lonestranger
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I like long walks on the beach, shaving my head...
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June 23, 2011, 01:34:38 PM |
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Goldmoney requires that one be "verified" by sending them govt ID and utility bills--this is the same shit MtGox requires to increase one's withdrawal limit. This is the greatest weakness of goldmoney for Americans.
(Btw, the knee-jerk "America is the greatest country" readers must have trouble reading Casey!)
Bitcoin's advantage is that it can be private and portable, moving effortlessly across borders. This is going to matter a great deal in these times. We ARE going into a world war, after all.
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Be very wary of relying on JavaScript for security on crypto sites. The site can change the JavaScript at any time unless you take unusual precautions, and browsers are not generally known for their airtight security.
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Advertised sites are not endorsed by the Bitcoin Forum. They may be unsafe, untrustworthy, or illegal in your jurisdiction.
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Litt
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June 23, 2011, 01:45:19 PM |
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bitcoin needs infrastructure. in fact, very complex and vulnerable infrastructure.
Complex, yes. Vulnerable no. Localized internet outages do not threaten bitcoin's long term value. It would require a massively catastrophic event to destroy the entire internet, worldwide, permanently. An event that would almost certainly also destroy the infrastructure protecting your gold: bank vaults, police forces, transport systems, electricity grids, etc. ...unless you are the survivalist type who lives in the woods and buries his gold in the ground. I agree. I highly doubt that even in the worst of case when/if the fiat currencies start to collapse in itself, entire network of internet infrastructure will be offline for a prolonged time to effectively stop the bitcoin trade long enough to bring it's value to nil. I'm seriously hoping for a new type of technology to develop where we can connect to the internet via p2p or open wireless type of structure without central nodes. That would 100% insure the bitcoin network never going offline without an ounce of doubt, but the technology in development may be bit more down the future. Namecoin is definitely a start in the right direction in that aspect. If anything, the signs of terrible things to come in the events preceding the possible collapse should urge the general public to seek out and develop such technology out of necessity. |
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Travis
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June 23, 2011, 06:40:01 PM |
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To me one of the biggest downers for Bitcoin, one of the things that makes me pessimistic, is that so many in the libertarian / sound money crowd seem to dismiss it. If that lot can't 'get it', the greater public surely can't? gold is backed by thousands of years of history.
Salt was backed by thousands of years of history ... until somebody invented the refrigerator. good. then calculate the likelihood of something like that happening in your lifetime, and there is your risk for gold. The rate of change in technology and society is increasing, its more likely than you think. |
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tavi
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June 23, 2011, 07:05:38 PM |
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Yes, I think the biggest fear they have is the fact that gold has been used as money for centuries. With that being said, gold gains a significant increase in value. Also for centuries mankind has used gold to show off wealth in the form of jewelry. The other major use of gold is to produce coins or bars which is obviously used for investing. The reason people invest it/hoard it is simply because at one point it was used as money.
If this idea that gold is money is ever put at jeopardy then guess what happens to the value of gold? Falls off a cliff. Bitcoin puts seep competition against gold because lets face it, bitcoins are finite, difficult to obtain, and easier to transfer than gold.
Just to put it into perspective: Bitcoin is the cubic zirconia of the diamond industry. Why buy a real diamond when you can buy a zirconia diamond at a fraction of the cost?
The only real uses for gold are in the dental industry, electronics industry and scientific industry which only consume about 10% of the mined production. The rest goes into investments or jewelry. Most of the world entire history of mined gold is still in existence (ie. not thrown away). This is because most of it is recycled.
I didnt mean to say gold will become worthless because of bitcoin, or that bitcoin > gold. (in fact, I still believe it is far less likely that bitcoin will be adopted as a widespread form of payment than gold will "fall off a cliff") I just dont see the rivalry. one has nothing to do with the other, gold wont be used for trade again. You have to understand there is a major correlation. The reason gold trades at the value it does is primarily because people place a value on it. In most parts of the world gold is the symbol of wealth and money. It is the stuff of kings and empires. There is a huge value being placed on gold for those qualities. BUT that value ONLY exists if people think that gold = wealth. If that idea is ever lost, then gold will be like just any other metal and will trade primarily at the value placed on it by industrial consumers. Yeah, I expect to see, given the bitcoin, that in not too distant future gold would be valued close to say, silver. They have similar metalic qualities (ok, silver rusts, but has additional medicinal value). And there is a lot more above-ground gold in the world than there is silver! |
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Bunghole
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June 23, 2011, 08:05:40 PM |
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I'm a long-time follower of Doug Casey and he's one of my most trusted sources, but I do think he's wrong about Bitcoin. Saying that Bitcoin crashed to one cent is not really accurate - it was only on one exchange and was due to a fraud or anomaly. It's not like people were selling OTC for one cent.
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andes
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June 23, 2011, 08:20:06 PM |
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YoYa
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June 23, 2011, 08:22:36 PM |
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We ARE going into a world war, after all.
