I would have to agree with the fact that DNotes is a lot more than just technology!!

Brief Update on CRISP Handbook:

I had planned to finish up my portion of the CRISP Handbook this evening and send it out to our team working on this project. Sorry that it is not going to happen. PR has been my top priority this weekend, including an attempt to contact a number of editors and contributors to certain news outlet. Success in PR takes a lot of hard work, sustained efforts and a significant amount of funding. With a few of our build blocks in place, we are committed to do take DNotes to the next level. I strongly encourage you to comment on the favorite new articles you come across and drop a short note to the writer referencing DNotes most current press release. We need everyone to help promote DNotes to the best you can and your efforts will be greatly appreciated.

We are looking forward to a very exciting week with expanded media coverage.

Thanks CryptoBroker79, that is excellent forward thinking for our industry. The link lays it out very simply. I'll have to look into it a bit further before I can give you a serious answer.

“Follow the money” is a sound advice in investing as well as other investigative work. I mentioned in earlier posts that $500 million VC money was invested in the cryptocurrency space in 2014, followed by $100 million in the first two months this year. I also predicted that we will see $1 billion Venture Capital funding for the year 2015. So far I am on track, another  $116 million has just been invested in a cryptocurrency related company and the rest of the world has little knowledge as to what they are working on.

One would think that this is becoming so obvious that people will at least put away their pocket change and turn it into DNotes. I would hope so, but frankly, I do not think so, at least not yet. CRISPs are designed with that in mind, save you pocket change and convert it into DNotes. Think of it as universal life insurance payment using your pocket change. Start off with a meaning amount you can afford and keep adding to it on a regular basis.

There are indeed many very promising signs that the big money will one day start wishing that there is a Bitcoin alternative that is stable and trustworthy for them to invest some serious money. To us DNotes is the obvious choice but to others it is not so obvious. We all should start trying a little harder to help our friends and family know about CRISPs and the new technology revolution that holds enormous power to cause a quantum shift with world changing implications.

"the immensely promising Bitcoin with the potential to be the greatest technology revolution of our generation can be quite deceptive; causing many to look back a few years from now wondering how they could have missed the early promising signs."

DNotes press release today says it all. Email a copy of it to all your friends and family.

********************

“21 has quietly raised $116 million in venture capital, from prominent firms including Andreessen Horowitz, RSE Ventures, and Khosla Ventures.”
Read more:
http://fortune.com/2015/03/11/march-10-bitcoin/

Your analysis is sound in principal and, I firmly believe you are correct but one difference between traditional and crypto is still a road block; knowledge. Fund managers are still wary of crypto and many don't even know it exists. Managers that do know of it are reluctant to incorporate in portfolios either because their investors don't understand or trust it or, the old standby, it's too volatile. I think this is a "cop out" meaning they don't want to spend the time to learn how the markets work nor do they want to spend the  
time nd energy required to manage a crypto investment.

Yes, I'm sure the day will come but it will still be a way off for most people. We all need to educate financial managers to the best of our ability. For example, I have funds under management by Edward Jones. My manager has performed well for the years we have known each other and the fund has done average to just above but when I suggested some investment in crypto, the color drained from his face.

I explained why I was interested, I explained how Bitcoin et al works and pointed him to articles and news about investment and capital but, he still doesn't trust the industry or "pseudo-industry" as he calls it. I'm sure I can bring him around eventually but it will take time and energy to do so.

Yes, you are correct in the long run but, it won't happen on its own, we need to make it happen. The way to do that is to show them the future, not try to explain the present. Humans have active imaginations, if you can paint a picture of a better financial system that has real value and no borders, they will catch on.

DNnotes directly addresses both counter arguments, it's not as volatile as most other coins and, on the surface where it matters, it's easy to understand. It has steadily appreciated since almost day one and there are no hidden features or purposes, no quasi-legal functions and a rather flat learning curve. It is both a currency and a store of value so it's uses are almost endless. Our Vault and CRISP plans are easy to use, and easy to understand and provide real benefits.

What more could they ask for right now?

