Powell: “Rapid changes are taking place in the global monetary system that may affect the international role of the dollar”
(theconservativetreehouse.com)
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Riddle me this... if BTC or ETH or DOGE drops to $0.0000000 USD, does that actually mean that the coins are all "worthless" or that they have no "value"? What is "value", who determines what has "value" and how do they come to such conclusions?
You buy a house for $1,000,000. The next day, the $USD crashes to "nothing." So is your house worthless? Of course not. In fact, your mortgage is now paid off in full. It was "worth" $1,000,000 right? You owed $1,000,000 right? Well, now $USD = 0. Holds no monetary value. You could give your lender $1 and that would be more than the theoretical "value" of the house, since $USD = nothing right?
Your house still holds value as an asset. Somebody else might want it and will offer something to you for it in exchange. Maybe they'll offer you a few gold bars. Maybe they'll give you 20 BTC. Up to you to determine what you're willing to take in exchange for your property....
The USD is nothing more than monopoly money. It's no more inherently valuable than your gold bar, which is no more inherently valuable than your digital token. Trust and faith in a system is what determines accepted standards of value.
Indeed. Oil is quite valuable. Virtually the entire world runs in it... without the fuel to keep things going... after all, Americans are paying historically high prices for it these days. Yet for some reason, even tons of oil based comoanies are still getting crushed on the stock market... doesn't that seem a bit, odd?
And yet logic would dictate that when most people see the price of something rising, in this case oil, then they'd rush to buy stock in oil-centric companies as their ability to generate greater revenue due to high demand and inflated prices, would be an indicator of said company's continued success... now if the price of oil was tanking like crazy (oversupply and not enough demand), cause prices at the pump to drop, companies making less profit, then it'd make sense for investors to sell of stock at lower prices to get what they can out of it while they still can...
Not arguing that massive manipulation and conspiratorial efforts aren't taking place, they obviously are, but all of this completely destroys any notion that the "markets" follow any sense of logical investing strategies. Apparently gone are the days of people putting their money on a company simply because they believe in that company's future success and increased profits and worth, thereby increasing the value of one's stock in said company... now it's just all psychology and shenanigans
...a house is brick and mortar...
...bitcoin is pie in the sky....
Speaking of BTC... have to wonder now if that ~$17k support that was hit yesterday was its bottom... hmmm premature 🚀 🤔
...give it 10 days....
Yup. Either rocket to $30k or down to $10k. Buckle up buckaroos
BTC is one of many forms of digital currency,
The vast majority of Americans and those living in the developed world have been using digital currency (or more accurately, digital accounting notes) everyday for well over a decade, without even thinking about it.
Future of currency is already here, in fact it's been here for years... some people just very slowly waking up to this reality.
Good dogs buy the dip. Howls...
...I got out at $20,000...
...doggy winks....
Hopefully didn't get hit with the short term cap gains "tax" (theft). Great time to get back in now 🐶🐶🐶
1 BTC has always been worth 1 BTC
You're confused about a few things:
Crypto has no intrinsic value. A digital token in an extremely slow and inefficient database is fundamentally worthless. Same goes for the dollar since it went off the gold standard in 1971. Anything you can conjure out of thin air by the trillions is worthless.
Gold is different. It has value thanks to its unique combination of physical properties that make it the closest thing to a theoretically perfect money the world has ever seen. You can't print gold or change any of its properties which is why it's retained its value for at least 6000 years. Like JP Morgan said: "Money is gold, and nothing else."
Everything else has value thanks to its utility: a house you can live in, land you can farm or build on, a stock gives you a share of a company's productivity, etc.
In the short term the system works on trust but in the long term it always resets back to fundamental value which is why all fiat currencies die within about fifty years and why crypto is imploding to nothingness.
You're confused about the concept of "value" itself..
Gold and silver are pretty, but you can't eat either, can you? Tulips were also very pretty.
"But the physical properties of metals like gold and silver!" Like what? Conductor of energy? Cool. Water does that too. Most plentiful resource on earth. But gold and silver are still very pretty.
"Scarcity. Can't fake it!" Never heard of fools gold eh? If you've not watched the show The Endgame, would be worth your time. Spoiler, what about that "gold" at the FED bank? Hmmm... when's the last time you've seen our alleged gold reserves at Ft. Knox, let alone touched any for yourself? The idea of there being gold though, now we're getting somewhere... all a mindgame, all psychology my fren.
I'm not confused about anything, the concept of value is very clear.
Any object used as money requires a certain combination of properties. Any one property is not enough, it needs to have all of them. Anything that doesn't, such as crypto or paper or seashells or cattle or salt, can have temporary trust-based value but not long-lasting intrinsic value as money.
These properties include:
Rare but not too rare. You need enough for everyone but not enough to pick it off the ground or digitally conjure it out of thin air. Gold fits the bill. Mining it is expensive and hard work and that limitation is physical, not artificial like in crypto.
