Well, it is.
And that is the issue you are going to face. Money to many on FR are the silver coins you used as a kid.
Silver is a regular commodity not—not valued as a precious metal, except in name only, it goes up and down based on the need to make computers and solar panels.
No one bases their “money” on gold any more. If we tried to go back on a gold standard the price of everything would skyrocket overnight.
Value is based on what the Fed thinks it is—depreciating the dollar an average of 2% per year. And that means you need to MAKE 2% more a year in order to maintain your standard of living. And...to keep the government solvent.
The full faith of the government used to mean something. Not so much any more. The ability to tax is strained. The ability to inflict our military will is certainly stymied (not the power—the will.)
People around the world do not have a stable currency. The manner in which the US has set standards for sanctions and penalties is creating a de-dollarization around the world. The issue is that there is nothing with which to replace it. This is where tokens and crypto come into play.
In the world of cryptos there is a world wide playing field. Values are determined between everyone playing. They are not controlled by governments or banks. They are not inflatable. They are fast. They are public. They are immutable and secure. The thefts you hear about are at the “banks”, not the systems.
No, they are not ready for prime time. Yet. But you better start being aware of them and understanding how they work in our “systems” because they are coming.
I recently spoke with a college classmate of mine. He works for a very large trust company. A few weeks ago he told me that every person working in his division was told they had to go our and open a bitcoin account to learn how it worked.
Do you think this 200 year old investment bank is instructing its high net worth managers to run out and do this because its a “fad?”
These are the little whispers one hears at the fringes that tells you that people who pay attention to this stuff are taking it seriously.
What I mean by that, it might be a currency, but it isn’t money.
Interestingly I tried to buy Bitcoin, when it was .03 or .003 per (something like that) but I couldn’t figure out how to do it. I had a hunch that it would probably spike very high, and could be lucrative. I should have tried harder. I was prepared to sink $2000 to $2500, you know, enough to make a significant gamble, though not enough to worry about if lost.
If the dollar were linked to gold it wouldn’t make the price of everything go up, though gold itself would be revalued upward quite a lot. Too bad about those folks with gold fillings in their teeth.