Great article.  This is starting to feel like the "calm before the storm" we have witnessed before when leading up to a major correction in the financial world.

Can I put your Family CRISP idea in the contest?

Damn, you make some good posts Keemo! Be great to hear your thoughts more often!

Excellent post, Keemo. DNotes is more than a digital currency. It is a currency with a purpose for the masses worldwide. It is a business and not a hobby or an experiment.

As usual, this is another excellent post, TeeGee. The 80/20 Rule has been revised and refined a number of times to make it more generally applicable to help explain many different situations and outcomes.

Among those, “Dr. Juran's observation of the "vital few and trivial many", the principle that 20 percent of something always are responsible for 80 percent of the results, became known as Pareto's Principle or the 80/20 Rule” has been used most often as a rule of thumb.

As an interesting note, 80% of business startups failed in the first two years. I would venture to say that the failure rate in the crypto currency world will be significantly higher. In my opinion 90% will fail.

This should help explain why DNotes is so firmly committed to be the best in class right from its beginning. Our mindset is to be the best in everything we do. Instead of taking a risk that there is an 80% chance that we could fail, we have an 80% chance that we could succeed. Of course, that is if we are satisfied with the 80/20 rule. That may be good enough for some, but certainly not good enough for our team. We are committed to accept nothing short of wanting to be the best in everything we do. May be one day, someone can write a book about what it means to be the best in class and why it matters to score high in every category upon which we are being judged. May be one of the core missions of CRISP for Students is draw upon the strengths of “Mavens” to groom the next generation of the “vital few”.

Excellent post, TeeGee. I honestly wish I knew as much as you do when I was your age. We are very proud to have you as part of our team. My commitment is to help build a near perfect framework upon which DNotes can build a solid foundation that can outlast any test of time. Once that is accomplished, the professional managers can run the show with the best business practices just like any other well managed major corporations.

DNotes is more than a stable digital currency built upon trust and integrity. It is built, alongside the currency, as a business capable of immense growth few will understand until it has already taken place. It reminds me of a quote from George Bernard Shaw:

“Some people see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not?”

I am working on a press release for next week that is quite compelling. It has the appeal to draw the “Mavens” a little closer to DNotes’ mission. I am certain that one day DNotes will be a part of many cocktail party conversations.

     I would think it would be "no minimum", on starting or adding. The beauty of Dyna's concept of what a retirement program in the crypto-currency world should look and feel like, is that it really does follow the "decentralized" mind-set the crypto-currency would is built around. The program is TOTALLY "self-directed":

YOU decide how much to save (no minimums or maximums)
YOU decide when to save (frequency of deposits)
YOU decide how to save (where is the money going to come from?)
YOU decide when to be able to take it out (You can create multiple accounts, with different maturation dates)

     Our job end job is to make DNotes the Currency of the Future. To facilitate future adoption, we want to reach as many people as possible, as soon as possible. Long-term investors are critical. Rewarding those who agree to hold DNotes for a set period of time, and increasing the reward for holding them longer makes a lot of sense.

     Understand also, that the Million DNotes to be used for the reward system comes from our personal stash of DNotes. We at first agreed on 500,000, but when Dyna could not contact me, he increased the proposed Reward System Fund to 1,000,000 DNotes. He knew me well enough to know that I would support that decision wholeheartedly. Dyna is a selfless, humble genius. He is devoted to making this world a better place, and helping the common man (or woman) that helps himself. By making retirement secure for thousands, or millions of folks who we "encouraged" to "help themselves" in a time of great economic uncertainty is a legacy we all here at DNotes aspire too. This program may be the most important program we will ever come up with. I predict the long-term effects will be even grander than what we envision it.     

I know I will get a call in the morning from Dyna. He is going to chastise me for praising him too much. Don't care. I stand by my words. Take that, humble genius.

Smokey

I did find out that if you email someone DNotes from the Vault and they don't open up an account there, the DNotes will be returned to you in 90 days.  I also like the idea of sending out a smaller amount, but enough to make it interesting, and if someone registers and accepts, I can always send more.  I agree that one needs to consider who you are giving it to.

