Bitcoin Forum

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/23/ron-paul-slams-stability-of-u-s-dollar-and-bitcoin-in-pro-gold-rant/

...With regards to the collapse of the Internet currency venture Bitcoin, Paul said he wasn’t interested.

“To tell you the truth, it’s little bit too complicated,” he said. “If I can’t put it in my pocket, I have some reservations about that. But it has been designed in the free market. If it is a means of exchange, it would not ever be illegal. You shouldn’t regulate it in the free market, but I do not think it fits the definition of money, which has been around for 6,000 years.”

Yeah, sadly, like many of the Mises old guard, he just can't wrap his head around a "hard" currency that you can't put in your pocket.

Disclaimer: I will always fucking hate touchscreen and when I can afford to I will buy a proper phone with buttons on it that do stuff when you press them, sometimes it's better to just leave us old guys alone with what we're comfortable with :P

I think Ron is smarter than that but playing a role here. He knows very well that if Bitcoin keeps rising, we're going to take his gold away from him someday.

He's playing dumb to scare off those that might listen him from Bitcoin.

He may also be trying to do the right thing. 

I'd like to think so. But Ron is heavily invested in gold mining so he has an interest in getting people to like gold.

Ah - did not know that.

I discovered rather late into the last Ron Paul campaign. I stopped supporting him because it made me realize that he's as blinded as any other member of the political class by his own investments.

I also found it a little shady that he was stumping for public policies on gold so hard while in office and while invested in gold concerns.

To be fair, that's a silver round he's holding up, not a gold one:

Ron didn't issue "The Case for Silver". ; )

Yeah, sadly, like many of the Mises old guard, he just can't wrap his head around a "hard" currency that you can't put in your pocket.

"Ron my good friend, it's like this.  You know how the calculator's been made an app on your phone?"

"Sure."

"You know how the typewriter's been made an app called a word processor?"

"Everyone knows that.  Get to the point.  We're talking about mon-"

"Okay, well, money's been made an app on the phone in your pocket.  And they can't inflate or print more of this kind of money."
"Oh, you mean that bitcoin thing.  I tried to run that, but it was always updating and never finished.  Of course my pockets are full of American Eagles, and so the phone doesn't get very good reception in my pockets."

"You buried your phone in gold?"

Ron Paul is correct it is not money.  Bitcoin is no different than a pokemon card.  But unlike a pokemon card they are each identical (there is no Charizard).  The only reason bitcoin has value is people give it value.  If it drops to $1 a certain type of person will buy more.  If people use it in a transaction, many will keep a couple coins for later purchases.  These coins are collectibles, as are pokemon cards.

Bitcoin as a collectible give it value.  Once it has any value, it can be traded as a currency.  Everyday bitcoin usually strengthens as a collectible.

To me it just looks like simple ignorance. I don't suspect malice.

Dude is old, probably not very computer savvy, and I doubt he even has much time to wipe his own behind with as busy as he is. Much less spend a chunk of the remainder of his time left looking into some new-fangled cryptogizmo on a computer that he hardly knows how to send emails on. Temporal preference; gold is his weapon of choice. He's familiar with it and he knows how it works. He stands to gain little (supposedly) from paying attention to Bitcoin.

Ron Paul is correct it is not money.  Bitcoin is no different than a pokemon card.  But unlike a pokemon card they are each identical (there is no Charizard).  The only reason bitcoin has value is people give it value.  If it drops to $1 a certain type of person will buy more.  If people use it in a transaction, many will keep a couple coins for later purchases.  These coins are collectibles, as are pokemon cards.

Bitcoin as a collectible give it value.  Once it has any value, it can be traded as a currency.  Everyday bitcoin usually strengthens as a collectible.

Ron Paul is correct it is not money.  Bitcoin is no different than a pokemon card.  But unlike a pokemon card they are each identical (there is no Charizard).  The only reason bitcoin has value is people give it value.  If it drops to $1 a certain type of person will buy more.  If people use it in a transaction, many will keep a couple coins for later purchases.  These coins are collectibles, as are pokemon cards.

Bitcoin as a collectible give it value.  Once it has any value, it can be traded as a currency.  Everyday bitcoin usually strengthens as a collectible.

But I seek the Great Bitcoin, and possibly the Greatest Bitcoin the Most Holy.

The one that is the sum of two prime numbers, each of which is the sum of two cubes.

O Greatest of Mysteries!

What is your value?

<<< Yes I just made this up and yes it's a joke and yes you can take it seriously and hey, dude, like, the chase is on now, and let the rumor fly, that it may be found, and great treasure awaits>>>

Pythagoras didn't want his followers repeating transcendental numbers in public. He held numbers in extremely high regard. He believed they ruled the world.

"This process: the cumulative development of a medium of exchange on the free market - is the only way money can become established.
Money cannot originate in any other way, neither by everyone suddenly deciding to create money out of useless material, nor by government calling bits of paper "money".
For embedded in the demand for money is knowledge of the money-prices of the immediate past;
in contrast to directly-used consumers`or producers`goods, money must have pre-existing prices on which to ground a demand.
But the only way this can happen is by beginning with a useful commodity under barter, and then adding demand for a medium for exchange to the previous demand for direct use (e.g., for ornaments, in the case of gold).
Thus, government is powerless to create money for the economy; it can only be developed by the processes of the free market.

A most important truth about money now emerges from our discussion:
money is a commodity. Learning this simple lesson is one of the world`s most important tasks.
So often have people talked about money as something much more or less than this.
Money is not an abstract unit of account, divoceable from a concrete good; it is not a useless token only good for exchanging; it is not a "claim on society"; it is not a guarantee of a fixed price level.
It is simply a commodity. It differs from other commodities in being demanded mainly as a a medium of exchange.
But aside from this, it is a commodity - and, like all commodities, it has an existing stock, it faces demands by people to buy and hold it, etc.
Like all commodities, its "price" - in terms of other goods - is determined by the interaction of its total supply, or stock, and the total demand by people to buy and hold it.
(People "buy" money by selling their goods and sevices for it, just as they "sell" money when they buy goods and services.)