How do you mitigate against the short comings of gold cost effectively? It's difficult to divide, transport, store, verify and is subject to potential supply shocks and confiscation. These sound like enormous shortcomings to me, of which mitigation is rather costly.
On the other hand, Bitcoin is easier to divide, transport, store securely, verify and supply shocks are of no concern, when compared to gold. This sounds like a no-brainer to me. I don't think understanding the benefits of Bitcoin is an issue for you. I think the issue is 'trusting' the Bitcoin software. That will come over time. Bitcoin is constantly being attacked at every angle, but has maintained its up-time for over 10 years with $US180bn being secured. I expect this network to last my entire lifetime and beyond, securing trillions, to the point where we will not be trading in ounces of gold or Australian dollars, we will be talking in fractions of bitcoins. It might be worthwhile having some, just in case it catches on.
I disagree with your conclusion that Bitcoin is commodity gambling. Let's make no mistake, Bitcoin is being used to gamble on a day-to-day basis for short term fiat profit, yes. However over the long term, the ultimate use case for Bitcoin is being used as a store of value. It is a cost effective shield from ridiculous central banking policies designed to part you of your wealth. Policies such as modern monetary theory, negative interest rates, quantitative easing (money printing), capital controls and financial surveillance are harmful to people's lives. Bitcoin is more accessible for the average person than gold and mitigating its shortcomings is.
Your other arguments raised around government regulation, forking, quantum computing and 'shenanigans', I'm not sure what to tell you, other than do more research, but I'll address them anyway.
Government regulation is just as applicable to Bitcoin as it is gold. Many users who hold bitcoin don't even care what governments think because they have little ability to control small packets of data along communications networks. Government regulation becomes irrelevant when everyone is on the Bitcoin monetary standard.
Forking is a result of a lack of consensus on a particular aspect of the code. If someone does not like a particular aspect of the code, they are welcome to 'fork' it and see who wishes to run it on their computer. It does not mean that users have to agree to it and run it on their computers. The user gets to decide what is in their best economic interests. If you look on the GitHub repository I alluded to earlier, you'll find Bitcoin has been forked over 24,000 times. It does not give these forks any value. Infact, it encourages monetary competition of which Bitcoin is currently the most superior and dominant. There are different ways to assess superiority and dominance, you might wish to do your own research and draw your own conclusions.
Quantum computing has not been invented yet as is of no concern for the foreseeable future. However, developers are keeping up with research to build quantum computing resistant Bitcoin.
Mining shenanigans - I'm not sure what you specifically mean, but miners will do what is in their best economic interests or face getting wrecked, which is why I suspect miners have decided to switch back to Bitcoin in favour of other shitcoins. Other coins are capitulating, electricity is burning and they are not making profit out of it, so you see an increase in mining Bitcoin.
If you want to find out more about Bitcoin, I recommend the following books:
The Little Bitcoin Book
Inventing Bitcoin by Yan Pritzker
The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous
Grokking Bitcoin by Kalle Rosenbaum
Free material to get you going
https://medium.com/
@WIZ/why-bitcoin-359ada12629e
https://21lessons.com/
https://www.lopp.net/bitcoin-information.html
I hope this helps.
Cheers,
Ketan