I am going to take full advantage of the Timed Send feature.  It has so many benefits other than just preventing a large dump of DNotes on the market.  Everyone always wonders when they should cash out of an investment, especially here in crypto where the thinking is "pump = sell".  Timed Send takes the guesswork out of that because you know you only have access to so many DNotes per month or year for a certain length of time.  It also gives people enough time to see that this is a long term investment that is going up in value.


Student Debt - 80k in student debt before grad school?  OUCH!!  I agree RJF, it is for profit and needs an overhaul.  In the province of Ontario alone, there are 7000 more teachers graduating from university each year than there are jobs for.  Many of them end up with jobs they could have gotten without a $60k trip to university.

It is always better when people mind their own business and don't spread FUD just because they decide to "leave a market". Anxiety from choosing to remain in the market is a different story.

I see Bitcoin is hovering a little higher today, although personally I'm kinda hoping it drops a bit before I make a purchase in the coming days. Look at it as a cheaper opportunity to buy DNotes with your dollars than you had before!

I've been looking at some facts on student debt in the states and UK, some of them are horrifying! (albeit some figures are hotly contested). For young people such as myself, the potential rewards are well worth the risks with crypto. I'm not sure DNotes will be available at a relatively low price in the near future regardless of what Bitcoin does. Giving away lots of crypto is part of my strategy to encourage adoption, as the value goes up of each unit of Notes, the more people you can give a "worthwhile" amount to. By this I mean that I could give somebody $20 of DNotes to get them started, but this could be several thousand DNotes, and would not be an insignificant proportion of my overall holding if I'm giving them away to many people. By comparison, if I am correct and they go up by a large margin, I could continue giving $20 worth of DNotes away to each person to get them started, but would have to give away far fewer of my overall holding. I could reach more people.

The more people who hold DNotes, the more awareness and demand will exist for them. That demand and increased chance of mass adoption will more than pay off for any small amount of DNotes you give away. I think the true trick would be in convincing people who know nothing about crypto, that these 'digital notes' that they know absolutely nothing are their best chance at escaping debt and retiring early! My blog is on how to register is still pending lol.

Just wanted to get in a quick afternoon post before I went about my daily activities.

Still, every long term coin strategy needs an economic model to survive the initial excitement. I've seen many coins do well until the highly anticipated spike and the following selloff... at which point the coin is practically dead in the water... speculation can be good to get a market position, but needs to be sustained with economic activities (buying and selling goods with the coin) so I would think a payment gateway is pretty essential early in the game... the sooner the better... am looking for that model with this coin

Hi Grandmama, thanks for supporting CryptoMoms and now here to give us a helping hand, Even though you are new you have been making some great observations with excellent posts. The optimum success of DNotes can only come about from the participation of a large number of DNotes stakeholders promoting and protecting DNotes, CryptoMoms, and now DNotesVault for their mutual benefits as a group. It is the unity of force, coming from a growing number of common people in pursuit of their common goals that makes our achievement sustainable with increasing momentum.

We are delighted to notice that quite a few new supporters have been helping us to spread the message. DNotes real greatness will come about when each and everyone of us try to do a little good for others while helping ourselves. This is a grassroots community effort to shape the future of money for the common people and the financially disadvantaged away from the central control of a few rich and powerful. The decentralized nature of digital currency is such that the actions of the majority always rule.

It's below the 400$ now - 398$. My guess it's a lowest price of the year. I wonder what is the cause for this downtrend since nothing is actually happening on the Bitcoin front, I mean nothing bad and nothing good. Exchange rate should be stagnant...

The effect of inflation on currency, and why the world may abandon the USD.

- Written in NZ english, written once in a quasi-academic manner, without too much attention to grammar and punctuation - I really just want to get my message out there and get some feedback.

Reserve currency is the term we normally use for the type of money countries use to settle foreign trade accounts. For example, if New Zealand buys goods from Canada, it is likely we would still settle our Balance of Payments using US dollars.

