Don't be so quick to count out Gold (and Silver). G&S have been monetary mediums of exchange for 7,000 years. Bitcoin has only been in existence for less than 10. Bitcoin has yet to face any true resistance (either from governmental forces or by hackers).
Anything that goes up as fast as Bitcoin, can easily come down just as fast.
Not that I'm rooting against Bitcoin, I'm just a little more cautious and discerning.
Oh, there's been no counting out of gold or silver.
Compared to the dollar and every other fiat, I see gold and silver being much higher in value in the not too distant future and I don't foresee it losing significant purchasing power anytime within my lifetime.
That being said, IF, and this is a rather large if, but, I say it again, if bitcoin becomes mass adopted as "THEE digital currency", or even if it remains as the "safe haven" to other cryptos as the crypto market becomes mass adopted, it's not outside of possibility that single bitcoin units will be valued above $500K and even $1 million.
In other words, it's possible that silver and gold will increase many fold in value, yet still significantly under-perform compared to bitcoin. And, if I'm to be honest, I believe that this is a likely scenario.
Bitcoin has one advantage over gold and silver that can never be surmounted -- it is, or at least can be, "invisible". It's weightless. It takes up no space. You don't have to hide it or depend on someone else to protect it for you. It can't be confiscated or stolen, unless you're, to put it bluntly, an idiot.
On top of that, it has a known supply limit. As unlikely as it may be, it's possible that a meteor may one day hit the earth that significantly increases its gold or silver supply, or we may decide to mine either of them from a meteor that passes by. There could also be storehouses of above ground gold or silver that is yet unaccounted for, which, if they were discovered may cause a major price depreciation. And the list goes on for possibilities of "supply shocks". Not the case with bitcoin.
And I haven't even mentioned how it can be "magically" transported half way across the world for a very minimal fee, in a matter of minutes! I'd like to see you try that with gold or silver.
I see right now as a technological transition, much like what happened between the various ages (stone age, copper age, iron age, etc.), only this time we're transitioning from a physical representation of money/ value to a digital one -- call it the "digital age" if you like.
I can see that. It's definitely easier to move around (let alone around the planet). Obviously, Bitcoin will need to go through several more evolutions to be able to handle mass adoption.
So let me ask you this, with the so-called hard cap of 21,000,000, how do you see mass adoption being handled? Do they increase the cap by 2x, 5x, 100x and treat it like a stock split where original holders will have their holdings increased by the same factor, or do you see people running around spending .01 Satoshis??? The speed of the network will need to increase dramatically and the cost of the transactions will need to come down dramatically.
Also, what happens when people/corporations are no longer mining because the cap has been reached? What mechanisms will there be to perform all of the billions of transactions?
You've peaked my curiousity!
There is no need to mess with the cap number. If 1 BTC were to have a value of let's say $10 million (which, I'm sure you'll agree, most people would consider an impossibly high value for it to reach), then grocery purchases, if we're to assume will have costs of between $1 and $1,000, would be happening within the ten millionth to the hundred thousandth range (0.0000001 ~ 0.0001) in BTC terms.
In that case, instead of measuring in terms of whole BTC units, which would be really confusing and counter-intuitive, we'd likely be measuring in ten millionths of 1 BTC unit (which is 10 satoshi, btw) so that the bitcoin unit costs closely resemble the dollar unit costs. That way, a $100 grocery bill will equal around 100 bitcoin units.
Depending on whether bitcoin is to be the world's future solution to digital cash, it may not have to increase transaction speeds that much, if at all. If it's merely going to be a digital gold (store of value), then transaction speed isn't much of an issue. It will definitely need to become much faster if it will replace physical cash.
Bitcoin is going to increase block size to 2 MB this November, which will increase transaction speed from around 7 per second to 14. The downside to this approach is that the memory space required to hold the entire history of the bitcoin blockchain (requirements for a bitcoin node) will also double in rate (with the doubling of block size), so there is a limit to how big the blocks can be in terms of Mbs.
I don't know exactly how it works, but Lighting Network, which is also going to be implemented this November, supposedly offers a work-around solution to the block size limitations, through the use of "off chain" transactions (that, I assume, combine many transactions together outside of the network and send them in large batches to the bitcoin blockchain -- if you're reading this and find an error, please feel free to correct it). This, as far as I'm informed, makes it possible for bitcoin to handle many thousands and even millions of transactions per second in the future.
As for the cost of transactions and the mining cap, I direct you to the following quote from this source:
That last paragraph says to me that each block needs to be sufficiently large so that the block space isn't so scarce and the demand can be more easily met by the miners.
Hopefully that covers everything that you were trying for.
Thanks for the conversation!
Same to you, my man.