Thanks for your well thought out and reasoned reply!

I completely agree with your opinion on gold. I think it is probably the most useful commodity to use as a currency for many reasons. It, of course, has it's drawbacks as you've mentioned so I think that the best use of gold right now is as a reserve just in case the internet goes down or something equally crazy happens. Without the internet, I think gold is probably the best form of currency (though I will admit I haven't done much research in physical forms of currency). I think goldmoney.com and similar services are interesting but I think they defeat the point of having gold because if the internet goes down, you are in the same boat as anyone with credit cards, or cryptocurrency.

Gresham's law doesn't really apply to cryptocurrencies as far as I understand it. Gresham's law states that "good money is money that shows little difference between its nominal value (the face value of the coin) and its commodity value (the value of the metal of which it is made, often precious metals, nickel, or copper)". in other words it is referring to two coins that are legally required to be the same value. For example, if two golden eagle coins are legally required to be the same value even if one of them has imperfections. Cryptocurrencies aren't legally required to be the same value as anything and they are fungible (every coin is worth the same as any other coin) So I don't see how it applies. I could be missing something though.

I believe cryptocurrencies are a good example of Thiers' Law, which is kind of the opposite of Gresham's law. It says that in the absence of effective legal tender laws, Gresham's Law works in reverse. If given the choice of what money to accept, people will transact with money they believe to be of highest long-term value. However, if not given the choice, and required to accept all money, good and bad, they will tend to keep the money of greater perceived value in their possession, and pass on the bad money to someone else. In short, in the absence of legal tender laws, the seller will not accept anything but money of certain value (good money), while the existence of legal tender laws will cause the buyer to offer only money with the lowest commodity value (bad money) as the creditor must accept such money at face value.

So if the government doesn't enforce value, good money drives out bad money.

(this is a very interesting train of thought... maybe this will be a future post...)

So to sum up, I think gold is better without the internet and cryptocurrencies can be better when we do have the internet. (and there are some projects to make cryptocurrencies work without an internet connection which is really interesting...)

Thanks again! I wish I had a more powerful upvote for you... Someday. :)