From a trading point of view that seems reasonable, I mean I dont know why litecoin was so popular but I guess it could be again alongside bitcoin just like the old days.   That prospect seems cheap and increasingly so as bitcoin rises, but Im not confident on just where each coin sits now though and why its user base is there

Hey calm down. I am not attacking you. My point is you get what you sowed. You create a top-down morass, so thus your investment doesn't prosper. You only manage to take money from fools rather than build a juggernaut that could make everyone involved wealthy.

Perhaps you shouldn't pass up a good opportunity to invest in my blockchain project (when and if it is ever launched), because I think I understand how to create a juggernaut. Which is the really my point.

6 months they will have a new project or a revival pivot for Steem. You heard it here second. I posted it first at Bitsharestalk.

Pretty sure the line is "You can checkout anytime you'd like, but you can never leave".

The USD is about to top and Gold is about to bottom. But shhh don't tell Martin Armstrong and his adepts 

SOMEONE sounds jealous there are no basements in the Philippines to be locked and loaded in.

SOMEONE sounds jealous there are no basements in the Philippines to be locked and loaded in.

I disagree that that trust in the case of hard currencies has anything to do with authorities and the stamp on the metal they make. In fact, in medieval times you could just grab a piece of gold and take it to the royal mint where you got your royal coins stamped for a small fee. This tells us that the stamp had rather a utilitarian function than an existential one. On the other hand, if it all came down to trust in authorities, there would be no case for Gresham's Law where you had essentially the same stamp but, nevertheless, different levels of trust...

Which wouldn't be ever possible unless you in fact trusted the metal more than the stamp on it as you claim

Why did we build the largest coin collection in the world? Because coins are the documented history of the fiscal mismanagement of centuries of mankind. There is nothing that does not fluctuate even what is used for money.

The Mongols conquered China and maintained their monetary system. They honored the paper money in circulation and used that as the monetary base rather than coins.

The barbarians issued coins at first maintaining the pretense of the Roman Empire pretending that they now held the throne.

...the next target marks the end of the Roman Empire that formally falls in 476AD with the last real emperor. However, then the barbarians assume the throne for a brief period of time. They issued coins that appeared to be Roman in appearance. Effectively, at the end, the barbarians wanted to be Romans where as the Vandals just stripped even the copper from the roofs of temples in Rome.

The idea that money must be tangible also has no basis in fact. Money has been many things to many people. The entire basis of money is you will accept something as money as long as you have CONFIDENCE that in turn someone else will accept it from you.

This idea that somehow gold coin is not fiat has been so misleading. Here is a Roman tax collector gold bar because the government minted gold coins cheating in quality but refused to accept them in return for taxes. Thus, taxes were imposed based upon weight – not coins! Therefore, the gold coins of the day were not trusted and even government had no CONFIDENCE in them, which is why they were NOT legal tender (acceptable for taxes).

...

Early attempts at wage and prices controls always failed from Babylonian times right up to the Wage & Price Controls of Diocletian (284-305AD) who attempted to restore silver coinage AFTER the Great Monetary collapse. It did not matter that coinage was restored. CONFIDENCE still collapsed and the coinage was rapidly hoarded and vanished from circulation. So yes, even when the money is of full value, it still will not circulate if people do not BELIEVE government. Indeed, there was still another war and finally Constantine (309-337AD) emerged as Emperor after defeating all rivals. He enjoyed some success but had to abandon Rome and created a new Capital Constantinople and revised the monetary system again.

...

Government then began to stamp the image or badge of the city to impress people.However, the first city to “coin” money was also the first to discover “fiat” meaning the value is simply dictated by government

...

The whole reason people began to use banks was because the “money” could not be verified. Just because the coins were silver or gold did not mean anything. They could be debased, shaved, or forged. You deposited money in a bank and the bank CERTIFIED you were paying in “good” money. People did not want coins, they wanted the bank paper receipts. Like the moneychanger, the bank was certifying the transaction was taking place with proper value in “money”. Thus, paper money began in middle ages as receipts certifying deposits.

...

Ancient Egypt always had “fiat” money receipts for grain in public warehouses trading as money. They did not have any coinage until Alexander the Great conquered them in 334BC. Virginia also had the same system of tobacco receipts that circulated as money in colonial times.

