Restaurant Chain That Converted Cash Reserves Into Bitcoin Says Gold's Safe Haven Days Are Numbered

A great number of companies have been converting cash reserves into bitcoin during the last few months. At the end of August, the Mediterranean restaurant chain Tahini’s announced the Canadian company converted all of their cash reserves into bitcoin. On Friday, Tahini’s tweeted about the recent crypto reserve conversion, as the team recalled telling the firm’s financial advisor that the precious metal gold and it’s years of being a reliable safe haven are numbered.

This year, a great number of private and publicly listed companies have been gathering vast amounts of bitcoin (BTC) and storing the crypto asset as a form of reserve status. For instance, the web portal bitcointreasuries.org shows 23 companies that are holding bitcoin as a reserve.

The close to two dozen firms listed hold approximately 888,864 BTC worth over $15 billion or 4.23% of the supply. Back in August, after Microstrategy announced its initial purchase, the Canada-based Mediterranean restaurant establishment Tahini’s announced it converted all of its cash reserves into bitcoin (BTC).

“We just converted our entire cash reserves that were originally used as savings into bitcoin,” Tahini’s revealed at the time. On Friday, the restaurant chain’s official Twitter account told the public why it decided to choose bitcoin in contrast to choosing the precious metal gold as a safe haven.

“We looked our financial advisor in the eye and told him gold will turn into a scam because of bitcoin,” the company tweeted on Friday. “He laughed and condescendingly came back with the 6,000 years argument,” Tahini’s added.

The restaurant owners decided to further explain why the company thinks “gold’s years are numbered.” Tahini’s concedes that gold has been a store-of-value for a very long time and used in jewelry. Then the Twitter account noted that individuals in the gold sales industry like Peter Schiff “will lie to you and tell you that gold’s value comes from practical use cases like electronics,” Tahini’s said.

“Gold does get used for other things besides a store of value, but that demand is not what gives gold a $10 trillion dollar market cap,” the Canadian restaurant owners insisted.

Instead, Tahini’s believes that large countries and institutions hoarding gold in vaults is what has been giving gold long term value. For millennia this has worked Tahini’s said because “gold was always the scarcest asset with the highest Stock/Flow ratio.” However, Tahini’s stressed that “Bitcoin changed that.”

Tahini’s opinion is that bitcoin is “1,000x better than gold in all aspects” and gives 14 reasons why the firm thinks the crypto asset is better. For one, unlike gold, bitcoin is “100% monetary premium which means it is not used for electronics or any other use cases other than pure money.”

“Bitcoin dematerializes value and makes it digital which made it easier to move value across the world without the need for any third parties,” the company wrote. “We can move $100 million from Canada to the UK to Australia and back to Canada in 2 hours for 30 bucks max. To do that with gold you will need an armed security team and [it] will cost you from 300 to 500 thousand dollars [and] take [four] to [five] months,” Tahini’s added.

The restaurant owners further said that because gold is so heavy, some countries like Venezuela store their gold elsewhere and risk it being confiscated. Tahini’s wrote that even common citizens will go to great lengths to smuggle gold and illustrated their point by referring to a man who got caught storing gold bullion in his rectum recently.

“Gold is scarce but bitcoin is absolutely scarce— A very important differentiation,” the company said. “Gold miners currently mine 2% of the gold supply every year. The higher the price of gold goes, the more resources will be spent on trying to mine more gold— Just like oil.” In the future, Tahini’s expects gold mining technology to improve and in contrast, bitcoin’s supply issuance is fixed and has a difficulty adjustment.

The company concluded with a few more reasons why BTC was better than gold, and further noted that precious metals investors can “easily be surprised that a discovery of a new gold mine will soon flood the market.” During Tahini’s summary of gold versus bitcoin, the company also said that it disagreed with investors like Dan Tapiero, Paul Tudor Jones, and Stan Druckenmiller that “think gold and bitcoin are cousins.”

“Bitcoin’s supply is verifiable to the last 1/100millionth unit simply by running a full node on your laptop,” Tahini’s determined in its Twitter thread. “While gold bugs will tell you that gold scarce— There is no accurate way of verifying that scarcity to the last ounce.”