Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Adrian-x]

Breaking $1300 

A welcomed reversal indeed.

LOL, having shorted Bitcoin at $10 to buy gold at $1900 the reversal is a long way away.
So far in fact I've lost all hope in gold ever living up to any meaningful return.
I just keep it around as insurance for if we go back to the dark ages, and so my kids can melt it to make wedding rings for there friends.

oh wow, i was buying your btc and you were buying my gold!

never short btc

It worked out well , you have a yellow lamborghini and I have a rare element I can't use, and valuable experience.  
The most expensive experiences serve the best, I though I'd let it go, but apparently not (don't tell my wife) so next time I won't judge cypherdoc, to be honest it was a good run from $2.80 to $10 $13, and I made a great return.  

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[marcus_of_augustus]

Today, banks like Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs own oil tankers, run airports and control huge quantities of coal, natural gas, heating oil, electric power and precious metals. They likewise can now be found exerting direct control over the supply of a whole galaxy of raw materials crucial to world industry and to society in general, including everything from food products to metals like zinc, copper, tin, nickel and, most infamously thanks to a recent high-profile scandal, aluminum.

http://m.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-vampire-squid-strikes-again-the-mega-banks-most-devious-scam-yet-20140212

[miscreanity]

We'll see. They might be able to scale it back quite a bit, actually, before interest rates move too much, as long as USD is still the defacto global reserve asset. It's really in China's hands.

Rickards is suggesting mid-year as the reversal point. I shudder to think what tapering until then will do to societies.

[zeetubes]

"I'm looking to convert my remaining USD to CHF first decent chance I get."

Isn't the CHF still pegged to the euro? I've read a few times that the Norway Krone and HK$ are better currency bets against the USD but I haven't bought into them yet.

[smoothie]

title of the thread is fun today.

Even a broken clock is right once a day.

Uh no it is twice correct. In the AM and in the PM.

[vokain]

title of the thread is fun today.

Even a broken clock is right once a day.

Uh no it is twice correct. In the AM and in the PM.

perhaps he's using a military time clock :p

[sidhujag]

"I'm looking to convert my remaining USD to CHF first decent chance I get."

Isn't the CHF still pegged to the euro? I've read a few times that the Norway Krone and HK$ are better currency bets against the USD but I haven't bought into them yet.

Chf is always pegged to the Euro due to trade partners.. snb set a floor at 1.20 ec and will sell chf infinitely to achieve this floor like boj does with uj at 80.

Usdchd is inversely correlated to eurusd whch is the most liquid forex instrument so usdchd is one of the more liquid too.

[molecular]

I may have been right for the wrong reason .. I anticipate another global recession this year.  I am not convinced that Bitcoin is where you want to be in such times compared to PMs.

At least for me, It's not about "where I want to be", but "where we want to be".

Gold isn't a a terribly useful money. In fact it isn't money at all. At least not by the definition I tend to use that says money is what people use as money. Gold fulfils only one function of money: store of wealth. It's utterly useless for transactional purposes in a global economy. If we indeed have to go back to using metal as money, we're back to mideavel ages. Noone in his right mind wants that. Our food (and related commodities) supply chains are global. We can't easily go back to local food production as some idealists may envision. It can work for some in rural areas, but people in cities would be out of luck.

Recessions result in large part from our disfunctional debt-based fiat money system (boom bust cycle). There's nothing inherently wrong with our economies, it's just that it doesn't make sense for them to grow any more and our monetary system doesn't support such a mode of operation. Our economies aren't sick, what's sick are our financial and monetary systems. Or maybe one could say our economy and/or society is sick with a cancerous monetary system.

It seems indeed 2014 could be another 2008 or even worse: some type of monetary meltdown. We need something trustworthy to use as money... globally. I can't imagine things to go over as smoothly as in 2008 with basically just printing a load of bailout money and putting taxpayers on the hook. You probably can't repeat that in the same way.

What will replace our failing monetary system? Are the fucktards at the IMF / World Bank / BIS going to come up with a gold-backed currency somehow? If Karen Hudes is right and there is a huge stash of "assets of the world" stored in Hawaii or whereever, including 140,000 tons (!!) of gold, then yes, it may be possible they'll whip up something like that. If there is no such stash there certainly isn't enough gold in the west to pull that off. Are they going to try a new largely unbacked type of FIAT? Are the people going to accept that? I'm doubtful and it would result in us having to cope with yet another ealistic money supply and resulting corruption.
 
I certainly hope crypto is up to the task and will emerge "by use" from the people / markets / economy.