Wait a minute.....WHAT!1?1! No one told me!  Defense shares still cheap? |
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Travis
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June 23, 2011, 08:23:26 PM |
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I stopped watching when they said the government should take control of the money supply, be the one to issue currency. |
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foggyb
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June 23, 2011, 08:23:45 PM |
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good. then calculate the likelihood of something like that happening in your lifetime, and there is your risk for gold.
The rate of change in technology and society is increasing, its more likely than you think. Its beginning to sound more plausible the more we continue these discussions. The salt analogy is really a striking one. Roman soldier were paid in salt. Here's an interesting story: Mahatma Gandhi led at least 100,000 people on the "Dandi March" or "Salt Satyagraha", in which protesters made their own salt from the sea, which was illegal under British rule, as it avoided paying the "salt tax". This civil disobedience inspired millions of common people, and elevated the Indian independence movement from an elitist struggle to a national struggle. Sound familiar? |
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BCEmporium
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June 23, 2011, 08:32:25 PM |
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Why does everybody talks about gold as if it has any intrinsic value?!  It have a conventional and relative value strengthened by ages, but no intrinsic value at all and not even many applications. To not mention "GoldMoney" is just yet another name for "e-Gold" with a nicer template... |
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andes
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June 23, 2011, 08:35:44 PM |
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I stopped watching when they said the government should take control of the money supply, be the one to issue currency. There is an ongoing discussion about this exact issue in this thread: The secret of oz [documentary]http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=21487.0 |
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relative
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June 23, 2011, 08:40:18 PM |
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Yeah, I expect to see, given the bitcoin, that in not too distant future
the certitude on this board that bitcoin will be adopted as a form of payment, let alone replace gold, or even replace ANYTHING, is bubble-esque. |
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andes
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June 23, 2011, 08:47:04 PM |
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Yeah, I expect to see, given the bitcoin, that in not too distant future
the certitude on this board that bitcoin will be adopted as a form of payment, let alone replace gold, or even replace ANYTHING, is bubble-esque. Entrepreneurs have unrealistic expectations to the upside, and are blind to the downside potential of their projects. We owe the progress in the world to these kind of people!  |
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Astrohacker
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June 23, 2011, 09:16:41 PM |
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From the article:
"But I have to say that I really do like GoldMoney. It does everything Bitcoin does – or did – but is backed by something of real value: gold. That means it’s not just an abstraction, but an actual store of wealth."
This reveals Doug's fallacy. Gold has physical properties like charge and density, not wealth. "Wealth" is not one of the properties of gold. The wealth of gold is something that is property of someone's brain; it is a reflection of what people believe. Is "being president" a property of Barack Obama? No. Rather, believing the claim "Barack Obama is president" is a property of many people. Likewise, gold being valuable is a property of all the people who believe it has value. Bitcoins have value in precisely the same way.
For some reason the "bitcoins have no intrinsic value" argument seems to be pretty common. Part of the argument comes from the fact that gold has properties like conductivity that make it useful in ways other than being a currency. But a currency does not need to have useful properties besides being a currency, as solidly proven by the existence of fiat currencies. Anyone who thinks that currencies must have use besides being a currency is willfully ignorant of the counterexample of fiat currencies.
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lonestranger
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I like long walks on the beach, shaving my head...
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June 23, 2011, 09:22:36 PM |
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Why does everybody talks about gold as if it has any intrinsic value?! It have a conventional and relative value strengthened by ages, but no intrinsic value at all and not even many applications. To not mention "GoldMoney" is just yet another name for "e-Gold" with a nicer template... Actually, e-gold was private; it didn't require the verification process. This makes the difference between them huge and it is also true with bitcoin. Casey seems to miss the importance of the privacy feature of btc. |
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Torminalis
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June 23, 2011, 09:24:32 PM |
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good. then calculate the likelihood of something like that happening in your lifetime, and there is your risk for gold.
The rate of change in technology and society is increasing, its more likely than you think. Its beginning to sound more plausible the more we continue these discussions. The salt analogy is really a striking one. Roman soldier were paid in salt. Here's an interesting story: Mahatma Gandhi led at least 100,000 people on the "Dandi March" or "Salt Satyagraha", in which protesters made their own salt from the sea, which was illegal under British rule, as it avoided paying the "salt tax". This civil disobedience inspired millions of common people, and elevated the Indian independence movement from an elitist struggle to a national struggle. Sound familiar? |
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Astrohacker
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June 23, 2011, 09:25:43 PM |
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I also find it odd that they appeal to the authority of Aristotle to determine what money is. Aristotle was one of the great minds of history, but he wasn't perfect. No one has ever been more wrong about anything that Aristotle was about physics. I don't think his is the final word on money either.
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CurbsideProphet
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June 23, 2011, 09:30:53 PM |
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There are many differences between gold and BTC's as have been mentioned. One that seems to have eluded people is that gold is finite while BTC's are not. Let me clarify, Bitcoins ARE finite but everything about this P2P currency is open source. The model is easy to replicate. Show me some sort of patent that protects Bitcoin from copycats. If BTC become successful, what's stopping someone from making Bitcoinz, E-dollarz, P2Pcoins, etc. etc.
Nothing.
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