Gold is a physical asset. It will go up and down through the years but will always be worth something, just wait a few more years when it is down and you know it will come back up. BTC could easily go to nothing overnight.
Just a question, how many people have actually cashed out BTC and gotten rich? If I tried to cash out 1 million of BTC today could I do it and get cash money for it?
I find it a kind of warped mindset when people talk about "cashing out of BTC". To me it shows that they don't quite yet "get it".
It reminds be about one of my banker friends who was a former CEO of one of Australia's largest banks. He once told me, among his many tales as a young banker starting out, how he was charged with setting up the first branch of the bank in a country near Australia called "Papua New Guinea".
He told me that in the early days, the local housewives (very privative local basically savage tribes), would all come on a Friday to "take their money out" (to make sure it was really still there) and then redeposit it back on the Monday when the bank opened again after the weekend.
Its a very primitive way of thinking, but understandable at the same time. Monkeys and dogs also have similar concerns and hesitations when learning new concepts. Caution has been a desirable human trait in terms of our survival. But an even more important trait that has been key to human success and evolution, both as a group and as individuals, has been open-mindedness and curiosity (as opposed to obstinate pig-headedness of the kind demonstrated by Mr Anabolic throughout this thread, which is more akin to a goat repeatedly bashing its head against a tree).
Put in very simplistic, terms it is far far easier to "cash out" of BTC, that it is for gold. Or to use it to purchase it for anything. Or to transfer it to anywhere in the world. Or to instantly break in down into any denomination. But either why, you really need to be twisting your logic on its head and start looking at how to "cash out" of cash, which you know with certainty and can see before your very eyes, is devaluing due to money printing. It defies logic to hold cash of any significant amount in these circumstances. And to believe doing so is "safe" boarders on being dilutional and irrational lunacy if you think about it.
The more important question to ask is what is the safest thing to do with wealth currently denominated in cash. In my view the answer (at a high level) is a mix of stocks (or businesses that you own and operate outright), property, gold, and Bitcoin.
What people are doing is "cashing out" of fake money. And cashing into a hard asset. Which is BTC. (As for what proportions allocation, and the pros and cons of each class, that is a more personal question. But you can be very sure that as BTC is a new asset class, its % overall in portfolios will be increasing over time, compared to the others).
But yes, in summary you could use BTC to buy fiat currency at an instant. Over 1 Billion USD value of BTC trade daily, and that volume is only increasing.
