1 November 2021
The most popular and well known of an emerging class of “crypto-currencies,” BitCoin™ is a digital product without physical backing or central controlling authority beyond the parameters of its internal definition. It has been described as a “peer-to-peer” record of solutions to mathematical puzzles known as a “blockchain.”
It has been decried by its detractors as the ultimate fiat, insofar as it has no material backing, and lauded as the savior of civilization as a currency which cannot be inflated without limit, nor controlled by any bureaucracy. Like metals, crypto satisfies many of the necessary criteria of a serviceable currency — it is scarce, it is readily recognizable (to those familiar with it), it is easily divisible, and it is fungible. Even if it neither clinks like metals nor rustles like paper. And it seems to be dependent on modern tech to be recognized and manipulated, but that’s a small problem, as long as the ‘net stays up and electrons continue to race around circuitry.
But metals’ greatest fans remain leery of it, or of it’s smaller subdivision the Satoshi, while many of its boosters earnestly defend it against the criticisms of “goldbugs” and other obsolescent old relics like your genial host.
correspondent TC is particularly passionate, stating that “Relying on metals in the age of the internet is stupid. [Peter] Schiffian goldbugs are cultists worse than the covidiots.” Which invites the question, how am I “worse than the covidiots?” Was it my effort to destroy the economy, murder the elderly, or abuse children? Or simply to squirrel away some secure savings that would survive both regime changes AND power outages? So many crimes. Which did he catch me committing?
correspondent TC responds: “Its [sic] your intransigence in simultaneously raising gold to a holy status while denigrating crypto as funny money. Your comment about a power outage already tells me you don’t know anything about it. Besides if we’re preparing for the end of the world, I have a box of bullets that’s worth more than all the gold in your safe. People like Schiff have just raised the deception to an art form. The comparison to the ‘covidiots’ is the unwillingness to learn, grow, apply logic and reason.“
I appreciate TC‘s refining his definition of my allegedly “covidiotic” misbehavior or misapprehension, but he still raises more questions than he answers, as he goes on to advise me to “[d]o whatever you want with your wealth, just stop trying to tell me crypto is bullshit and gold is magic. They are at best on equal footing, and that’s being generous.”
TC seems to have mistaken my curiosity for an inability to compromise or to learn (“intransigence”), as well as inferring a mysticism (conferring a “holy status” onto the profane) that is antithetical to empiricism. In order for me to “stop” telling him that “crypto is bullshit and gold is magic” I would have to first START. Someone seems to have tapped a well of hostility within him, and he’s vomited it all over me. But I have a generous heart and am willing to leave such emotionalism behind.
Nevertheless, in the spirit of “transigence” I’m eager to learn new things, and generally grateful for correction. So I posed this question to him: Lacking electrical power (including batteries or photoelectric transformers), please explain how I might purchase or spend a Satoshi or two. Can a verifiable “block-chain” be expressed manually? I (mis?)understand that all digital products are ultimately sequences or matrices of ‘nits and noughts. Finally, I advised TC to be wary of assuming that I have (or anyone else has) neglected ANY of the four metals of freedom: gold, silver, copper, AND LEAD!
correspondent TC has so far declined to respond.
correspondent Otmia Unogsy, meanwhile, points out that “crypto currencies DO have a physical backing. The devices you use, mining equipment, computers. All essential physical things in an internet age.” By the same token, of course, F’eral Reserve “Dollars” also have a similar “physical backing.” Their value is supported by the “full faith and credit” of the united States’ military reputation, and their demonstrated ability to obliterate would-be competitors to petro-dollar hegemony. The important difference between “support” and “backing” is convertibility. Remove the support, and the value evaporates, whereas gold and silver retain their value irrespective of the fate of the backing authority. I have silver and gold coins that were issued by extinct governments, and they are still just as valuable as equivalent lumps of metal.
correspondent LR-L offers a few kind words, and adds that he is “a ‘diversify’ guy” himself “with an admitted bias toward the post-collapse value of boxes of lead denominated in grains per unit.” He concludes from my thoughts, and from the various responses that I provoked, that there exists a “need to do a Kickstarter for the Well of Hostility®, although what form that should take is proving a stubborn idea.”