I wish there was a couple of years more time for cryptocurrencies to mature and solve their problems, or at least prove they're solvable in short enough time, but I fear things may unravel faster than we like.

;tldr: I may be naive hoping for crypto to save the world, but saying "crypto probably isn't ready, we'll just have to use gold" is not acceptable.

[molecular]

title of the thread is fun today.

Even a broken clock is right once a day.

Uh no it is twice correct. In the AM and in the PM.

you must be american.



EDIT: btw, smoothie. Could you check wether there's 140,000 tons of gold laying around somewhere on Hawaii for us?

[molecular]

"I'm looking to convert my remaining USD to CHF first decent chance I get."

Isn't the CHF still pegged to the euro? I've read a few times that the Norway Krone and HK$ are better currency bets against the USD but I haven't bought into them yet.

Chf is always pegged to the Euro due to trade partners.. snb set a floor at 1.20 ec and will sell chf infinitely to achieve this floor like boj does with uj at 80.

With the swiss population having emotionally decided to tighten immigration laws and thereby moving away from EU and endangering their market access, I'm not so sure CHF is such a good place to be any more.

[traderCJ]

Gold isn't a a terribly useful money. In fact it isn't money at all. At least not by the definition I tend to use that says money is what people use as money. Gold fulfils only one function of money: store of wealth. It's utterly useless for transactional purposes in a global economy. If we indeed have to go back to using metal as money, we're back to mideavel ages. Noone in his right mind wants that. Our food (and related commodities) supply chains are global. We can't easily go back to local food production as some idealists may envision. It can work for some in rural areas, but people in cities would be out of luck.

;tldr: I may be naive hoping for crypto to save the world, but saying "crypto probably isn't ready, we'll just have to use gold" is not acceptable.

Well it obviously was TL and you DR because I never said gold is a good currency by today's standards.  It's just about as lousy as stock certificates, bonds or paper money in that respect.  The name of the game is preserving and accumulating wealth.  Gold and bitcoin solve different problems.  Where gold fails as a currency, it succeeds as a store of value.  Where bitcoin fails as a store of value, it succeeds as a currency.  Expecting a single unit of something to solve both problems is unrealistic.

[molecular]

Gold isn't a a terribly useful money. In fact it isn't money at all. At least not by the definition I tend to use that says money is what people use as money. Gold fulfils only one function of money: store of wealth. It's utterly useless for transactional purposes in a global economy. If we indeed have to go back to using metal as money, we're back to mideavel ages. Noone in his right mind wants that. Our food (and related commodities) supply chains are global. We can't easily go back to local food production as some idealists may envision. It can work for some in rural areas, but people in cities would be out of luck.

;tldr: I may be naive hoping for crypto to save the world, but saying "crypto probably isn't ready, we'll just have to use gold" is not acceptable.

Well it obviously was TL and you DR because I never said gold is a good currency by today's standards.  It's just about as lousy as stock certificates, bonds or paper money in that respect.  The name of the game is preserving and accumulating wealth.  Gold and bitcoin solve different problems.  Where gold fails as a currency, it succeeds as a store of value.  Where bitcoin fails as a store of value, it succeeds as a currency.

Yes, I twisted the meaning of your words and/or what was your intention to say to suit my needs and drive home a point ("It's not about you, it's about us"). I apologize.

Expecting a single unit of something to solve both problems is unrealistic.

Here we disagree. Tell me how Bitcoin is not a good store of wealth and please note that gold was down 30% last year.

The novelty of Bitcoin is specifically that it is able to solve both problems.

[dozerz]

"I'm looking to convert my remaining USD to CHF first decent chance I get."

Isn't the CHF still pegged to the euro? I've read a few times that the Norway Krone and HK$ are better currency bets against the USD but I haven't bought into them yet.

Chf is always pegged to the Euro due to trade partners.. snb set a floor at 1.20 ec and will sell chf infinitely to achieve this floor like boj does with uj at 80.

With the swiss population having emotionally decided to tighten immigration laws and thereby moving away from EU and endangering their market access, I'm not so sure CHF is such a good place to be any more.

i dont think swiss immigration laws have a direct effect on the price of the franc, if anything distancing itself from europe and the euro zone was the smartest decision to protect the economy and will only strengthen its price which has already happened.

[traderCJ]

Yes, I twisted the meaning of your words and/or what was your intention to say to suit my needs and drive home a point ("It's not about you, it's about us"). I apologize.

No problemo, I occasionally am guilty of this as well if I want to make a related point.

