As energy has a usefulness and intrinsic value that even gold lacks. It could be traded anonymously like cash like batteries as dollars or as energy storage and quick and efficient transfers becomes smaller and more convenient. Im thinking specifically electrical energy with batteries and capacitors but even gas could be used.
It could be created by individuals with solar panels or bike mounted generators. It could be stored as potential energy in large amounts as heat or pressure and then converted back to electrical energy when needed. It could be networked for large transfers. There could even be large banks that hold energy as a business, but they would not be able to lend more than they hold. Private individual energy storage would be the most secure from government or other seizure obviously.
Wheres the flaw?
That's more or less what Bitcoin is to be honest.
Bitcoin can be seized and cant be traded anonymously though, right?
Yes and no. Reread the fed seizing gold from the American people.
The bulk stolen was stored in safety deposit boxes in banks. Keeping your crypto in an exchange, the exchange can get robbed. Keeping it in a hard device, your device can get stolen.
Hacking a password is as simple as torturing someone for a password or pin.
It can't be seized unless it's on an exchange or if they confiscate your pass phrase for your cold storage wallet.
Sure it can be tracked by the wallet addresses, but because anyone can create a wallet address it's highly impractical to track it. Plus, there are ways to anonymize bitcoin transactions.
Ok thats cool, i dont understand bitcoin completely yet.
I do have an issue with the lack of intrinsic value still though. If shtf youre holding 1’s and 0’s instead of something you can do something with.
The only way Bitcoin becomes 'useless' is if the entire world's internet infrastructure is permanently destroyed. At that rate you might as well go Amish, which I guarantee 99% of people on here are not prepared for.
holding/storing energy is not trivial, especially in bulk.
batteries are environmentally expensive.
and if everybody was doing it, you would never make enough to buy your food.
Im not sure I understand this. The free market would still exist, the farmer would trade the food for energy, and he couldnt charge a kWh that nobody could afford.
There is no infrastructure to store energy in a meaningful format. What is one batteries worth of energy worth? It takes about one minute for a single solar panel to charge a AA sized battery for example. How many AA's can you carry around in your pocket?
While I don't disagree that it may be possible at some point in the future for energy to be a viable medium of exchange, we are no where near that capacity at this time.
Ok so AAs could be coins in this system and car batteries could be bills.
If we get to a point where something the size of a couple AAs could pay for groceries for the week, we will have arrived, right?
It takes ONE MINUTE for a solar panel to charge a AA battery. That is a SINGLE solar panel. That solar panel costs about a hundred dollars or so in initial investment and lasts 20-30 years. We would need for AA's to be about a million times more energy dense to be viable as a storage medium. And that assumes that people would need energy as we currently do. If energy was currency, then everyone would be mining it. If everyone is mining something, and the technology for that mining gets better and better all the time (as these things do) how many people will need more?
Now were talking about a world where energy is abundant for the consumer. Energy is used for a lot of necessities and fun things. I think as it becomes more plentiful and cheaper, well be able to drive faster or power flying cars or do other things easier. It could still be currency but we could choose to spend our currency being warmer in the winter or cooler in the summer.
It's not a question of whether or not it can have intrinsic value. It can and does. The question is, can gathering and storage infrastructure and technology fall behind our requirements for it sufficiently that it can be traded in a meaningful way. We currently trade it at a 20 cents per kilowatt hour or so on average. That price will only go down as we leave behind the corporate chains that have hold on it.
Cold Fusion technology has existed for over two decades in an experimental (but usable) format. It has been suppressed by the PTB because to release it to the masses would destroy the corporate stranglehold on energy. That is not the only possible hidden energy tech, just the only one I can say for sure exists.
Cold Fusion allows for all of our current energy requirements to be met for a couple dollars worth of fuel a year. That includes us using it for "flying cars" and whatever else you want. If energy is that cheap, how can it be used as a currency unless we find a need for many orders of magnitude more energy per capita (everyone has their own personal wormhole generator for example).
You went to public school and didn't educate yourself off the clock.
Not really a flaw at all.
The US petrodollar has been a pseudo energy backed currency for the last 50 years. Bitcoin is also an example of a currency that is predicated on needing energy to establish its value.
The only issue, which you glossed over, is storage of energy. That is difficult and expensive. This is why it has only ever indirectly backed a currency. Gold is a better asset backing than energy, because it is more easily stored, divided and transported.
But as the 2 examples above illustrate, energy can be successfully made the basis of value.
The "petrodollar" as energy backed currency is a myth. Our dollars are not backed by petroleum stores. This is what investopedia says about the petrodollar:
The dollars we use are not petrodollars. The petrodollar is an accounting term. It is, in a way, a measure of how much of our inflation we export to other countries to keep us afloat as our dollar printing press's go BRRRR. What it is not, is a "energy backed dollar."
Bitcoin doesn't store energy, it requires it. It carries no intrinsic energy value whatsoever.
No they do not. However, I agree it is, at least in principle possible, if we had better tech to store and exchange energy. The above two are not examples of it however.
Once you have bitcoin though, it doesnt have any intrinsic value. It has value because more than one person says it has value.
