Thats a normal dynamic also, inventors of a product especially a new category dont tend to be the ones making the most money.  Its the developers and those who can apply the technology to society and sell it basically, otherwise all this clever stuff is just a diamond in the dirt passed over.
Now does seem the right time for innovation to be of use even these alt coins, as we have extreme radical elements in play for global currency.   Seems one of those periods in history for change, may you live in interesting times like the Chinese say (alledgely) :p

I know Greenspan wrote an essay on the importance of the gold standard and how much damage fiat currency does.    He did of course play out all the mistakes he warned about, a theoretical genius and a guy who basically went opps when questioned in front of congress.   He said himself, he doesnt know what happened and Ben Im sure is equally clueless but no doubt a clever guy on paper ironically

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Dj9v9s9buk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NJnL10vZ1Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Dj9v9s9buk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tgy47vTNfk

I dont think they do love gold, those guys are buried and gone.   Who in living history really relied on gold for their job security.    Ben Bernanke isnt faking about this, fort knox is about important as a museum full of bones to him and to be fair I can see why he'd think that.    Gold is a relic, you go see how the world used to work and its covered in dust and quite boring and now we have technology and hauling some heavy metal is antiquated, archaic and if nothing else, insignificant.   The knox gold doesnt have enough worth to do anything much, he is correct right this moment to think it makes no difference.   The price of gold would need to go up alot to actually counter all the new money produced.

The swiss used to be on 20% backing and are now at 10% after tracking the Euro with a fixed rate.   USA however must be a complete joke now, I dont think its near even 1%.  Its probably about the same as silver coins, dollar was silver and now its copper so all those guys that used to lean on that solid value exchange have been gone a while I think.
   Nobody thinks like that, till you get a total exchange of everybody in government out of their jobs and a whole new education and paradigm I dont think it'll change what or how they use knox.   More likely to me is they dump out that useless gold for some low price, like rubbish out of a wheel barrow to make way for something far superior and less cumbersome in their view.  Its just a weight on their back


Banks lease gold and maybe Germany has to wait six years to receive delivery because it must be bought before it can be shipped or for the leases to expire naturally.    All banks lend out their deposits so I guess thats normal though Im sure Germany itself should have been doing this, Im not sure its that closely controlled when abroad.
Probably the biggest interest in keeping gold price low is the biggest buyer of gold which would be China.  As they had no gold under communism and is a large percentage of the world, they must now come upto speed in a short time or this appears to be their actions quietly done.   Rickards says they have got 3000 tons in the last decade by his estimates which is alot of transfer.
I think its more because we are excluding that China also buys gold mines, many of which will not operate with a high oil price and a lower gold price but are worth alot more if any government were to switch to solid exchange instead of debt; gold being alot more compact and worth exchanging of course.

GLD has sold alot of gold, the fund is smaller now.  If it was bought on the market or cashed out directly Im not sure but that is transfer also.   That appears as a lower price, lower value to the market but like a delisted company share it doesnt mean the company is worth less just less well known and the market is less accurate when its not reported, of course gold has no revenue really visible to estimate worth on.  Bitcoin worth and volume has alledgely dropped to 2012 levels I read recently, if use dictates value that is.  With gold, its tricky as you say the deeds of ownership are not always reported publicly.  China recently denied any new ownership of gold in the last few years

Gold is locked up but transfer must occur, I think of it like an ice age.  Water is largely frozen but must liquidate to transfer, so there are changes ahead

Gold is too bulky to transact in small amounts and you never pay a shop like that for anything small.   Gold is used to pay though, in Vietnam they buy houses with bars as the price in fiat would change so much they'd never agree in time.

Its like that tale in Germany, they sold all they had for cash but by the time they got to the ferry the cash had dropped in value and tickets costs too much.
  So gold could be useful or will be even for that and bitcoin even if you do not like or respect it is fast and easy to carry so they pay instantly for the tickets which arguably makes BTC superior to gold for even local transactions



Even more realistic is fort knox being liquated.   Im never that interested in wild theories but just set this out on a scale, we got 17 trillion of debt and we got a country which imports most of its good even many normal essentials (bundy ranch was a good example of over-regulation throttling business ironically to the point of extinction) so what will they do in desperate times after acting so badly now
Politicians arent known for their steely nerves and strong backbone, seems obvious to me they will dump fort knox reseves if or when prices rises dramatically as a collapsing dollar occurs.