Here we disagree. Tell me how Bitcoin is not a good store of wealth and please note that gold was down 30% last year.

The novelty of Bitcoin is specifically that it is able to solve both problems.

First of all, I think it is unwise to bring pricing information into this discussion.  Depending on how myopic one is, it is easy to argue that gold is better than bitcoin or vice versa by using pricing criteria on an arbitrary timescale.

It is the tradeability of something in the future which gives it value.  In theory, anything can have value, so long as someone else agrees.  Value is derived from others and thus is a psychological phenomenon.  It is reasonable to argue that everything has a finite minimum value to someone at some point in the future.  Thus, anything can serve as a store of value.  So the real question is what makes one thing a better store of value than another?  It is impossible to answer this definitively, because it requires perfect knowledge of the future.  I cannot argue that gold is the best store of value, but I can argue that it is a good store of value, based on several factors.  First of all, it has a solid history of storing wealth.  It's well beyond beta testing by now.  I'd say at worst it is tied with real estate.  Second, its abundance and chemical properties make it an exceptional as a store of wealth.  When you look at a periodic table, you quickly realize that among the metals, there aren't many good candidates besides silver, gold, palladium and platinum.  As far as chemical properties go, gold is king.  Extremely resilient to corrosion.  Low melting point.  Malleable.  Appropriately rare.  Several others I can't think of at the moment.  The laws of physics work in gold's favor.  Third, and most importantly, is the psychological momentum behind gold's value.

You suggest that Bitcoin solves the store of wealth problem.  As I mentioned above, it is a problem which cannot be solved, as it requires perfect knowledge of the future.  Bitcoins would be worthless if the internet were crippled or eradicated somehow, for example.  To be fair, someone could figure out a way to transmute lead into gold, cheaply.  These are corner cases which are impossible to predict.  Thus, we are limited to guessing at the likelihood of such outcomes.  I have to make this brief right now, but we must face the fact that Bitcoin is in beta testing, and will be for many, many, many years to come.  It has many practical vulnerabilities, such as exchanges.  And historically speaking, it has basically zero history of being a reliable store of value compared to gold or real estate.  The bugs are still being worked out.  That's understandable, but that places it at a severe disadvantage as a store of value compared to gold and other hard assets.  The psychological momentum behind Bitcoin is strong right now, but it wouldn't take much for people to switch to an alternate crypto currency.  From a purely logical perspective, there is no reason to prefer Bitcoins to Dogecoins (shudder) as a store of value unless one speculates about mass psychology  That is, the likelihood that people will value it in the future.  So what makes Bitcoins better than Dogecoins (shudder) from that point of view?  Why would people, as a whole, prefer Bitcoins to Dogecoins?  Because Dogecoins are a stupid, gimmicky crypto-clone.  But you try making that argument elsewhere.

There are only so many elements.  There are an infinite number of potential crypto currencies out there.  The internet has been around 30 years or so.  Cryptos, 5 years.  We're trying to extrapolate the value of one particular crypto currency a human lifetime out.  It makes about as much sense as suggesting that shares of AOL would have been the ideal store of value back in the heyday of AOL CD coasters in the mailbox every week.

The bottom line is that value requires consensus.  Consensus is a psychological phenomenon.  Bitcoin, on paper, has incredible characteristics as a store of wealth and currency.  However, it has basically zero track record and the psychology of the masses as far as cryptos go could turn on its heel.  The psychological uncertainty with respect to time makes it, in my opinion, more applicable as a currency first and a store of value .. 5th or 6th.

I'll say this.  If Bitcoin wins the currency battle, it will be an excellent store of value and probably beat the crap out of gold in a human lifetime.  However, my money is not on this happening.  What say you?

[miscreanity]

I'll say this.  If Bitcoin wins the currency battle, it will be an excellent store of value and probably beat the crap out of gold in a human lifetime.  However, my money is not on this happening.  What say you?

If I might interject -- crypto will subsume fiat. Gold is restricted to a physical presence while much of existing society is already becoming an abstraction. How would gold be able to cross the Rubicon? Bitcoin is already there.

This monetary transition goes beyond anything that has ever come before, yet it is only one part of the whole. Looking at gold vs. Bitcoin in isolation provides only a momentary picture, lacking scope of the larger trend. The transition is a logical (natural?) macro progression.

As a vehicle, gold is the value store which will act as a bridge between existing wealth and influence, and that to be found in the resulting environment established by maths.

[NewLiberty]

I'll say this.  If Bitcoin wins the currency battle, it will be an excellent store of value and probably beat the crap out of gold in a human lifetime.  However, my money is not on this happening.  What say you?