Easy to work with, such as smelt or smith. Gold fits the bill. Palladium, platinum, rhodium and many other similar expensive metals don't.
Fungible, every piece needs to be the same and interchangeable. Gold fits the bill based on point 3. Diamonds for example don't.
Store of value. It needs to last and not be used up, worn out or tarnished. It needs to be dense in value for easy storage and transportation. Gold can sit in ocean water for 500 years and come out looking like the day it went in. Gold can be caught in a fire and be fully recovered. A handful of gold coins buy a new car even today. Gold fits the bill like nothing else.
Easy to recognize and verify. This is where the "prettiness" and long history of gold comes in. Gold is easy to recognize and fakes are quickly spotted using simple tests. A farmer in rural India knows what gold is and knows its value while the average layperson in the US can't explain what crypto is. Gold fits the bill.
Notice how conductivity or any other industrial application is irrelevant here. In fact, based on point 4, industrial uses are a drawback for use as money as they consume the supply. Money needs to sit still and hold value and there is nothing in the world that does it as well as gold does. Can't eat gold? Can't eat dollars either but you can buy food for gold when paper money turns worthless overnight, see the Serbian civil war. There's a reason government vaults are full of gold while they're telling everyone it's a useless relic and printing paper fiat like there's no tomorrow.
Oh, and I can touch my gold any time I like.
You’re assuming people still see value in gold following the end of the paper money. You named ways it can be used and it’s durability but no reason for why it would retain value to the people. If the dollar collapses (likely the world collapses as well) so what banks will be there to hold the gold? Farmers are going to just take on massive amounts of gold for their food? They can’t turn it into anything so they will just keep massive reserves? We’ve seen currencies collapse before, how much golf was traded by the people during those times?
"not long-lasting intrinsic value as money."
All of the materials you listed in the preceding sentence were used or are still being used, as money (or currency). "Money" is merely a physical medium with perceived value used to conduct transactions. What you should have said was, some materials are better suited to be used as money than other materials, because that's what you continue on to argue.
The 5 properties you listed are all reasonable attributes that some would expect to look for to trust that material as a form of currency. However, some of your assertions and assumptions are not exactly on par. First, you assume that "gold" is rare. Is it? Humans keep finding it, despite all these years of mining. If you truly wanted to keep it rare and stop the value from fluctuating, mining should cease, or be banned, right? You think that mining crypto is easy and cheap? You must really not understand much about the crypto mining process. Easy to work with? Crypto doesn't even require smelting or smithing, making it far easier to "work with" than physical metals (might want to rethink this property as being a good attribute). Fungible? Quite in the contrary... sound money should be non-fungible, as in, not easy to reproduce or alter its nature, or copy (counterfeit). You should really do some more research on blockchain technology. Actually, not even going to hit on the last two pounts, as it's evident you don't understand much about digital currency (or "crypto"). Just here peddling... https://youtu.be/sr0gNJ090JA
"There's a reason government vaults are full of gold..."
They are? How do you know? You seen it? Touched it? Bit into it? You just THINK it's there. You BELIEVE it's there.
https://youtu.be/DZqy4RdfGDE
"printing paper fiat like there's no tomorrow"
Yes. This is a massive problem and the ultimate cause behind inflation... hits on that issue of fungibleness and reproducibility.
"Oh, and I can touch my gold any time I like"
And I can touch my dick any time I like... doesn't mean that anyone else is also going to want to touch it as a means of transaction for goods and services 😜
You're still missing the point of this entire thought exercise. What is money, actually? It's what people collectively decide it is. If 70% of the world woke up tomorrow and decided that our ancestors were idiots for using shiny metal objects as currency, just like using seashells, beans, sticks or tulips were eventually declared stupid forms of currency, then what of your gold and silver? The point is that there's something far, far more essential when it comes to currency than the physical nature or attributes of the proposed material.
Regardless of the physical object, the value of all money, all currency, is dependent on psychology. The mere idea behind crypto is currently up-ending the long established accepted views towards currency, financial institutions and monetary policies. And that's why it poses such a threat to those in control of it all, and who have been for the all of history. Don't take this as financial advice. You clearly love your metals because "they've always been used". Not saying that's not a good reason to trust metals. But it's not a great reason to doubt digital currency, which has already taken over the developed world for the past 10-15 years. "Crypto" or rather the blockchain tech behind it, is just an essential security upgrade in the evolution of digital currency. It's not going to be stopped.
"Cool. Water does that too."
You're confused... water does not conduct electricity... the impurities in water do.
"Gold" in that context could be interpreted as "dirt" or "goods" as in, "we have the dirt" or "we have the goods".... the TRUTH about the FED is what destroys the FED.
...there is one property of silver no one knows about or talks about and that is it's isotopes 105 and 107 and they are unique in the science of elements and will play a huge role in the future of woo