That might half the gold price.   I'm still waiting for half of 2011 peak to occur now and then I can safely be bullish on gold again as no doubt the sheep will bleat about how it never keeps its value  

HKD would be an interesting one as China is building up gold reserves and surely HKD will gain when China stops fixing to dollars.   But you are trusting their government to do anything but favour themselves.
Their holdings of trillions in US debt will cause them problems and its most likely the currency suffers for that


No their interests are with politics not keeping currency worth.    They would devalue and make currency holders pay to service centralised debt.    If you want to go Euro then hold Swiss francs as you can at least hope one day that country releases the tether they hold over Euro before it goes over a cliff and so your losses are limited.  Swiss hold about 10% of worth in gold backing and they were the last gold backed national currency to operate up until 2000


The one I'd choose if I had large amounts (spare) in a currency  I had no debts in, it would be Australian dollars.     Its a large country with many resources, not that many people and they have an interest in maintaining a link to commodity industry.   They are more aligned to Asia and actual production not so much politics and old western dominance now based on consumerism.    Also its a national bank which operates a national mint and even their own gold mine, they are far more likely to link or respect gold exchange long term when its a part of the countries national production already.
Especially if that industry rose as dollar fell, its likely to benefit even fiat investors in that country

Did the banks not go broke or was it really the government and they took private peoples money ?  
Seems like another good reason to keep large amounts of capital yourself or outside the country like the Perth mint deposit scheme.   However an operating business has no choice but to run a balance at the bank so didnt this cause lots of business to fail ?#

Yep Ive spent my whole life knowing thats the case unfortunately any success in life is hunted by failure, constant vigilance is needed as they say

It should exceed the old value, its been improved since and there is the same number of coins so theres no great why not.  If its audience and usage expands then it'll rise in price.
 The question should be how well does it compete with alternatives but I believe its cheap, fast and easy to use so I think its a fair prospect

How do I buy the silver from them ?   Its not a backing as such I guess, they are offering to sell.  Main problem is usually postage and customs.    I'd change my mind if the Perth mint allowed depositbullion to be purchased in bitcoin and then it would be useful to be.  One day I could go collect it even, ruling out delivery problems

If microsoft or similar can borrow money for five years at 1% it will encourage speculation by them.   Quite sensibly they buy their own shares as this in turn reduces the dividend payable on those shares, sensible refinancing almost.   The idea is they can invest this cheap money for more employment (trickle down is still the hope), in effect they will speculate more and employ outside of rising government cost

Government is altering the bias of business.   They do fix interest rates.   They employ laws to enforce their actions and they do encourage speculation.  In a free market we have elements that would normally short sell bad prices.  The western fiscal economic model is not a free market and it does encourage speculation by fixing cost of money, when 50% of GDP is government this is fair to say QE has eclipsed business and monetary flow in a normal capitalist system.
 QE is a monopoly, a kings charter gifted to a modern day apprentice on the governments wishes



How many institutions can issue federal reserve notes.     It doesn't even qualify as capitalism anymore really.
Too few hands carrying too much power is a problem, its why we have democracy and its why we should have capitalism and the problem is we dont and its causing continual failures to occur that could be stopped if people had the power that government has taken from them.  

 We have centralised capital control.  Capitalism is far closer to peer to peer where each unit is fungible against all others equally.  When the Fed issues QE at their own agenda and timetable they are determining monatary worth and who will receive that benefit of the newly produced money.  Im not calling a conspiracy, they do put that worth into government which in theory passes it onto the people but it is still not capitalism and QE will encourage speculation and unfairly benefit the largest dealers in QE assets which is government debt mostly and also housing debt.
  This is not a free market, prices of the largest units of currency are enforced by laws and please dont kid yourself that people at the FED are not politically biased.  They are not on puppet strings but they are not able to somehow dodge human mistakes we all carry which will have biased them to their origins which is government.

   Timothy Geithner, Obama and Ben B have between them 1 years experience in privately funded businesses and they are not going to bring you anything but what made them successful which is politics, I expect Yellen, etc are similar

Seems about right, but I still think it should just be renamed and continue that way.  It cant be stopped but suppressed and obstructed I think so and why make things any more difficult.     To make a true zombie comeback would need some specific usage people do catch onto, its certainly possible and it'd still have a famous story in its history which could be enough to make it a cult classic.

Did anyone consider POS at this stage

There is a price already, 2.2293 btc per oz of gold

By trying to say you backed btc with gold, the scale is set to 21million per oz.    So instead of increasing the credibility of bitcoin, it now becomes like sand on a beach.    

     In a free market bitcoin must have a price/risk comparable to other assets, arbitrage makes this true of almost anything.    We cant just 'make it so' without resorting to the stupidity of communist party (or Nixon) price fixes and what that really means is less business is done.   In your case you are probably proposing that only you can give this exchange, because you undercut all other exchanges with your cheap price then business is restricted I think would be the effect.  
I think it would be so much more complicated and harder to do.   The immediate effect of every exchange offering this swap to gold would drop btc prices massively I think.  Exchange rates are not fixed without further problems

Peer to peer cryptography wont mix with gold, that value cannot be transmitted or codified

Volume of all major exchanges would be useful information to have.  Mt gox led to an inaccurate perspective so it would be best to have some average or weighting to trade done, that would help improve prediction most likely

The low interest rate but high level of regulation cost and taxation discourages actual production business and favours finance and capital speculation especially abroad.    This is self bias, government is aided by debt handled by investment banks.   If the finance fails then government itself is in far more trouble then it suffers from other avenues like unemployment and business migrating abroad

