing and describing, it’s no longer apply because it isn’t those things.”