You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more
Aztecs took gold tribute from their subject tribes. Spanish conquistadors looted the Aztecs. Sir Francis Drake looted Spanish galleons. Seizing gold vaults was a universal war objective. Many politicians have controlled monetary systems by controlling gold. Now we can do better.pic.twitter.com/pg33pZLJCK
Probably the biggest flaw with the monetary metals (gold, sil er, and copper) is that they are costly to assay/validate. This led making people vulnerable to (i.e. requiring them to trust) centralized entities such as coin minters and bank note issuers, said trust often abused.
Some of the same craft skills & tech that gave us the industrial revolution also made it much easier to counterfeit coins. As fake coins spread, use of bank notes grew. Here's a fake silver dollar made in Birmingham via a technique invented in Sheffield. https://www.coincommunity.com/articles/swamperbob_8_reales_birmingham_counterfeit.asp …pic.twitter.com/Qbx7heTq2p
Bank notes further increased trust, i.e. vulnerability. to the actions of third parties. Gold came to be held in centralized vaults, and IOUs for much more than the gold actually held were issued -- fractional reserve banking (FRB).https://twitter.com/bitstein/status/1145438009636085760 …
Governments helped set up the largest banks, which printed even more bank notes and used them to buy government debt. These banks became (Bank of England) or were set up as (Federal Reserve) note-issuing monopolies, which we now call central banks.
Eventually default turned these gold IOU paper notes into fiat. BofE started refusing to honor its notes in 1931. The Fed reduced the amount of gold it would redeem a dollar for in 1933, restricted gold trade by targeting the centralized bank vaults, and went full fiat in 1971.
Here's an example showing how, despite authority resemblance
https://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2016/07/artifacts-of-wealth-patterns-in_15.html …
the fundamental nature of U.S. dollars radically changed over the course of the 20th century. They look very similar, but the kind of money they represent is radically different.
ht @jp_koningpic.twitter.com/JF7KifIcXJ
I agree that an indiscernible gold ingot can be more difficult to irrefutably test than bitcoin (performing a water displacement test is not costly & accurate in most situations.). Realistically though, almost all buyers of gold or bitcoin rely on centralised entities.
You exaggerate. I and many other Bitcoin users validate for ourselves. It's quite easy.
Just compare the cost and steps involved to validate, secure and transport bitcoin vs metals. The benefits and cost savings when using bitcoin is enormous. Even the most bullish gold bug knows this but they might not say it publicly of course.
I don't believe it's that simple. I can independently transport (on my person) & transact a high value quantity of gold. @roysebag makes the argument (rightfully) that bitcoin requires substantial infrastructure to do the same.https://twitter.com/josephskewes/status/1132093163114356738 …
The idea that assaying or "validating" pure gold is a difficult task is imho a myth. The whole reason gold as an element ascended as money is due our ability as humans to employ kinesthetic, taste, smell (gold has no taste or smell) sense perceptions to validate it vs. others.
Holding gold in your hand, burning it with a lighter, biting into it, smelling it, tasting it with your tongue, exposing it to water, etc. are all very easy ways to decentrally and self-evidently verify it to be unique to everything else. X-Ray, chemical assays, are also cheap.
Cheap, easy, reliable: pick one. Far short of being good enough for typical retail transactions. Why coins were invented millennia ago. With modern spectroscopy could do better, but would have to redesign form factor of jewelry to be suitable for random sampling & quick spectro.
You exclude gold because it’s density makes it far much easier to validate than those other metals, right? In in case, IMO your concept of “global settlement” is essential. I would say when money is a present good you directly control, then it is trustless.
Gold is also costly to validate. Measuring its density was too inconvient for retail transactions and is spoofable.with certain alloys of cheaper metals.
This combined with commerce expanding geographically leads to a gradual centralization of the monetary base. Fiat would be less likely to happen if that were not the case.
For minted coins you have weight spoons. If the coin fits correctly within the spoon and leans towards gold, then it is not fake. Stuffed tungsten coins might sneak in, but their sound would be very different.
But these contraptions don’t work so well for 400 oz bars :)
True. That’s why I was being specific about minted coins (widely known and used).
I wonder what fraction of gold stock is in an easily verifiable form? I have a plastic gold balance/volume measuring device marked for ½ a dozen coins.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.