Also the laws stop companies bringing international earnings back home to the USA.  USA has some of the highest tax on companies in the world.  USA is the only country to tax its citizens not living or earning in the country.  [sorry - The other is Eritrea. ]  Basically USA is unique not just now but historically this has never happened to this extreme, that could be celebrated maybe and it makes for 'interesting' times but probably its going to end badly.
   The most positive event for the citizens within its borders anyway would be straight out default much like the USSR turmoil but anyhow until then the USA is the poorest nation that has ever existed, nobody has ever owed so much.
 I dont blame Yellen, she cant even look in the direction of the truth.   The last five years was spent running down hill or freefalling even, to scale back this debt would be like ascending a mountain though I do think it could mean lower unemployment in that task not many would agree less government spending, defecit, size of, laws could make the country better off.
  If spending more didnt work then spending less, running a surplus is a reasonable argument.  The statistics dont favour (in their appearance) a harsh change of course yet but its still required I think

I thought the protocol is robust, this is more about concerns over phishing possibly.  Without a standard straight forward client and if it allows for the wallet to look like anything it could introduce confusion possible.   Meanwhile BTC can be stored on any website and its down to each company to assure its companies of their security in doing so

Couldnt say I agree on that one even though Madoff did accuse the same and to be fair he really isnt that far wrong.   much as I hate to say it, government does have a use, provide a utility for its operation.  It might be a giant leaky bucket of failing inefficency and dangerously self justified and self serving convolution but there is some water carried and tasks of some use to society.  Some functions of government do provide security.  Its often the case that private companies would be superior not that government operations are totally false.

  A true pyramid money really does go in one end  and is never to be seen again hence is no where near to investment at all

# I dont think it fits that definition because its value rises from usage but pyramid can be just purchase.
A pyramid has no usage and for gains to occur it must employ ever more greater numbers or it all fails.  I dont think btc requires more people just to carry on

Its a minor recent part of his business, he mostly manages funds and he could choose gold and btc if wanted but his line is really about actual 'physical' ownership I think.  They probably do own foreign bonds though which is fiat.  Also shares can end up as broken promises also so I dont see why it should be impossible to convince him of worth here.  BTC is superior in many ways but it does not carry title to anything 'solid'

Schiff mentioned a gold based crypto currency, damned if I ever heard of it.  P something ?  He still disagreed as its merely token or 1% of gold worth not 1:1    He then went onto describe a currency that was run with a central deposit and had no miners, you just rely on the vault to verify the gold and issue gold digital tokens - of course this isnt crypto currency at all more like GLD  which we've had quite a while  

The graph looked weak not sure why, for a couple days at least now.   Not enough volume on the rise, it peaked on sudden demand not followed up.     Could be it just needs more work or shakeouts then more holders before a greater rise.  A single buyer wont raise price if the trend remains down from various sellers though I wonder why not just sell at once so I guess its traders giving back speculative buys

A byte is 2 to the power of 3 as computers process everything in binary which is a base of 2 I think that is mostly why.  Ascii was 128 characters or 2 to the power of 7 for printer codes and now they use 1 byte for each character

  Someone should look at the history of currency and how bitcoin relates. Deci is ten but originally currency was not with a base of ten.  The dollar was originally a silver piece and could be cut up into pieces of eight?

The exact same time last year I thought the same thing and I sold some in August, I was ever so slightly wrong.  Lucky when I shuttered things off, I kept a balance.
Really cant tell, we have the FED taper going on and the conclusion to that should come sometime this year.   If they do fail to taper or in some small way alter their policy from expectations now then all sorts of things can happen with secondary drastic horizon altering events, it really is a snake in the grass a whole colony of them really

Think of it as ironic, the less fear the more apprehension is justified and any stability BTC can add could be valuable to some especially outside USA yet principally using dollars


That would be radical, they have bought things worth far less.   Its unlikely as it is they would increase their gold holdings which should have been done many years ago and certainly now.  Its not on their politically biased radar to even consider such things, if bitcoin were related to solar power projects or hosuing initatives with some kind of political kudos then maybe but it does not key into the system at present. 
  You might hope some kind of wild card hedge fund might consider and as their funds relate to QE it would be part of Fed policy indirectly

Its bigger, all this man did was sell his savings in exchange.     People do that all the time and waste it on consumer goods that are certain to depreciate.  His risk is his belief he may gain but his loss is already lower then someone who never invested in a house (profitably) or gained any secondary benefit from pocessing savings.
   Your idea to go into debt is much harder, your lose from both ends potentially and could be bankrupt.    At the very least you should secure the interest with a long fix if possible, I was suggesting the OP at some point buy a small flat with a fixed rate also to hedge his bets.
  Bitcoin ownership itself is also a kind of bet on interest rate movements so to borrow for such an 'investment' activity is not just black or red but going in on lucky 7 too

I always thought eleuthria turning his attention to alt coins was a minor miracle.  Like a double rainbow these things can be fragile and momentary   Alas I think ASIC has much reduced profitability on Litecoin so it is not so viable for home users ?
I recommend going with x11 or x13 if running home rigs its still worth the hassle and Ive used TMB, that is ok and also Ive used bcmultipool recently which covers x11 and they pay out in bc which is very fast to transfer or cash out which is useful (easier then juggling lots of different coins as a small user)

(Ive also played diku back in the day, do you know of the aardwolf guy as he was a big coder as I remember)