The analogy to gold is interesting but not entirely clean. Gold’s validation is physical and intrinsic whereas Bitcoin’s validation is procedural and dependent on the functioning of the network. Miners secure the chain by finding and appending blocks but nodes enforce the rules. This is a critical difference because it means the ability to verify Bitcoin does not depend exclusively on miners in the same way that access to gold does not depend on a single institution. Anyone can run a node and independently validate the entire ledger which adds to Bitcoin’s robustness as a monetary system.
The question of whether Bitcoin is currently money in the classical sense partially depends on the scope of usage and general acceptance in everyday transactions. By Austrian definitions money is the most saleable good in a market. Bitcoin’s saleability is still growing and in certain contexts it is already operating as money but on a global scale it is still in transition. The more important question is whether its structure and properties allow it to evolve into that universally accepted medium of exchange. On that front Bitcoin’s decentralization censorship resistance and predictable issuance give it a strong foundation to eventually meet the classical definition in practice not just in theory.
The analogy to gold is interesting but not entirely clean. Gold’s validation is physical and intrinsic whereas Bitcoin’s validation is procedural and dependent on the functioning of the network. Miners secure the chain by finding and appending blocks but nodes enforce the rules. This is a critical difference because it means the ability to verify Bitcoin does not depend exclusively on miners in the same way that access to gold does not depend on a single institution. Anyone can run a node and independently validate the entire ledger which adds to Bitcoin’s robustness as a monetary system.
The question of whether Bitcoin is currently money in the classical sense partially depends on the scope of usage and general acceptance in everyday transactions. By Austrian definitions money is the most saleable good in a market. Bitcoin’s saleability is still growing and in certain contexts it is already operating as money but on a global scale it is still in transition. The more important question is whether its structure and properties allow it to evolve into that universally accepted medium of exchange. On that front Bitcoin’s decentralization censorship resistance and predictable issuance give it a strong foundation to eventually meet the classical definition in practice not just in theory.