Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
-Steve Jobs
The silver - gold ratio has been knocked out of whack by the ETF markets and manipulation (if you listen to
http://HTTP://gata.org). There are some pretty telling signs of it, so it is hard to discount that.
Silver is the currency of the people, and Gold of the kings, but one of the intrinsic qualities of gold and silver is the physical nature of the silver and gold pieces. A half ounce silver piece is about as big around as an ounce gold piece due to the relative masses.
The smallest silver piece produced in the US was a 3 cent piece, much thinner than a dime, and it was used to provide change for stamps purchased.
People were reluctant to buy a stamp with a 5 cent piece that had silver in it and get change only in copper (which is a base metal, not a precious metal) and only get a paper stamp sticker to send their mail. So the US Mint produced these tiny 3 cent pieces with a prominent 6 pointed star on it.
The silver gold ratio has been around 16:1 for most of the last few thousand years, so you would get a silver dollar and a 20 dollar gold piece, with alloys (mostly copper) filling in for the weight and size.
With the crypto currencies, we have a different characteristic, the ephemeral nature of them. New Liberty Dollar is putting out a specie (physical bullion based coin) for crypto currencies that will have a QR code linking to the current spot market price of the coin in the different crypto currencies, as well as many fiat currencies.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=269535It is the first of its kind, a global currency, and we will do both silver and gold.