3 ms·

I wonder if governments would take even more drastic measures if currency weakness was driving people into crypto. The US made owning gold illegal in the past.

• brucephillips 9y ago
  Really? When?
  • blang 9y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102
    • joering2 9y ago
      This keeps coming back to HN. What the order ban is actually hoarding the gold. Since each dollar was backed by physical gold, people that hoard physical gold were limiting government with ability to move currency and relese it as soon as needed. Obviously taking us off gold standard fixed the problem (by making US an insolvent nation btw)
      • dragontamer 9y ago
        "Hoarding gold" was defined as having more than 6-ounces of gold (roughly $6500 in 2018 USD) Which basically means gold was dead as an exchange medium after EO 6102. It was illegal to have more than $6500 (today's money) worth of gold / 5-ounces or so, so transactions would have to be way smaller than that!! In 1930s money, 5-ounces of gold was just $100.