China and Japan were the same. They never had circulating gold or silver coinage. This nonsense that money has to be tangible is NOT supported by the facts. Money has always been based solely upon what someone else is will to accept. Go to a WaWa or Starbucks and try to buy with a gold coin. They will not accept it. Hell, some places will not even take a $100 bill anymore and want plastic. If they do not BELIEVE gold is acceptable for payment or you hand them $1 in 1964 silver quarters to by a $5 coffee, you are out of luck. They will see it as $1 not worth $5. This is the real economy. MONEY is only valuable based upon what the OTHER person believes – not you!

It is NOT the fiat. It is simply CONFIDENCE. Bank and warehouse paper receipts have circulated as money for thousands of years. Even dollars under Bretton Woods gold standard were simply receipts redeemable in gold in international transactions. It was NOT gold that actually circulated. When people as a whole distrust government, then barter replaces official “money” and that can be a lot of things and the worse it gets the more likely it boils down to food. We have run every possible correlation and have the database to do so.

When Genghis Khan invaded China, which was using paper money, he too accepted it and did not devalue the paper money that was in circulation. He too accepted the paper money from the previous emperors.

By the time this economic implosion is over, you will PRAY for HYPERINFLATION. What we face is far worse. It is loss of everything with the risk of tanks rolling down your streets hunting money!

It has always been a confidence game. Those in power are constantly trying to boost the confidence of the people in order to stabilize their control over society. Above is a Roman coin from the tetrarchy period of Diocletian & Maximinus. The term meant “leadership of four” whereas there had been a chaotic period that spanned across 20 emperors whereby they came to power only to be overthrown by another. There was no political stability. The Emperor Diocletian sought to create political stability and established the tetrarchy where there were two emperors and two “Caesars” who were like vice presidents in waiting. The power of governing the empire was split and marked the end of the crisis of the third century.

You do not see hyperinflation in Britain or China despite the fact that both declined from major economic peaks. Money never becomes worthless in a major core society for if the core were to collapse then everything else must fall as well. Genghis Khan accepted the paper currency of China upon his conquest and did not render it worthless. It continued to circulate and he accepted it in payment himself. That is showing the Moguls wanted the dignity of conquering civilization and merely replaced the emperor.

Human nature does not change with time. It remains consistent and this is why history repeats. With the fall of Rome, the invading barbarians wanted to be Roman. Their rulers initially issued coins merely pretending to be the emperor. One of the great kings was Theodebert I (534-548AD) whose tomb is erected and still standing as if he too had been a Roman Emperor. Thus the invaders wanted to be the head of the civilization both in China and Europe showing confidence did not vanish, just a change in ownership and no hyperinflation.

The term ‘barbarous coinage’ of the 3rd century refers to imitative coins that are typically crude in style. Their origin stems from the use of Roman coins outside the empire and as a result there was a high demand that was not often met. Consequently, then shortage of official coinage was compensated by the strike of imitative coinage that was underweight, but there was no real intrinsic metal value. Like US dollars circulate in Russia and China, it is the confidence in the foreign government that provides the inherent value to the monetary instrument rather than the metal content.

Indian Ancient Imitations of Roman Coins

The peripheral economy with respect to the center core economy has routinely imitated the coinage of the dominant economy which is the financial capital of the world. In the case of India, these imitations of Roman coinage in gold are known as far back as the Roman Emperor Tiberius (14-37AD). These are imitations rather than counterfeits for the metal content is the same or at times even better. Pictured here is an Indian contemporary Indian imitation of a gold aureus of Tiberius (AV Aureus 19mm, 6.69 grams) copied from a coin struck at Lugdunum (Lyon) mint issue in modern day France which obviously made it to India.

I disagree that that trust in the case of hard currencies has anything to do with authorities and the stamp on the metal they make. In fact, in medieval times you could just grab a piece of gold and take it to the royal mint where you got your royal coins stamped for a small fee. This tells us that the stamp had rather a utilitarian function than an existential one. On the other hand, if it all came down to trust in authorities, there would be no case for Gresham's Law where you had essentially the same stamp but, nevertheless, different levels of trust...

Which wouldn't be ever possible unless you in fact trusted the metal more than the stamp on it as you claim

Why did we build the largest coin collection in the world? Because coins are the documented history of the fiscal mismanagement of centuries of mankind. There is nothing that does not fluctuate even what is used for money.

The Mongols conquered China and maintained their monetary system. They honored the paper money in circulation and used that as the monetary base rather than coins.

The barbarians issued coins at first maintaining the pretense of the Roman Empire pretending that they now held the throne.

