The conflict between crypto currencies and precious metals

in #bitcoin7 years ago (edited)

The rise of crypto currencies has generated massive wealth and hype all over the world. It has made a lot of people wealthy who normally would never have had a chance in hell under the current system. With the crypto currency market approaching 800 billion dollars as I write this. It's no wonder it has attracted a lot of attention, mostly bad from the financial sector. Bankers and economists all who have a great deal to lose and almost nothing to gain have come out and called bitcoin a fraud and a ponzi scheme. It is not all that surprising as these people are the most powerful people on the planet and maintain that power by controlling the world's money supply and lobbying their respective governments to create laws that all but guarantee their grip on the monetary system grows stronger and stronger. They weave a system of webs and use lingo strictly to confuse the laymen and make him think that high finance requires a genius intellect, multiple college degrees, important sounding job titles and an army of useless parasitic consultants. The average person thinks I couldn't possibly understand all this, I better just leave it all to the pros and the brokers. They will take care of me for sure.
Bitcoin was created in 2009 to directly challenge the banking system after the financial collapse and subsequent bailout of the people responsible for it. Bitoin in all it's glory, for the first time allowed anyone anywhere to securely and anonymously transact with anyone else anywhere on the planet. It gave back power to the people to secure their own funds without having to trust anyone with custody. In an increasing world of electronic espionage buy our govs and corporations it gave us the power over our own data and privacy. Bitcoin was an austrian economists dream come true, a currency capped at 21 million making it truly inflation proof. There is no bars of entry, no fees, no licensing, no brokers, no laws, no consultants, no banks, no confusing language, literally anyone can buy, invest and trade in cryptocurrencies. People havn't had this level of control over their own wealth in decades possibly even centuries.
Then there's gold. Gold has always been looked at as the austrian economist's answer to the kensian economist's debt based inflationary scheme. Gold was seen as having a mostly finite supply, completely fungible and mostly inflation proof. it was always considered by some to be the only real store of value as gold typically doesn't lose its value like paper money with time. Gold bugs tout it's 6,000 year plus history of being used as a currency in almost every civilization that has ever existed on the planet. Anyone can go mine or pan for gold completely anonymously. Anyone can spend or trade gold with some relative anonymity. All these things make gold a pretty good investment in my opinion and so far it lives up to the hype, sort of. But I always wonder why so many gold and silver bugs hate on bitcoin and actually side with bankers on the issue of cryptos. I mean hell weren't we all believers in austrian economics? don't we all agree in libertarian values and that bankers pretty much control all the worlds wealth and power? Don't we agree that these monopolies need to be broken so we can distribute this wealth a little more evenly not through government control and theft but allowing anyone access and complete control over their financial destinies.
So I've come to the conclusion that these gold pushers like peter schiff are really not interested in anything they claim they are. They care about 1 thing only and that is making money. Not that i care, hell I'm all about making money too, it's the fact that they are lying to manipulate a bunch of people with a certain ideology that only what they are selling is not only gonna make them rich, it's gonna save the world too. Guys like Peter Schiff own companies that sell gold, he like banks have a vested interest in u buying his gold. He is selling a pipe dream to enrich himself.
Gold and the gold market is just as phony and complex as the current financial realm. Gold contracts and futures are traded when everybody knows there isn't enough gold in the world to fill those contracts. If u bought gold on paper but u don't actually have that gold in your hand, I hate to break it to you but you dont't own anything but a piece of paper. Peter Schiff will tell you that "oh no, you can buy my gold and u can physically own the gold". That may be true but how much gold can you physically own? How much gold would you want to physically own? What could you do with that gold? Not a whole lot. You could probably sell it for about a third of what it's worth at you local pawn shop. You can't trade it. You can't buy anything at a store with it. These Peter types have this apocolyptic fantasy that all of civilization is going to collapse and then your btc won't be worth anything and we'll all revert back to gold. I even disagree that in the highly, highly, highly, highly improbable event that all of civ collapses gold will be king and not only retain it's value but be the dominant currency. I believe a more useful, divisible and abundant commodity like ammo would hold that title. Gold like everything has no backing. It's value is only what the masses value it at, like everything else, this is how all markets work. Gold may have some use in industry specifically electronics of which more abundant and cheaper metals do just fine. Gold's only backing is the fact that barracuda like people are attracted to shiny things. Gold would be very difficult to transact with as you'd have to break out the forge every time you wanted to make change. Peter says "use my gold card" which is a credit card that supposedly can be used all over the world like btc. Except your gold sits in a bank and when you use that card it simply means you have transfered ownership. You never actually have complete control of the gold. Therefore it can be confiscated, frozen or stolen no different than a bank really.
Honestly I really have nothing against gold but it doesn't compete with bitcoin at all. Gold has had decades to fulfill the promises that guys like Pete have made and it hasn't done anything. Bitcoin on the other hand in just 9 short years has not only grown exponentially. It has sparked a revolution. Banksters and Gov's have blown it off in the past but now are starting to feel the heat from the fire it has created, and you can tell even as they try to act unfazed, they are scrambling behind the scenes to figure out how to put the genie back in the bottle.
Welcome to the revolution!

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