There are two characteristics of a currency that make it useful in international trade: one, it is issued by a large trading nation itself, and, two, the currency holds its value vis-à-vis other commodities over time. It is these two characteristics that drive demand for a reserve currency. The inflationary preferences of the USA FED have been well documented and discussed in this forum. This habitual increase in the monetary supply has caused a comparative loss in value to other commodities, but no viable alternative to a worldwide reserve currency existed, until now.

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[Explanation for those new to the theory of inflation - read on if financially / economically literate]

Inflation is a term used to describe the real value of a currency over time, as opposed to its nominal value. An appropriate example to illustrate this is if you put $100 into a bank that paid 5% interest yearly. At the maturity of a calendar year, you should have $105, or an increase in 5%. In this same year however, the government may opted to print more currency in place of the overwhelmingly unpopular decision to raise taxes. The FED may have increased the money supply to the tune of 3%, and without a corresponding increase in economic productivity, the result is inflation.

The original $100 you deposited into the bank turned into a ‘nominal’ amount of $105, but after accounting for inflation, you are left with an ‘inflation adjusted’ figure of $100 plus 5%, less 3%.

Mathematically it would look something like this.

Year 1 = n1
Year 2 = n2

(n1 x 1.05) x.97 = n2

or:

($100 x 1.05) x .97 = $101.85

Therefore, $105 is actually equivalent to $101.85 when chained to the value of the preceding years ‘monetary value’ in a 3% inflation environment. It would also be fair to say that the Government has imposed a hidden tax of $3.15 onto your wealth in addition to income, business, excise and other regulatory taxes. If you had chosen to not place your money into a savings account, the $100 that you held in cash, would need to increase to $103 to buy the same amount of whatever commodity the next year.

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Here are some links to illustrate the correlation between money supply and inflation:

USA:
http://kapitalcon.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/graph-of-money-supply-and-inflation2.gif
Mexico:
http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/jfloyd/modules/moninfmx.jpg
New Zealand:
http://blog.greens.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/M1-M3-CPI-1988-2013.jpg


Now that this relationship has been illustrated, it may beg to question why everybody hasn’t abandoned the US currency entirely. The truth is, big companies like DuPont are already beginning to settle payments in Chinese Yuan and the Euro. One major factor that has prevented such a swift abandonment of the US dollar, is that other major nations have inflated their currencies too. Japan inflated its yen to a larger extent to what the US has in a feeble attempt to revive its stagnant economy by cheapening its currency in the hope its exporters will receive more Yen than it would have before. The destruction of inflation is not limited to the US, it is one of the political elites favourite means of confiscating wealth from their citizens.


“It is my contention that if any person or organization ever obtains the monopoly right to create money, that person or organization will tend to use this right to the hilt. The reason is simple: Anyone or any group empowered to manufacture money virtually out of thin air will tend to exercise that right, and with considerable enthusiasm. For the power to create money is a heady and profitable privilege indeed.” - Murray N. Rothbard (1992)

There US dollar is susceptible to abandonment, or at best serious decline to multiple threats. I postulate that the first of these is the first major nation that stops inflating its currency.



The dollar is very susceptible to losing its vaunted reserve currency position by the first major trading country that stops inflating its currency. Should China peg the value of its currency to gold, the world may adopt the Yuan as the trading currency. Currently China is buying US debt to prop the US economy up to keep consumer demand for Chinese exports. When China no longer wishes to hold trillions of US debt, demand for the Yuan will increase, and demand for the US dollar will decrease. China, possibly the worlds largest trading nation would diminish its holding of US dollars. Dollars held overseas would begin making their way back to the USA, causing more inflation and subsequent price increases. According to a report by congress “The Use and Counterfeiting of U.S. Currency Abroad”, Part 2. March 2003, 60% of US dollars exist overseas. Even if this were to happen, I don’t think it would take long for Digital Currency to supplant the new, pre-eminent economic superpowers one, albeit the US economy will still be in tatters.