If I might interject -- crypto will subsume fiat. Gold is restricted to a physical presence while much of existing society is already becoming an abstraction. How would gold be able to cross the Rubicon? Bitcoin is already there.

This monetary transition goes beyond anything that has ever come before, yet it is only one part of the whole. Looking at gold vs. Bitcoin in isolation provides only a momentary picture, lacking scope of the larger trend. The transition is a logical (natural?) macro progression.

As a vehicle, gold is the value store which will act as a bridge between existing wealth and influence, and that to be found in the resulting environment established by maths.

By crypto subsume fiat, do you mean that national currencies are expected to become cryptocurrency issued by nations or some other form of subsumption?

National currencies are ostensibly reserve currencies.  One of the reserves is gold, though under BASIL III gold takes a lesser role to bonds issued by other nations, it remains one of the reserves upon which the fiat-crypto currencies base their reserves.

If your proposition is that people ought never value anything physical value and only the abstract value of mathematical beauty as the resulting environment established by maths, this is quite a radical abstraction for physical human beings, and I would suggest unlikely to occur short of some wholesale transcendence of physicality altogether.

At the risk of using an analogy apropos to valentines day:
Just as the abstraction of love may be considered a higher and more valued formulation than physical sex, without sex backing love, humanity ends.  It is not one vs the other but the combination of both that is sensible.

[sidhujag]

"I'm looking to convert my remaining USD to CHF first decent chance I get."

Isn't the CHF still pegged to the euro? I've read a few times that the Norway Krone and HK$ are better currency bets against the USD but I haven't bought into them yet.

Chf is always pegged to the Euro due to trade partners.. snb set a floor at 1.20 ec and will sell chf infinitely to achieve this floor like boj does with uj at 80.

With the swiss population having emotionally decided to tighten immigration laws and thereby moving away from EU and endangering their market access, I'm not so sure CHF is such a good place to be any more.

Not that, I think with the crackdown of the swiss bank accounts evading tax's for americans via wallstreet, that Chf is not really much of a safe haven anymore. It should fall like a rock like jpy has been. When they are worthless they will complain and USD / EUR will start devaluation via QE again in 10-15 years... IF bitcoin hasn't taken over by then.

[Dr Bloggood]

"I'm looking to convert my remaining USD to CHF first decent chance I get."

Isn't the CHF still pegged to the euro? I've read a few times that the Norway Krone and HK$ are better currency bets against the USD but I haven't bought into them yet.

Chf is always pegged to the Euro due to trade partners.. snb set a floor at 1.20 ec and will sell chf infinitely to achieve this floor like boj does with uj at 80.

With the swiss population having emotionally decided to tighten immigration laws and thereby moving away from EU and endangering their market access, I'm not so sure CHF is such a good place to be any more.

Not that, I think with the crackdown of the swiss bank accounts evading tax's for americans via wallstreet, that Chf is not really much of a safe haven anymore. It should fall like a rock like jpy has been. When they are worthless they will complain and USD / EUR will start devaluation via QE again in 10-15 years... IF bitcoin hasn't taken over by then.

There won't be a USD or EUR anymore in 10-15 years... and I'm really looking forward to the Euro part of this prediction...!

[miscreanity]

By crypto subsume fiat, do you mean that national currencies are expected to become cryptocurrency issued by nations or some other form of subsumption?

National currencies are ostensibly reserve currencies.  One of the reserves is gold, though under BASIL III gold takes a lesser role to bonds issued by other nations, it remains one of the reserves upon which the fiat-crypto currencies base their reserves.

If your proposition is that people ought never value anything physical value and only the abstract value of mathematical beauty as the resulting environment established by maths, this is quite a radical abstraction for physical human beings, and I would suggest unlikely to occur short of some wholesale transcendence of physicality altogether.

At the risk of using an analogy apropos to valentines day:
Just as the abstraction of love may be considered a higher and more valued formulation than physical sex, without sex backing love, humanity ends.  It is not one vs the other but the combination of both that is sensible.

National currencies are unlikely to be decentralized. If they were, competition would eventually settle with a clear winner. I think governments will learn how to work with decentralized cryptocurrencies, thereby granting full legitimacy for replacement of traditional, centralized fiat. Crypto will therefore absorb the functions of today's fiat.

I agree that it will be some time until even collective awareness and understanding take root, let alone any substantial shift to abstract. Your analogy is very appropriate.

[molecular]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whxTKPvfwDQ

von Nothaus?