Posted on 12/25/2023 7:34:17 AM PST by Theoria
Ahhh . . . And here I was thinking that crypto gatherings were more in the nature of tent revivals, with fire and brimstone directed at nonbelievers, and fresh lemonade the beverage of choice.
I never said more. They both lack all intrinsic value. So equal. Zero. You’d understand a lot better if you actually bothered to READ what I wrote instead of making up your own version of the content.
Not really. For casual out of pocket gold coins are freaking useless. The market value is too high, nobody can “make change” for $2000 and ounce gold. Crypto on the other hand is available via phone app. You can hook your GooglePay or whatever up to your crypto wallet and tap and pay. Now admittedly that’s gonna be someplace with modern tech. But non-modern places will have all the same problems with gold coins as modern, as well as not having tap and pay system. Once you get away from modern tech you’ll learn quickly how little use all of forms of money. Because they’re not connected to the all those convenient lies, they tend to only want things with intrinsic value. Jimmy Buffet used to keep a box of old tour shirts in his seaplane when he was kicking around the Caribbean, in a lot of places those t-shirts were way more help than dollars.
In 2023, inflation ravaged Zimbabwe issued gold coinage and announced plans for a gold backed crypto currency. In a pinch, when the local government has destroyed the value of its currency, gold money -- and a gold-backed crypto -- beckon as a way back.
Yes places where the legal tender, that you put so much weight into, is useless paper they like gold. People will always believe one of the lies.
Meanwhile do you think any of the 250 companies that take this crypto app (there are many) https://bitpay.com/directory/ will give you change for a gold coin?
Crypto is more useful right now than gold.
The utility of crypto versus gold depends on where you are and whom you are dealing with and for what purpose. Zimbabwe’s crypto backed by and convertible into gold combines the convenience and reduced transaction costs of crypto with the fundamental value and physicality of gold. What’s not to like?
Right. Much like the utility of t-shirts vs any cash, as Jimmy Buffett proved.
But we still have the basic issue here that no form of money has intrinsic value. Zimbabwe’s problems prove you wrong when you insist legal tender is automatically wonderful, and my dismissal of it right. And the fact that you need to go to a country whose monetary supply has been best used as toilet paper for decades for you “example” of crypto convertible to gold as a good thing just shows again that you’re wrong in all the ways.
Look, it’s been fun. But you’re so full of crap you’ve actually now descended into arguing against yourself, and you don’t even realize. Bye bye, see ya on some other thread.
Again, you evade my point, that crypto backed by gold or other hard assets is better than crypto backed by nothing.
I’ve never understood why bit-coin mining is a thing. They’re paying someone for doing something totally non-productive. And it doesn’t cost the guy paying them a single penny.
Again you ignore reality. I most of the settled world I can take my crypto, unbacked by anything other than the same belief that backs ALL money, into a Circle K RIGHT NOW and buy stuff with it.
But more accept crypto than gold coin.
Paper money (and a reliable banking system) solve that problem, and the paper money is backed by a gold monetary base, it helps restrain the monetary printing press and assure price stability. For many decades, the world did fairly with the US and the European powers on the gold standard, with paper money backed by gold and easily convertible into gold (and sometimes silver in the US). The Depression put an end to that due to an international gold squeeze that contracted the money supply.
The problem with crypto is that new cryptos can easily be created, which dilutes the value of all cryptos. In that respect, crypto can be like printing paper money, but with rich guys (instead of the government) having access to a printing press in the form of crypto mines.
As with paper money though, if a crypto is backed by and convertible into gold (as in Zimbabwe), it gains the benefit of gold's wide and enduring value. It also helps differentiate that crypto from competitors.
My guess is that crypto in current form will be disfavored by many governments and avoided by much of the public due to the FTX fraud and lack of effective regulation of crypto issuers and exchanges. The best case for crypto will then be a populist one in the form of a gold-backed, fully convertible crypto that resists inflation and has a well founded and transparent system of regulation.
Imagine if, say, Amazon and the top fifty US retailers and banks developed a crypto backed by and fully convertible into gold, with US government approval. If that happened, the current bitcoin type of cryptos without gold backing would swiftly decline in value and become irrelevant.
Crypto was sold as a medium of exchange. Everyone treats it as a lottery ticket.
That too. The SEC has taken action in numerous crypto cases that involve fraud and various regulatory infractions.
If I have a bag of gold coins, or even a bag of $100 bills, if the power goes out for an extended length of time, I still have the bag of ‘money’.
If I have the same value in bitcoins and the power goes out for an extended length of time, what do I have ?
Except if the power has gone out the stores can’t run their registers. So no form of money is going to accomplish much.
A second question for you knowledgeable gentlemen.
If I put $30,000 in legal tender in the bank, and later I go in and try to withdraw all or part of it (say it’s only $100), do they HAVE to give it me ?
Yes. Failure to pay depositors on demand (checking account deposits are demand deposits) is a violation of law and can lead to the bank being shut or at least the executives and board being sanctioned or removed. Notably, at many branches, you may have to wait or make prior arrangements to get $30,000 in cash, but they will gladly give you a bank draft for that amount.
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