Bitcoin Through the Checklist

Back on Day 6, a checklist was introduced for evaluating money. Six properties. Let’s use it.

Durability: Bitcoin doesn’t rust, burn, or decay. A private key memorised in your head survives floods, fires, and wars. Score: better than gold, better than paper.

Portability: You can carry $1 billion in Bitcoin in your memory. You cannot do that with gold, cash, or any physical asset. Score: nothing comes close.

Divisibility: Divisible to 100 millionths of a unit. You can send fractions so small they’d be invisible to the naked eye. Score: far beyond any physical money.

Fungibility: One Bitcoin is identical to any other Bitcoin. No history attached to the coin itself — only to addresses. Score: equal to cash, better than gold bars of varying purity.

Scarcity: Fixed at 21 million. Cannot be changed. Score: more reliably scarce than gold, infinitely more scarce than any fiat currency.

Acceptability: This is where Bitcoin is still growing. Gold has 5,000 years of acceptance. The US dollar is accepted everywhere. Bitcoin is accepted in millions of places — but not everywhere yet. Score: developing, not yet universal.

Five out of six properties: excellent or best-in-class.
One property: still growing.

No money in history has ever scored this well on the first five. The only open question is the sixth — and acceptance grows with every passing year.

This isn’t an argument. It’s a scorecard.

Tomorrow: Bitcoin vs gold — the comparison that actually matters.

— The Daily Bit