Hayek’s ‘Denationalisation’ of money is the best known proposal for the separation of currency and state. The proposal includes the abolition of legal tender laws that would allow every individual to issue their own currency, whether in paper tickets (which existed at the time), or digital with their own insignia and names. These currencies would run in tandem to the current dollars, euros and yen that have maintained monopolies by the government. This would mean that DYNA could create DYNA COIN’s, Dnotes could develop Dnotes, I could make TeeGeeCoin, drug users PotCoin, and shibes Dogecoin. Hayek also suggested the creation of a bank that would issue ‘ducats’ - gold or silver coins that would be issued to be used to price each new currency. This obviously is an exact map of what Bitcoin is to the current Digital Currency realm, and the Nobel Laureate was very confident that these ‘ducats’ would easily out-compete the over-inflated currencies backed by nation states.

The thing about money is it is not demanded, nor required for its own sake. It is not like a computer or food where people can derive utility from its use. Money is demanded for no other reason than that it already functions as money, when people know it can be used to buy and sell as a medium of exchange. Anybody may issue their own currency, but issuance and acceptance are two very different matters. Nobody will accept a new currency as they might new Iphones and TV’s.

Ludwig Von Mises "regression theorem" showed as far back as 1912, that nobody will accept any currency as money unless it has been previously demanded and exchanged earlier. This would make it obvious that one would need to go back in time to the original transaction that would have made such an entity count as ‘money’. Rothbard (1992) postulates that since something can not have been used as money before its first transaction, it could only have been demanded because it is a ‘non-monetary commodity’ and therefore had a preexisting price, even in the era before it began to be used as a medium.

“In other words, for any commodity to become used as money, it must have originated as a commodity valued for some nonmonetary purpose, so that it had a stable demand and price before it began to be used as a medium of exchange. In short, money cannot be created out of thin air, by social contract, or by issuing paper tickets with new names on them”
(Rothbard, M 1992, The Gold Standard: An Austrian Perspective. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1985, pp. 1-17 ).

At the time Hayek’s idea was first put forward, it was considered idealistic and unworkable. Printing new names on bits of paper wouldn't make people accept its function as money; the dollar would still reign supreme. It was also said that the removal of legal tender laws wouldn’t work, for the new names would not be able to emerge into currency from first being useful ‘commodities on the free market’ as Von Mises’s theorem suggested they must. This would have left the deeply entrenched government currencies unchallenged as money, and money would not have ended up denationalised at all. Money would remain a function of the state, holding all the citizenry hostage to its theft, and liable to its irresponsible fiscal decisions; there would not be any separation of money and state.

I postulate that Digital Currency has rendered Von Mises’s theorem obsolete. Mining currencies has turned such ‘rewards’ in the form of coins as a commodity, which has already allowed some to break through this pre-requisite to be accepted as money, and truly allowed the denationalisation of money as put forward by Hayek. The blockchain technology will allow us to be truly free from the shackles of our bureaucratic rulers, I will write future pieces soon on how I believe Dnotes fits into this picture. I’m very interested in hearing what the community has to say on such posts, and topics that would both interest and help the community and adoption of Dnotes that I could do research on.

Few references:

[The Gold Standard: Perspectives in the Austrian School. Edited with an Introduction by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. Copyright © 1992. The Ludwig von Mises Institute. Auburn, Ala. Pp. 116-130; retrievable here: http://mises.org/rothbard/genuine.pdf

http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/docs/counterfeit.pdf

Thanks, Smokey. Coming up with that business plan was the easy part. Fine tuning it and executing it flawlessly was quite demanding. With limited financial resources and a declining economy, it was even more challenging than it should have been.

The success of Smokeys Daylily Gardens is the results of a few winning strategies that are applicable in just about any business, with some adjustments. It is most important to start off with a relentless commitment to be the best in class. You are not a “me too”. You want to be equal to the best you are competing with, at a minimum. Your objective is to be equal to and better than any of your competitors. You commit yourself to do the right thing every time and always remember that your customers govern your success or failure. If your customers want you to be successful, your chances of being successful are greatly improved.