I did mention storage and the tech is getting better all the time. Batteries in their current form are more like dollar bills. You wouldnt want to carry more than 20 on you at a time. But new battery technology for walking around cash or just other forms of potential energy could be used, either chemical, something similar to a water tower for long term storage.
A very important property of money you are missing. It never has intrinsic value. It is an accounting mechanism. That is all. The salient point is what governs and restricts that accounting mechanism. It always has value only because 2 parties accept that it represents value.
Barter, on the other hand, is the exchange of intrinsic valued things that people need for daily function.
But energy is very hard to barter directly, because it can not be easily transported. Even if stored in batteries or hydro (with terrible efficiency losses mind you), you can not easily move it from one place to another. Oil is probably the best energy storage mechanism that can be easily transported, and thus, bartered.
Im thinking small scale to start with until tech catches up. Start with farmers markets and garage sales or places where bartering might already be happening. Large purchases like a car or house would be difficult currently and maybe more easily done with oil.
The point is, the energy in your battery (and the battery itself) in your pocket does have value and is currently transportable. If i anticipate tech to get better and energy density, storage efficiency, and transfer efficiency to all improve. This could be a way to get away from fiat currency and have something that wouldnt be vulnerable to market crashes.
Am an Engineering student.
Energy as an intrinsic currency would be a really bad and dangerous idea. Energy @ 1kilo watt hour is about .20$ A phone battery has about 10 watt hour (about 1/5 cents) Ever seen a phone explode? That mess. In your pocket. And its a fifth of a cent's worth. Walking around with 20$ would be the same as walking with a bomb
I beleive energy currency (like physical batterys not cable network), is either worthless .002$ or suicidal.
Haha good point.
yes, but you would have to extent the outlaw on free energy technology to keep your economy going
What free energy tech? First to develop it would be rich, right? Win-win?
First to develop it would get rich, attempt to create control, and would employ murderous efforts to keep the 2nd from developing it. War would ensue, the technology would be leaked, more would develop it, and you'd be back to gold in no time.
Are we afraid they would flood the market with energy, making driving, heating, and growing your own food super cheap?
The fact that someone could use free energy to gain power has no relevance to energy as currency the way I see it because free energy could be sold for other currencies right now. The difference would be that you could walk around with something in your pocket with value that anyone of us could use without government control.
the point is that it's a dumb idea and it won't work. You can't "sell" free energy. You can sell machinery to transmit free energy, but you can't meter free energy. There's no monopoly to be had. Thus no one who controls the previous monetary monopoly would allow this technology to develop.
That's why JP Morgan pulled his funds from Wardencliff Tower. That's why we have the petrodollar to this day, and we we're not flying through the air using free energy.
Check out some of the history regarding this stuff, none of it's new.
Unfortunately human nature has a very large say in what happens on this planet.
I dont exactly know what youre saying. You can sell solar panel energy and turbine energy and oil energy.
Are you saying small scale free energy? Like a little box that produces electrical energy to power your home and car?
Free energy has been developed. The inventors are dead now. Most murdered who didnt take the hush money.
There's already crypto currencies like energy web that are trying to do just that. They already have partnerships with power plant operators, and integration into EV charging stations. The token can track what type of energy was produced, and where it came from. It turns energy into a tradeable asset. The downside is that it's being pushed by the WEF, IMF, and has grants from Google. It is definitely the future if "they" get their way.
Thats cool. Im hoping though for something you could hold in your hand like a battery, use to buy stuff at the farmers market or power a heater to keep your feet warm.
Money has three characteristics.
fungible; do you care if you get this 5$ bill or that 5$ bill? Do you can if you get this 25 cent silver coin or that 25 cent silver coin? If the answer is no then you have fungibility. This is why gem stones are not money. There is potentially a big difference between this diamond and that diamond even if they are both the same size.
easily subdivisible to facilitate commercial transactions. Fiat does this well. So did real money based on silver and gold. Coins of different denominations were issued and paper promissory notes facilitated larger transactions.
store of value. This is why iron is not a monetary metal but gold, silver, copper and nickel are. Iron rusts. The monetary metals fo not. You can put a gold coin in the ground and come back in 100 years. If you put 1 oz in the ground, you will take out 1 oz.
Energy does not store well. If you have. Barrel of oil and the barrel springs a leak, what do you have left?
Electricity? How do you propose to store it? A battery will have a loss over time, that breaks the basic definition of money.
Are you thinking of using calories as your unit of measure? If so, is 100 calories of oil equal to 100 calories of electricity which is equal to 100 calories in coal?
Can you carry MY ""ENERGY"" around in your Pocket???
YES??
NO??
Yeah like a battery or cell phone charger.
No, like the Energy I expend while Working.....
Where can we ""Collect"" that??
Like a generator connected to a bicycle?
Hahaha, yeah, something like that, but more like a Human connected to something that collects Human Energy.....
So, Matrix? Haha
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.....
Pocket full of batteries to pay for bread.
Or you are talking about starting your own power plant.
These storage devices you talk about are honestly huge capacitors. Very... Very expensive.
If we tap into the magnetic field we live in to operate our electronics, the energy storage model you propose would be moot.
There seems to be a Tesla tower in Arizona, if it is then where are the others? It needs about 8 of these around the world to give us free energy forever.
All we will have to do is drive a metal rod about 3 feet into the earth and harvest the earths electrical power.