...the next target marks the end of the Roman Empire that formally falls in 476AD with the last real emperor. However, then the barbarians assume the throne for a brief period of time. They issued coins that appeared to be Roman in appearance. Effectively, at the end, the barbarians wanted to be Romans where as the Vandals just stripped even the copper from the roofs of temples in Rome.

The idea that money must be tangible also has no basis in fact. Money has been many things to many people. The entire basis of money is you will accept something as money as long as you have CONFIDENCE that in turn someone else will accept it from you.

This idea that somehow gold coin is not fiat has been so misleading. Here is a Roman tax collector gold bar because the government minted gold coins cheating in quality but refused to accept them in return for taxes. Thus, taxes were imposed based upon weight – not coins! Therefore, the gold coins of the day were not trusted and even government had no CONFIDENCE in them, which is why they were NOT legal tender (acceptable for taxes).

...

Early attempts at wage and prices controls always failed from Babylonian times right up to the Wage & Price Controls of Diocletian (284-305AD) who attempted to restore silver coinage AFTER the Great Monetary collapse. It did not matter that coinage was restored. CONFIDENCE still collapsed and the coinage was rapidly hoarded and vanished from circulation. So yes, even when the money is of full value, it still will not circulate if people do not BELIEVE government. Indeed, there was still another war and finally Constantine (309-337AD) emerged as Emperor after defeating all rivals. He enjoyed some success but had to abandon Rome and created a new Capital Constantinople and revised the monetary system again.

...

Government then began to stamp the image or badge of the city to impress people.However, the first city to “coin” money was also the first to discover “fiat” meaning the value is simply dictated by government

...

The whole reason people began to use banks was because the “money” could not be verified. Just because the coins were silver or gold did not mean anything. They could be debased, shaved, or forged. You deposited money in a bank and the bank CERTIFIED you were paying in “good” money. People did not want coins, they wanted the bank paper receipts. Like the moneychanger, the bank was certifying the transaction was taking place with proper value in “money”. Thus, paper money began in middle ages as receipts certifying deposits.

...

Ancient Egypt always had “fiat” money receipts for grain in public warehouses trading as money. They did not have any coinage until Alexander the Great conquered them in 334BC. Virginia also had the same system of tobacco receipts that circulated as money in colonial times.

China and Japan were the same. They never had circulating gold or silver coinage. This nonsense that money has to be tangible is NOT supported by the facts. Money has always been based solely upon what someone else is will to accept. Go to a WaWa or Starbucks and try to buy with a gold coin. They will not accept it. Hell, some places will not even take a $100 bill anymore and want plastic. If they do not BELIEVE gold is acceptable for payment or you hand them $1 in 1964 silver quarters to by a $5 coffee, you are out of luck. They will see it as $1 not worth $5. This is the real economy. MONEY is only valuable based upon what the OTHER person believes – not you!

It is NOT the fiat. It is simply CONFIDENCE. Bank and warehouse paper receipts have circulated as money for thousands of years. Even dollars under Bretton Woods gold standard were simply receipts redeemable in gold in international transactions. It was NOT gold that actually circulated. When people as a whole distrust government, then barter replaces official “money” and that can be a lot of things and the worse it gets the more likely it boils down to food. We have run every possible correlation and have the database to do so.

When Genghis Khan invaded China, which was using paper money, he too accepted it and did not devalue the paper money that was in circulation. He too accepted the paper money from the previous emperors.

By the time this economic implosion is over, you will PRAY for HYPERINFLATION. What we face is far worse. It is loss of everything with the risk of tanks rolling down your streets hunting money!

It has always been a confidence game. Those in power are constantly trying to boost the confidence of the people in order to stabilize their control over society. Above is a Roman coin from the tetrarchy period of Diocletian & Maximinus. The term meant “leadership of four” whereas there had been a chaotic period that spanned across 20 emperors whereby they came to power only to be overthrown by another. There was no political stability. The Emperor Diocletian sought to create political stability and established the tetrarchy where there were two emperors and two “Caesars” who were like vice presidents in waiting. The power of governing the empire was split and marked the end of the crisis of the third century.

You do not see hyperinflation in Britain or China despite the fact that both declined from major economic peaks. Money never becomes worthless in a major core society for if the core were to collapse then everything else must fall as well. Genghis Khan accepted the paper currency of China upon his conquest and did not render it worthless. It continued to circulate and he accepted it in payment himself. That is showing the Moguls wanted the dignity of conquering civilization and merely replaced the emperor.

