Gold, cats, bitcoins and ...virtual reality

Humans have used various means as currency throughout history. Gold and silver were, traditionally, the most widespread form of currency.

 

 

We currently have in place a monetary system where money is not backed by anything except ...debt. As we go forward we will be dealing more with electronic currency, either centralized or decentralized (cryptocurrencies). Obviously people take money very seriously -no matter what its form is- but what if our money are just ..."game tokens" in a Virtual Reality which we just happen to perceive as real? Does it matter if it's gold, fiat or cryptocurrency? 

I have assembled some thoughts on the issue below - although it's kind of a long read. There's a summary in the end, but you'll miss the reasoning part.

Gold Rush

Most would agree that Gold is fascinating. If you have ever held Gold in your hand it might have "clicked" something within you. Even its weight is mind-bending. When you hold it you realize that something extraordinary is happening right there and then due to the immense gravity pull that is exerted on it. A ball the size of a basketball, created out of solid gold, would weigh 140kg or over 300 pounds. That's the weight of 2 average men. 

The fascination doesn't end with the mind-bending weight: I remember the first time I was prospecting grounds as an amateur prospector when I found my first spec of gold. I was so excited I couldn't believe it. My heart pounded quite faster for what seemed like a spec of dust that weighed literally nothing. 

 

 

Being the analytic person that I am, I wondered where does this "gold rush" feeling comes from? It wasn't normal. And it wasn't an associated expectation that finding gold meant I would also make money from it: I knew the ground doesn't really have economically viable deposits. It was just a spec - and I knew it. So why would I have all this bogus excitement? It didn't add up. This was one of the questions that were bothering me for quite a while. And I knew that others felt it as well when dealing with Gold - even people who spent their lives dealing with Gold and couldn't get over the feeling of excitement. That very peculiar and "anomalous" excitement...

The History of Gold

The anomalies surrounding Gold are too many to count. Notwithstanding ancient Sumerian myths that the human race has been specifically designed (?) by advanced aliens ("Gods"?) to mine Gold, we see that the official storyline isn't very "rational" either...

According to Wikipedia (Metallurgy):

"The earliest recorded metal employed by humans appears to be gold, which can be found free or "native". Small amounts of natural gold have been found in Spanish caves used during the late Paleolithic period, c. 40,000 BC."

So, from all the periodic table, the first metal that humanity used was ...gold. And that was ...42000 years ago (if not earlier - and we haven't yet learned about it). And you also have to factor that Gold is a pretty rare metal (its scarcity in the ground is such that it is measured in the few "parts per billion"). 

Now, seriously, what's the odds for that?

Silver, Copper and Iron

Then we have "anomalies" like humanity finding silver and copper, and according to the timeline, doing so before finding iron. Now, you can be reading about silver and copper all day long, but I can guarantee you one thing: If I send you out in nature in a copper and silver rich site, and say "please can you mine even 0.1 gram of silver or copper and come back" you won't be able to. 

Do you understand what I just wrote? 

You, the man of 2016, won't be able to bring me back not even 0.1 grams. You will face "technical difficulties". And somehow the ancient and primitive men were mining them? 

These metals (especially silver) need extremely counter-intuitive methods of extraction because they are often found as ores that have complex molecular bonds that need to break down in multiple steps in order to get the metal. In some cases chemical leeching processes are involved, or washing with hydrophobic materials. One has to wonder how did the ancients thought of these counter-intuitive and complex methods that a modern man in nature won't even be able to replicate...

 

 

Now, we are supposed to believe that the ancients didn't even know about iron while they were doing high-complexity mining for gold, silver and copper (bronze)... Yet iron is always found near Gold. Or to be more precise: It goes hand-in-hand with Gold (!). It's the black sand from which Gold is extracted during weight separation. 

If you take a small bucket from a river, and move the bucket around, at the bottom of the bucket will be some heavy "black sand" (magnetite and hematite - iron). Below that sand will be specs of Gold (which is 3-4 times heavier than the black sand). So how can you find Gold without finding iron, and how can you smelt Gold without smelting the iron impurities as well? The history we are told clearly doesn't add up.

The Value of Gold

The anomalies of Gold continue when we try to understand its value. If you ask someone, "why is Gold valued through the ages?" the answers you'll get are usually unsatisfactory.

Most will say "it is valued for historic reasons", which is a problematic answer because it is self-referential. Meaning that the further back we go, the less historic reasons there are - but people were valuing gold even when it had no history or very little history.

Some will say it's "the bling effect". Yet gold in its native form is not very spectacular. It's like a potato, a bit more yellow-metallic, usually with black spots (iron) and brown, gray or red dust - depending soil composition. All these ores you see exposed in museums or the Internet - they are not that way when they come out of the ground. These ores have been acid-cleansed with very strong acids to reveal the gold part, remove impurities and become shinier. So native gold has very little bling effect. 

 

 

The weight might have been spectacular to the ancients, but still, when you are fighting for survival they would surely value other things more - things that would be relevant to their survival, tribal warfare, etc etc. A stone that was able to produce fire from friction would be considered way more useful than a gold stone.

And even if we disregard the ancients completely, today Gold's value is at 1300$ per oz.

Why?

Gold is not the most conductive element. Neither thermally or electrically. Silver is.

Gold is not the most reflective element. Silver is.

Gold is not the heaviest element. Osmium is.

Gold is not the most heat-resistant element. Tungsten is.

Gold is not the most corrosion and tarnish-resistant element. Platinum is (can even resist Aqua Regia - a combination of acids that dissolves Gold).

Gold is not as catalytic or re-active as Platinum and Silver are. 

