Do you think investing in gold is better than investing in cryptocurrency?

Which one is a better investment depends on your investing goals, strategy, how much capital you can handle losing, and lastly your risk tolerance.

Both have their advantages over one another and that is why it would be smart to diversify between the two, especially when talks of a recession start to circulate. While cryptocurrency is easy to save and spend in a digital world, cumbersome gold will still have value if things go bad.

On the other hand, gold is an ancient form of exchange, while cryptocurrency may emerge from the next recession as the universal store of value and means of transaction.

While it is not recommended that you sell all your gold and buy cryptocurrencies instead, there is a case to be made for adding cryptocurrencies to portfolios as an alternate store of value.

Both cryptocurrency and gold have their advantages and disadvantages, but they complement each other well, which is a bonus for your portfolio in an uncertain world.

That said, I would pick bitcoin over gold.

How Bitcoin is better than gold

If we dig a bit deeper, though, we'll see that Bitcoin has a serious edge over gold.

Let's revisit the topic of scarcity. What you initially assume about gold's supply is possibly flawed. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, roughly three-fourths of gold in the Earth's crust has already been mined. There are still more than 50,000 metric tons underground. If the price of gold skyrockets for some reason, mining companies might find it worthwhile to extract deposits that are currently not economically worthwhile to access.

This simply means that the supply of gold can go up if market conditions allow for it. Bitcoin's supply is finite, as it's based on computer code that can't be tampered with. That's why it's such a volatile asset. Supply can't be adjusted to meet changing demand to smooth out any imbalance. Raising the lifetime limit of 21 million Bitcoins requires a so-called hard fork, which leaves Bitcoin as we know it unchanged and creates a new cryptocurrency with tweaked code and characteristics.

Additionally, contrary to gold's properties, Bitcoin is easy to store and move around. It's also divisible up to eight decimal places, and it can be used in transactions. Try taking a gold bar out to a restaurant and slicing off a small chunk to pay for the tab. This just isn't practical.

If the qualitative characteristics aren't enough to convince you of Bitcoin's advantages, then let's look at the cold, complex numbers. Since May 2013 (the earliest data provided by Coin Market Cap), Bitcoin's value has surged more than 24,400%. During the same time, the price of an ounce of gold increased by just 25%.

To be fair, Bitcoin is extremely volatile and is a much more difficult asset to own for your peace of mind. To illustrate, someone who puts their entire net worth in physical gold would probably be able to sleep better at night than someone who went all-in on Bitcoin. But over an extended period, Bitcoin's return speaks for itself.

Bitcoin and gold are always drawing comparisons in the investment world. However, it should now be obvious that cryptocurrency is becoming a much better place to park your money.