Bitcoin Forum

I'm sure this has been talked about here before, but I can't find any threads dealing with it specifically.

What would be the advantages/disadvantages of having a cryptocurrency pegged to gold rather than just floating as BTC is? something like e-gold but with the hard to track nature of bitcoin.

Who would be in charge of guaranteeing convertibility ?  Basically there would be some big safe somewhere, where people could exchange their golden bitcoins into physical gold.

This would expose the storage facility to government seizure.

You might find this interesting: https://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9493.msg136917#msg136917

Bitcoins are being pegged to the price of electricity as we speak.

Nonsense.

The reason why gold-bug fiatphobes are idiots is because they want the government to decree that one little portrait of some historical slave-owning figure or other should be redeemable for one small amount of yellow metal.

This, say the gold-bugs, is better than same government decreeing that they will accept your little slave-owner portraits as tax. ???

Bitcoin is better than all that, let it float free, gain and lose value as the economy needs. The amount of yellow metal in society is irrelevant, and should not impinge on peoples ability to setup new enterprises and invest in new industries. Liberate the purchasing power man, let it swoop and soar, don't tie it down with all that shinny yellow aristocrap.

The reason it can't be pegged is because no one can create more of either one at will.  This is also the reason that both are better than cash.

Your anti-gold rant is laughable, mostly because of the missed commonalities and false differences.  Let me illustrate.

You demostrate your misunderstanding of what gold-bugs want. Or at least the 'gold-bugs' I'm talking about are the ones that hate Nixon because he took America off the gold-standard. That bastard did a lot of crap, but the gold-standard, that's their problem with him. Jeesh. ::)

In todays world you can pay your taxes in fiat and feel free to buy whatever is out there for sale, gold, pie, silk, copper... price goes up, price goes down, knock yerself out. Why all the hate for fiat? Makes no sense really, strikes me as a waste of time. Don't like dollars? Spend em on land then, or copper, or gold. Problem with dollars at the moment isn't some cretchety Rand-enjoyer in a bunker somewhere convinced the evil communo-fascist gurn'mint is out to steal his bodily fluids, to me the major issue is the sky-rocketing commodity prices drowning out the ability to eat of people living in the 3rd world. So the yanks can't afford that extra 4x4, who gives a fuck.

Actually I take that back, the amount of homeless food-stamp dependant people in the US is sky-rocketing too, along with the struggle of all those average Egyptians or Mexicans or Indians and so on trying to feed their families on inflating rice or corn or what have you.

Just my two toshi anyway.

Something similar to this was attempted in the United States. It was called e-gold (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/e-gold).

It might still be profitable on free land, if you can find some.  There's obviously demand for such a service, and it shouldn't be too difficult.

I prefer Bitcoin, though.  Hits all my sensibilities.  Gold is a very useful element, but I prefer P2P to centralisation.

Not bodily fluids, purchasing power.

I thought they were pegged to pizzas.

If they were, pizzas would be worth about $140,000 right now.

What do you expect government wants to do with all that stolen purchasing power anyway? It's government, it's not going to buy itself piles and piles of caviar with it... the only people with any percentage in stealing anothers purchasing power are private interests, not government. I happen to be against a lot of what government does, the military-industrial-congressional complex for instance. But even there, who gets the money the government spends on missiles? People that work down at the weapons factory, and the electronics components factory, and the mines and refineries that make the stuff that make said components, and the share-holders that own the Lockheed Martin stocks, and the missile designers and programmers that go home at the end of a long hard day to read Atlas Shrugged again.

Even when government is spending on Evilness it's still just a matter of cycling the same old income around. Shopkeeper pays taxes, taxes buy bread for food-stamps, food-stamp user goes to shop, hands over food-stamp to shopkeeper. The income never really escapes into significant amounts of hookers and blow in boring old government. And even when it does, hooker invests in property, blow-dealer buys stock-options, round and round it still all goes.


Private interests can gain from stolen purchasing power or stolen political rights or economic rites, causing fire-sales of human life and cleaning up. It's why I think 'private interests' should be restrained in certain matters. Here I mention the usual names I like to mention for this sort of point... Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Lockeed Martin, Shell, Haliburton, XE and so on.

Anyway, I try here not to derail yet another thread.

Private interests don't have the power to do it, but government does.  The current model assumes that the people can and will prevent private interests from obtaining government power and using it to enrich themselves.  That doesn't seem to be working very well right now, and it will be coming to a head within my lifetime.   It is a recurring theme throughout history.  The question is, will we start the next cycle by saying "And don't do it again!", or by taking the inflationary power away entirely?  Or at least until those with a personal memory of this era are dead...

And if you really think that all spending is the same, why don't you pay your neighbor to dig some holes and then fill them in?  After all, it will just cycle the same income around.  :)

Nahh.

I liked the concept of a crypto-currency pegged to beer better. It's yellow as well but unlike gold you can actually survive on it. For a short while... :P

That's a fair point, you don't seem to be an anarcho-capitalist or anything like that.


I didn't say all spending was the same, it's not. The question is how useful is that expenditure... governments can make bad or corrupt decisions but government expenditure itself is not really a matter of taking from Peter to pay Paul, it can be an effect in the short term but in the long term aggregate demand still equals national income.

It's not about stealing purchasing power, it's about handling political power. Spending tax money on missiles is like the government shorting human life itself, sure it might profit down the line when foreign-lives in some dusty backwater are cheaper than now, but that's not really the point is it.

Anyway it's not my job to bother with politics.  ;D

justmy2toshi.

I should have known that mentioning gold would lead the thread derail.

I think the beertoken idea is a bit tongue in cheek (maybe not?) but makes some good points.

Right now it seems as if bitcoin is primarily being used as a mining opportunity (savings) and a speculation opportunity (buying selling BTCs, but not buying or selling anything else with them).

There is no reason that a cryptocurrency couldn't exist that has a value that is equal to something else (a basket of food, a barrel of oil, a massage in Bangkok) for those of us primarily interested in bitcoin as a means of facilitating pseudonymous transactions in cipherspace rather than as a speculation play. (not saying those two things are mutually exclusive)

ie; I have tried to convince 5 people to accept bitcoins at their site recently and all stated pretty much that there's no way they could do with the work of re-figuring out prices every 12 hours based on the latest 100% swing.

I know you all think this behavior will settle down but mahybe not before BTC crashes and burns b/c not enough vendors have taken it up

Well thanks to Senator Schumer, bitcoins speculative energy is about to be laced with a generous additional dose of material trade.

Might be nice to educate the newbie, by directing him to the Myths page:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Myths#Bitcoins_value_is_based_on_how_much_electricity_and_computing_power_it_takes_to_mine_them

Alright guys, you made your point.

It's a common fallacy, etc.

However, is it not true that the cost of Bitcoins is the cost of running the entire network and not just what it cost the particular miner that solved a block.

I actually don't believe the information that any cryptocurrency is pegged to gold. Its possible some cryptocurrency could be pegged to gold, but I prefer not to believe that in order to make the right decision when it comes to selling out my stakes. It takes a great deal to profit from this market and ones believe system is a necessary prerequisite for profitability.

They creating a system that could be a legit here mate. Yeah I know its a little bit complicated but there is a certain project that able to secure it. I think its name is Digital gold where actual gold weigh and pegged the price of it on digital crypto currency. Sounds weird but pegging it is actually not a trend now. Anyway if youre saying isnt true well youre wrong its happening already its just the information is to vague to believe.