Gold is not producing energy (not radioactive like Uranium)

Gold is not the only colored metal (Copper is also colored)

Gold is not the scarcest metal to extract by quite a margin (>3000 tons per year when other elements are in the range of kilograms or single-digit tons)

One thing that Gold has in its favor, is that its the most malleable. So malleable that it is almost useless and has to be alloyed with other metals in order to gain strength and not bend when used in jewelry or coins.

So... Why Gold? Why isn't ...Platinum, or Silver the element of choice? 

Cats and Kittens

To answer the question on "Why Gold" we'll take a small detour in the nature kingdom...

If you've ever had the experience of pregnant cats you may have noticed that around a month before they give birth, they start searching around for shelter. But how does the cat know that she will give birth and that she needs shelter for her kitten? How does she know what will happen? Her parents didn't tell her. She went to no school, read no encyclopedia, got no education whatsoever on the subject. So, how does she know what is coming and what she must do? Information typically flows in a visible way and there is no visible information flow here. 

There is another anomalous indication: Kittens... When a small kitten (say a month old) wants to pee, they go to the sand and try to dig, then pee and then cover up. Cats like to cover their poo and pee. Or at least they try (when they are too young their brain-feet coordination is too low to do it right). But who told them to do so? How did they get that information - even if they've never seen another cat do that? Most say "instict", but what does that even mean? Where is this behavioral information stored?

Now, you may be asking: "What do cats have to do with anything?"

Cats are a "hint". 

If there is some type of information inside a being that was not deposited by the environment (the mother didn't teach the kitten), then there is some kind of "programming" going on from beyond the environment. This means that cats or other beings may be pre-programmed with certain information. 

So just as the cat is pre-programmed with the knowledge of how to dig the soil and cover it up, we may have been pre-programmed with something else... something like ....valuing gold and silver.

In that case, the questions are "why?" and "by who?". Do you see now where I'm getting at?

Money in the context of a Virtual Reality

If we live in a simulated world / a virtual reality world, then that world needs some kind of currency for the "players". As humans we create online games and these games have in-game currencies as well. So we are familiar with the concept of designing realities with fictional integrated currencies (that are very "real" to the in-game characters, as they allow them to buy things).

So, with this in mind, does it sound far fetched to say that Gold and Silver are the pre-programmed "constants" and they were intended to act as currency for this coded reality? 

But if you are the programmer of this reality, then how do you make people recognize these metals and use them for the intended purpose? You would have to use external means of communicating this information (the "Gods" of the myths directing humans to mine Gold, giving them "fire", giving them advanced metallurgical knowledge to process silver - etc etc). Or you could pre-program the "players" with an "instinct" that draws them to Gold. An "instinct" that makes humans value it inherently. An "instinct" that creates the "gold rush" reaction.

This would also explain why two centuries after the discovery of Platinum, Platinum did not really replace Gold as a monetary asset (note that Platinum has better anti-counterfeiting characteristics due to its extra weight and additional corrosion resistance).

Fiat Money

For the last ~45-50 years money has shifted from a gold and silver backing to a ...paper scheme. Granted, the gold and silver backing was already partial, but it was better than the fiat system we have now.

If we assume the reality programming has Gold and Silver as money of this "hologram" then isn't fiat money violating this programming? 

The answer is no because fiat money was created with the acknowledgement of Gold and Silver as the "money of the realm". Gold was replaced only in the lower-strata (average person) and not necessarily the Elite. The Elite use the paper money to keep gold demand low which allows them to buy more cheap Gold.

 

 

The demonetization of Gold meant that the Gold that was dumped from central banks was bought by someone: People with excess money to spend for investment bought that Gold. 

A few decades ago the Elite saw that Gold production numbers were increasing due to industrial methods and realized that they were going to be diluted in the range of 50% or more within 30-40 years (~1965-2000+). So they had to find a way to buy the Gold produced and preserve or increase their wealth. But there is one huge problem: If the money IS gold, then you need to spend gold to buy gold. But that doesn't work. Spending 1kg of gold to buy 1kg of gold doesn't increase your holdings. You must produce something else to dump it for gold. Or you can replace the Gold=Money equation and give ...worthless paper to buy gold.

So, to sum the fiat system up, it works pretty much like the mirrors and beads that the colonists used on the natives to buy their property. If you are a gold miner, you get a few papers that pretend to be "money" and then you hand over your gold. A very "fair" deal.

Cryptocurrency

So now we are left with Cryptocurrencies... what are they in relation to this Simulated / Virtual Reality?

There are (at least) two perspectives for this:

The first approach would be something like this: Cryptocurrency is honoring the system's "constant" of Gold and modeling its issuance after it - all the while trying to subvert the fiat money system that has de-facto replaced Gold.

The second would go more like that: Cryptocurrency is man's rebellion from within the virtual reality, where man is actively rejecting the programmed money of the realm and its scammy "successor" (paper money). 

 

 

In the first scenario, Cryptocurrencies acknowledge that Gold is king and act as a "trolling" to the fiat system. In the second scenario, Cryptocurrencies do not acknowledge anything and try to replace both Gold and fiat.

It is also possible that due to the varying nature of different cryptocurrencies, they have different "roles" and thus there is no uniformity of (deeper) purpose.

Summary

There are various anomalies regarding the historic "place" of Gold as a monetary medium. These anomalies may point out to this reality being a programmed reality and Gold being a programmed "constant" that defines Gold as the currency and store of value for the "players" (humans) of this "program" (Earth reality). This programming may extend even to the deepest part of our mind as pre-programmed information where we are supposed to value Gold. Fiat money seems to be "against" the reality programming, but in reality it is not. Cryptocurrencies could either be in favor or opposed to the "constants" of this reality program.