You are, of course, correct in the abstract that money in the broadest sense can take any form. But money in modern life and commerce is characteristically fiat money backed by government and by legal tender laws. In addition, gold has such intrinsic value that it is often made into both official coinage and bullion coins. Yet even gold fluctuates in value.
In all sincerity, for your sake, please look carefully before you spend money on crypto -- or any other form of investment, for that matter. You may think that I am wrong about crypto, but can you be absolutely, one hundred per cent certain that I am wrong?
I’m neither scorning nor quivering. I’m pointing out that backing is meaningless.
All money is fiat money. And gold has no intrinsic value. That’s actually part of what made it good money for so long. It was useless, so people wouldn’t use the money to do other stuff. Something people eat, or build houses or tools with makes bad money. It has to be useless, have no intrinsic value, for people to do nothing with it but spend it.
I’ve known absolutely that anybody that thinks backing money with anything has meaning is wrong for decades. Long before anybody even started thinking about crypto. History proves it. Money has only ever been backed by one thing: people’s willingness to take it.
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 ?
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 ?