Create an “unfair advantage” over your competitors by going beyond the call of duties, delivering more than you promised and always be respectful and appreciative. Most people prefer to do business with friends, not enemies. Go the extra miles to do things that others won’t do. Slowly build up your resources and capabilities so you that are in a position to do things others can not do. That is the “unfair advantage.”

By exploiting the economy of scale, Smokeys Daylily Gardens, has the machine power to plant and harvest more daylilies in one day than most of their competitors can in the entire season. That is the power of the “unfair advantage.” Of course, it takes a lot more than that for Smokey Gardens to reach this level of success, such as team work, internet marketing, and more. That is a different story for another day when appropriate.

I am privilege to be of help. My skill-set as an entrepreneur will be helpful when we start to promote our merchant account payment processing. I plan to be actively working smaller local businesses to build up a solid foundation before pushing for prime time. Mass consumer and merchant adoption of DNotes will take at least four years. Doing it right from the start is the key to our success. It takes many building blocks to secure that foundation, and that is what we are working on.

Bitcoin Notes:

1.  By now we have all heard that the premature merchant acceptance of Bitcoin and the subsequent immediate selling of it for fiat, makes price stability challenging.  There is another obstacle that may be standing in the way of large corporations holding onto it after receiving it as payment.

"Under the generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), corporations may not be able to count bitcoin holdings as a hedge against currency risk due to the volatile nature of the digital currency. They may instead have to count bitcoin assets as a speculative position, which would increase their risk profile.  In other words, large merchants can’t be relied on to drive bitcoin demand, nor are they long-term holders of the digital currency."   

- http://www.coindesk.com/citi-miners-merchants-keeping-bitcoin-prices-check/

2.  This is an article on OTC (over-the-counter) trading of large blocks of Bitcoin - this may come in handy for DNotes one day!

- http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-brokers-trade-millions-without-exchange/

DNotes as a Store of Value:

In the case of money, when you earned or inherited more than what you need to consume or spend immediately, the extra is stored to be retrieved at a later date. That “extras” can be stored as is, or exchanged for another medium, such as gold which has been very popular for the last few decades. Whether it stays as money or exchanged for other assets or investments, when it is finally retrieved and spent it is about buying power. The more productive the vehicle you selected as the store of value, the more buying power you will end up with. The risk of losing your investment should always be a primary consideration.  As a general rule, the higher the investment risk, the higher the reward; and the lower the risk the lower the reward.

Using the rule of high risk/ high reward it is a common practice for many investors to allocate a small percentage of their investment portfolio to invest in certain high risk situations. When one made the right pick the overall investment portfolio can significantly out perform other investments. The store of value in this case consists of a basket of various assets designed to produce the highest rate of return with managed risk.  For many years, gold has been an excellent choice, generating huge returns. However, for a few years now, since 2011, the price of gold has stabilized.

Could DNotes be the best Store of Value since gold? Only time will tell. DNotes has a comprehensive long term strategic plan to be the best in class since the first day it was created, (2-18-2014). DNotes’ team and its community believe that, by staying true to their mission in building a stable, trustworthy currency with reliable long-term appreciating value, DNotes will have the best chances to be “The Digital Currency of the Future with Lasting Value”.  If achievable, DNotes could be a great store of value, perhaps the best since gold.

Gold has been an excellent store of value for over a decade, performing spectacularly well as a hedge against inflation, thereby preserving investors’ purchasing power. Until the 12-year bull-run ended in 2011 at over US$1900 per ounce, down to US$1,267 today, gold has been an outstanding wealth creation investment.


Let us take a closer look. I mentioned in an earlier post that Store of Value is one of the four functions of money. The other three functions are; Unit of Account, Medium of Exchange, and Standard of Deferred Payment.

Money as a store of value is an important component for the modern economy to function efficiently, since everyone accepts money in exchange for goods and services. The money accepted can be spent immediately or stored as cash or banked to be retrieved later to be spent or invested in another asset that may be more productive as a store of value. Finding a relatively secure investment with high returns is a big challenge these days.