Human nature does not change with time. It remains consistent and this is why history repeats. With the fall of Rome, the invading barbarians wanted to be Roman. Their rulers initially issued coins merely pretending to be the emperor. One of the great kings was Theodebert I (534-548AD) whose tomb is erected and still standing as if he too had been a Roman Emperor. Thus the invaders wanted to be the head of the civilization both in China and Europe showing confidence did not vanish, just a change in ownership and no hyperinflation.

The term ‘barbarous coinage’ of the 3rd century refers to imitative coins that are typically crude in style. Their origin stems from the use of Roman coins outside the empire and as a result there was a high demand that was not often met. Consequently, then shortage of official coinage was compensated by the strike of imitative coinage that was underweight, but there was no real intrinsic metal value. Like US dollars circulate in Russia and China, it is the confidence in the foreign government that provides the inherent value to the monetary instrument rather than the metal content.

Indian Ancient Imitations of Roman Coins

The peripheral economy with respect to the center core economy has routinely imitated the coinage of the dominant economy which is the financial capital of the world. In the case of India, these imitations of Roman coinage in gold are known as far back as the Roman Emperor Tiberius (14-37AD). These are imitations rather than counterfeits for the metal content is the same or at times even better. Pictured here is an Indian contemporary Indian imitation of a gold aureus of Tiberius (AV Aureus 19mm, 6.69 grams) copied from a coin struck at Lugdunum (Lyon) mint issue in modern day France which obviously made it to India.

There is no way to be "fooled" by holding something that acts as both a commodity and currency if you buy anywhere near the bottom (silver that is, btc isn't an actual commodity).

Crude rallied during October reaching the $52 level. Yet for the close, it crashed and burned on the last day to AVOID a buy signal at $49.35 level. We bounced off the first Downtrend Line, which now stands at $51.86 for November. This is what I mean about the hidden order within markets. This has NOTHING to do with me making a great call or some personal opinion to pound my chest. There is something much more significant taking place in market activity. This is what our model simply allows you to see. The numbers are the numbers. It has nothing to do with me being personally right or wrong. The numbers will continue to be generated long after I am gone.

This is all about becoming a STUDENT of the markets. Getting back to our roots as true analysts to observe and ponder. Not to force something to fit a predetermined conclusion because that is what we would personally like to see. From Comey coming out on the exact day of the ECM to announce reopening the investigation against Hillary all the way to our computer forecasting decades in advance that 2016 would be the biggest spike in third party (anti-establishment) voting and having Donald Trump show up on time is all rather amazing to me. It has been my privilege to have bumped into this hidden order in the middle of the night. I never presumed such order existed. This order found me to reveal itself rather than me trying to prove there was some order I could not see. It happens to be a discovery of something extraordinary that connects and binds all of us together reflected through the price movement of markets, which is the product of human interaction on a global scale.

NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING, takes place without a reason. The failure of oil to have elected that Monthly Bullish Reversal yesterday just as gold could not elect $1362 on a monthly basis and then crashed and burned to avoid the Quarterly Bullish Reversal in the $1340 zone, are subtle reminders that there is hidden order, which defeats the rhetoric of everyone.

To my BCT friends who are goldbugs, the reason I speak frankly is because I want you to look at the situation objectively. I know from my own infatuation in the past with precious metals, that the drug of fighting back against the system is very intoxicating.

But the fact is that absent our existing governance and monetary system, a power vacuum forms, which sucks in roaming armed gangs which then gives rise to warlords. The warlords are the market makers. Feudalism. Power is a fact of physics and nature.

The only way your fantasy of a silver dime monetary barter system would take form is if you have an organized community with governance, security, and enshrining silver dimes as the monetary system to give it the confidence it needs. And then some market makers to provided the liquidity between debt, silver dimes, and production. And you have to then provide for defense against more powerful invaders, so your community can't be too small.

If you don't understand how governance, market makers (i.e. power-brokers), and the economy are all dependent on each other, then you of course will make silly fantasies about people trading silver dimes as a fall back option.

Understanding power vacuums, the power-law distribution of wealth in nature, etc.. are critical to forming a rational assessment of the future.

Money has always been what people trust and have confidence in. This doesn't mean the metal itself, but as Armstrong has explained many times it was the stamp on the metal. Even when the invaders took over the Roman Empire, they used the stamps on the coins from the former Empire because it was more trusted.

