The financial worth of an individual is dependent on the total net worth of his resources be it in fiat, precious metals, or stocks.
Naturally, humans have always sought to acquire all these resources to become financially stable and independent of others.
According to research, the ten wealthiest individuals in the world oscillate between themselves due to the share price of their companies and their investments in stocks.
However, some decades ago, it was paramount to have your store of wealth in precious metals like gold and silver as these were a quantifier for an individual’s store of wealth. Following this, precious metals served as a guarantee for wealth preservation, which led to the gold standard being used to evaluate the wealth of individuals and nations.
Knowing fully that these precious metals are quantified and have physical properties like weight and texture, will require physical methods of discovering and processing them, which is known as mining. It involves a laborious process of detecting metal, panning, crushing, slicing, and dredging to retrieve the gold. Gravity and water are commonly used to separate gold from other materials, making this category of gold mining the most popular among amateur gold hunters.
There is also hard rock mining which is the process of using open-pit or underground mining tunnels to retrieve the gold from the rock. This method of gold mining is responsible for recovering most of the world’s gold supply.
The final category of gold mining involves the processing of gold ore. As a result of the low gold yield and the high costs and environmental impact of the operation, this method is largely becoming deprecated. Gold ore is finely crushed rock or earth that contains trace amounts of Gold and is extracted through a chemical process. Cyanide is the most commonly used chemical for this process.
Several countries and individuals have accumulated precious metals to their benefit as a result of all these processes. Since gold and other precious metals were extracted from their original states, the price of gold and other precious metals was presumably high.
Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, on the other hand, have created a new dynamic resource for developers and creators of blockchain projects and cryptocurrencies. The methods they use to produce these cryptocurrencies may be similar, but they are much more efficient.
This involves the use of computer algorithms that solve processes and at the same time rewards those who successfully solve the computational problems (mining). A mathematical calculation embedded in Bitcoin causes a halving every 4 years, and as such the reward for mining, BTC transactions is cut in half. By reducing inflation, bitcoin becomes more durable. Approximately 50% of all bitcoins were mined in four years, but the remaining 50% will take another 120 years to mine.
These computational problems require high-speed computer resources, which would require electricity and other resources to accomplish. Consequently, the products from these processes become valuable as commodities because they are rare and have a finite number (for instance, bitcoin has only been made up of 21 million).
This new technology has invariably created a new set of billionaires in the world due to their early adopter status and securing these cryptocurrencies in their early stages. With an outstanding result from their possession of these cryptocurrencies, such that for the past 5 years bitcoin has returned a massive percentage gain of 47,401.98 which is an increase of +5,280.62% since 12/19/16 for holding it while gold could barely return a price growth of over 47.34% over the same year period.
The world is becoming smarter and everyone is drifting towards the Gold 2.0 (Bitcoin) which is assumed to become the new standard of value and a global phenomenon in the next decade. It now becomes obvious that gold is now becoming a poor man’s crypto and bitcoin the new standard for wealth evaluation.
The Klever team would continue its educational advocacy for new and prospective crypto investors and traders alike to get on board the Klever train by downloading the Klever wallet for storing the cryptocurrency.
It is a Klever thing to do.
James Enajite
Klever Writer