Money is not the only asset used to store value to be retrieved, exchange, or transferred at a later time. The other assets commonly used to store value are precious metals like gold and silver. Real estate, collectibles, stock ownership in a company, and other financial instruments such as bonds, and treasury bills are also commonly used to store value. They all have inherent risks and potential for value appreciation. In general, the higher the risks, the higher the returns.

Timing in buying in at the early stage of an upward trend can yield huge appreciation as in the case of gold, which went from under $300 in 2000 to as high as $1,900 per ounce in 2011. Gold has been the best store of value during this period. As such it deserves a closer look.

Massive creation of new money by the Federal Reserve through the policy of Quantitative Easing to pump up the weak economy and to finance the staggering Federal deficit of over $17 trillion with low interest has put great pressure on the US dollar resulting in significant lost of value against the value of gold. If the US dollar continues to lose its value, as many are predicting, will the price of gold continue to increase? Will gold continue to be the best store of value?

To gain a better understanding on the dynamics of devaluation and value appreciation of an asset stored over time when measured against the US dollar, we need to realize that gold is also currency. It is a commodity currency. To be brief, our discussion is limited to the following currencies:

1.   Money -  a fiat currency:

Money is a legal tender created and controlled by a government. In the case of United States, massive amount of new money can be created based on the decision of political appointee administers (Federal Reserve – Board of Governors) Its supply is relative scarce, controlled through managing money supply. It is durable, portable and transferable. Unlike gold it is fungible and divisible to the extent that it is mutually interchangeable in whole or in part.

As the US government federal deficit and trade deficit continues to grow rapidly, the pressure on the value of the US dollar increases, leading to further lost of confidence in the US dollar resulting in further devaluation. Perhaps the biggest fear is a dramatic increase in interest rate. It will have a crippling effect on the value of the US dollar, various currencies closely aligned with the US dollar. This will be extremely damaging to the world economy. The Federal Reserve may not like to see another bull run in gold for this very reason.  http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/01/17/hows-whys-gold-price-manipulation/

2.    Gold - a commodity currency:

Gold is more durable than fiat currency. It is definitely scarce and cannot be cost effectively reproduced to increase supply. It is not as portable as money, especially involving cross-border transfer. It is not fungible or easily divisible. It is not a good medium of exchange but has served well as a good store of value.

A dramatic increase in the price of gold could immediately cause very damaging chain reactions. My sense is that the US government has been doing everything possible to prevent this from happening. Consequently, I would conclude that another round of rapid gold price increase is not likely.

Bloomberg.com reported 8-14-2013 that “Damage of Declining Gold Prices Felt Globally” and added “A 12-Year Bull Market Crashes:” It reported that “During a 12-year bull market, gold was promoted as a hedge against inflation, a store of value and a spectacular investment in its own right.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/infographics/2013-08-14/gold-price-decline-felt-around-the-world.html

3.   DNotes – a digital currency:

Call it property as the IRS would, a clone of Bitcoin, or virtual currency, DNotes is a digital currency meeting all the functions of money, with added advantages and enhancements:

Unit of Account:

Being traded on 5 exchanges at around 1,000 Satoshis or $0.005, a value on DNotes has been established.

Store of Value:

DNotes is the most consisting performer in value appreciation among over 400 crypto currencies. http://coinmarketcap.com/  From a low price of 41 Satoshis, on March 25, 2014 DNotes has consistently established higher highs and higher lows. It has been delivering a spectacular reliable long term appreciation for almost six months (a long time in the crypto world) without exception. With around 90 million DNotes issued to date, a maximum limit of 500 million DNotes, and a market cap of around $500,000, DNotes long-term stunning performance is likely continue for years to come.

None the less, this should be considered as a high risk investment with no assurances that the same rate of value appreciation is sustainable. It should be treated as a high risk investment with potential high return. Do not invest more that you can afford to lose. It should be limited not to exceed a small percentage of your investment portfolio, depending on your risk appetite.

Once again please participate with your comments and questions.

I like to cover the pros and cons of Bitcoin, and adoption by merchant and consumers next. In an effort to be more objective, I like to invite you to do your research and post your findings and comments. That will make it much more interesting, hopefully more objective and less self-serving.