Exactly. The gold analogy was about issuance mechanics, not properties. Bitcoin is its own thing — programmable, verifiable, portable in ways gold never could be. The metaphor became a cage.

For some reason people didn't find peer-to-peer electronic cash nearly as compelling, even though that's the real superpower.

I still like that metaphor tbh, it's easy to explain to simpletons: everybody knows what gold is, some either crunch the term "digital" quite well. Gold always meant precious, scarce, valuable, preserving value, associates with wealth, is indestructible. Even on your dollars you have "In Go(l)d We T...

Gold is physical bitcoin

They seem to miss the part about this stuff being transported through a communications channel. People think it's a gold ETF 2.0 now and not a p2p electronic cash system.