Bitcoin (crypto-currency on a blockchain) enable trustless money, where we don't have to trust any authority. We trust the decentralized protocol. Now that was the ideal. Unfortunately Satoshi's proof-of-work centralizes and thus we end up trusting Gregory Maxwell and the Chinese mining cartel.

So crypto-currency is not quite ready for being independent of the powers-that-be yet.

Someone may invent a solution. I happen to know someone who claims he may have such a solution. We'll see...

"circumstances-always-get-me"

In the most extreme scenarios, bullets may be the best single "currency" (USA), my lead stash is 9mm bullets (lots of them) for my Beretta.  Along with water production systems.  These cases would likely not have gold (especially) and silver valued highly, at least during the very worst parts...  Still, at some point (probably..., when?), some kind of currency almost always is chosen.  My *guess* is that the most probable candidate would be silver coins, remember we are talking about a long and drawn out time (TEOTWAWKI in this paragraph) when central governments might not be there.  Silver will always retain some value, it is useful too (kills germs in water).  Gold will be there to preserve value through a long period, like giving to your kids.

But how likely are the extremely bad  scenarios?  Ahh, not as likely, IMO, as the milder, but still bad Great Depression v.2 and its more uncomfortable "SHTF".  So, in my own planning, I have but a couple of water filters and only a nominal amount of food stored (believing that the very ugly TEOTWAWKI will NOT be what happens).  Again assuming here no HORRID scenario (no Golden Horde armies devouring everything in the landscape...), I think that gold & silver are perfectly fine as part of a diversified portfolio of holdings.

If things DO go really bad, if the Dark Ages (let's say little/no electricity for the moment), then Bitcoin ain't going to do the job!!  Yeah I know that BTC can still function at some level without an Internet, but, it will fail in actual use...

Note that CURRENCY (US$, FRNs in your actual possession, not in the bank) counts as a good asset to hold in almost ANY weird scenario...  In the early days, a $100 FRN might get you gasoline or a meal for your family if the credit card machines are down...

In the most extreme scenarios, bullets may be the best single "currency" (USA), my lead stash is 9mm bullets (lots of them) for my Beretta.  Along with water production systems.  These cases would likely not have gold (especially) and silver valued highly, at least during the very worst parts...  Still, at some point (probably..., when?), some kind of currency almost always is chosen.  My *guess* is that the most probable candidate would be silver coins, remember we are talking about a long and drawn out time (TEOTWAWKI in this paragraph) when central governments might not be there.  Silver will always retain some value, it is useful too (kills germs in water).  Gold will be there to preserve value through a long period, like giving to your kids.

But how likely are the extremely bad  scenarios?  Ahh, not as likely, IMO, as the milder, but still bad Great Depression v.2 and its more uncomfortable "SHTF".  So, in my own planning, I have but a couple of water filters and only a nominal amount of food stored (believing that the very ugly TEOTWAWKI will NOT be what happens).  Again assuming here no HORRID scenario (no Golden Horde armies devouring everything in the landscape...), I think that gold & silver are perfectly fine as part of a diversified portfolio of holdings.

If things DO go really bad, if the Dark Ages (let's say little/no electricity for the moment), then Bitcoin ain't going to do the job!!  Yeah I know that BTC can still function at some level without an Internet, but, it will fail in actual use...

Note that CURRENCY (US$, FRNs in your actual possession, not in the bank) counts as a good asset to hold in almost ANY weird scenario...  In the early days, a $100 FRN might get you gasoline or a meal for your family if the credit card machines are down...

Does anyone know how much $$ the ICO of Ark.io will raise? I don't know enough details to say whether that coming Steem clone is worth making a speculative investment. They seem to rather serious, but I don't think they've really improved anything over Steem's broken model at least in terms of the onboarding and rewards payout mechanism (and math!). They may be correcting the whale concentration with a more fair ICO than Steem's sneaky "premine". Devil is in the details.

Also remember you are investing in the capabilities of the lead developer to a large extent unless the project is entirely complete and no future forks. Even then you are sort of investing in the lead developer, because it is assumed he will work on the ecosystem development. So you need to know very well the technical and marketing capabilities of the development team, especially the lead developer.

For XMR, you have fluffypony. For Bitcoin, you have Gregory Maxwell. For Zcash, you have Zooko-Wilcox. Etc...