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Short version: Square (now known as Block) has a brand called TBD54566975, which has developed a protocol for "liquidity and asset exchange" called tbDEX. The n

Short version: Square (now known as Block) has a brand called TBD54566975, which has developed a protocol for "liquidity and asset exchange" called tbDEX. The number 54566975 is a Unix timestamp equivalent to Friday, September 24, 1971 10:29:35, which was the end of a meeting between US President Richard Nixon and Federal Reserve Chair Arthur Burns where they effectively decided to take the US dollar off of the gold standard. This ended the Bretton Woods system[1] where various Western countries pegged their currencies to the US dollar, replacing it with a system of free-floating exchange rates. (The actual history is of course somewhat more complicated.) Goldbugs and (apparently now) a lot of crypto enthusiasts consider this to be some kind of mortal sin against the concept of money, and have been telling each other that the dollar is going to collapse any year now every since. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system

jandrese 4y ago
Now that is some laser targeted marketing. A Venn diagram of Gold Standard Libertarians and Crypto Nerds has a whole lot of overlap. Which isn't really a surprise since both offer the chance to horde a resource with limited supply in order to passively gain wealth.
- netsharc 4y ago
  There's this link to an interview with Yanis Varoufakis a few days ago, he mentions the "primitive thinking" of the "Gold standard!" folks https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2022/04/23/discussing-crypto-the-left-technofeudalism-with-evgeny-morozov-crypto-syllabus-long-interview/ https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2022/04/23/discussing-crypto-... HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31133393 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31133393
  - luciusdomitius 4y ago
    If Varoufakis is such a financial genius (with his eccentricity he is either that or a complete retard), then why is the country whose finances he managed the laughing stock of Europe? And why did it become like this on his watch? Disclaimer: I don't think it was all his mistakes that caused it, but his immense stupidity definitely did more harm than help. Anyway, commodity-backed money are back for a good month and they seem to be doing quite well so far. BTW with commodity-backed money you have direct mapping between wealth and environmental impact, thus eliminating the need of carbon-credits, right-to-repair regulations and a million other things.
    - coutego 4y ago
      > but his immense stupidity definitely did more harm than help. Difficult to say. It is now accepted that the management of the Greece crisis and, in general, the 2008 crisis by the EU was horribly wrong. So much so that it almost destroyed it. The reaction to the COVID crisis in 2020 by the EU was exactly the opposite that in 2008, because of the lessons learnt back then. Those lessons became obvious in part because of the "noise" of people like Varoufakis or Paul Krugman, who explained at the time why the EU strategy was a mistake and what should be done instead. Time proved them mostly right. Varoufakis' rock star attitude and insistence to stick to economic theory discussions when debating with people who were just trying to cut their own losses, rather than finding what was the correct thing to do for the common good, was probably not a winning strategy. Nevertheless, from the economics point of view (not the realpolitik point of view) it now looks he was right.
    - netsharc 4y ago
      Hah, the Greek economy was already in shambles before he and his party came to power. If you read his book "Adults in the Room"[1] about his time as finance minister, he was offering (obviously he'd say so) sane suggestions, but the Troika couldn't accept them because they'd lose face politically. E.g. ge wrote that the Spanish finance minister (from a conservative government) agreed in private that the ideas were good, but if he were to ask his parliament to ratify them (the weird EU policymaking meant every country had to agree to the rescue package, the countries would usually follow Germany's lead), the Spanish socialist party would've said "See, debt forgiveness makes sense!" and would've crucified the conservative party in the then upcoming elections. The book even had an appendix about why his and his prime minister's threat of Grexit were not bluffs (using game theory), but there was a marathon late-night discussion session between the Greek PM and Merkel, and at the end of it, it was morning, and the PM got beaten to give up Grexit and accept the Troika's destructive policies. And that's the main point, Varoufakis knew austerity wasn't going to help safe the economy, but the Troika forced Greece into those austerity measures to even continue negotiations. Paul Krugman quoted Matthew Yglesias about how these leftists who got elected in Greece were really serious about fixing their country the way they wanted it, and how Brussels rejected them because they're not part of the clique and don't want to be[2] > In the era of globalization and EU-ification, I think the leaders of small countries are actually in a somewhat different situation. If you leave office held in high esteem by the Davos set, there are any number of European Commission or IMF or whatnot gigs that you might be eligible for even if you’re absolutely despised by your fellow countrymen. Indeed, in some ways being absolutely despised would be a plus. The ultimate demonstration of solidarity to the “international community” would be to do what the international community wants even in the face of massive resistance from your domestic political constituency. But I have a feeling you're not here to learn and be changed of your opinion, you already know you're right, correct? [1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/15/adults-in-room-battle-europes-deep-establishment-yanis-varoufakis-review https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/15/adults-in-room... [2] https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/greece-the-tie-that-doesnt-bind/ https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/greece-the-tie-...
- luciusdomitius 4y ago
  Could you provide some data on those studies?
- shakow 4y ago
  Cryptocurrencies are far from all being in limited supply.
peterpost2 4y ago
Thanks, that's a lot more compact to read
unwind 4y ago
Also, from [1] since I'm fin-blind: A gold bug is someone who expounds the virtues of gold as an investment, and who thinks its price will perpetually increase. [1]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/goldbug.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/goldbug.asp
- roenxi 4y ago
  That doesn't sound right: 1) Obviously the price of gold will perpetually increase - there is an official policy of low single digit annual inflation. The price of everything is expected to perpetually increase unless it an obsolete good. It isn't like gold bugs are even a little unusual in observing this. 2) I thought the point of gold bugs generally to spruik gold as a speculative gamble on the theory it will go up like crazy. Note that as an investment gold does pretty well, it usually posts "real" price gains YoY. Or, for people who believe more in reality, the rock stays about the same and official inflation stats undercall asset price inflation every year like clockwork. Gold bugs are the ones who think that is unreasonably poor performance.
- AdamH12113 4y ago
  Wikipedia[1] has a fuller set of definitions: * An investor or speculator who is very bullish in buying the commodity gold, or similarly themed financial products such as junior mining companies, gold certificates, bullion ETFs, and other derivative instruments related to precious metals. * A person who opposes or criticizes the use of fiat currency and supports a return to the use of the gold standard or some other currency system based on the value of gold and other hard assets. * Someone who considers one commodity, usually gold, "the appropriate measure of wealth, regardless of the quantity of other goods and services that it can buy". * A person, often with views summarized above, that subscribes to conspiracy theories relating to gold and silver, frequently including but not limited to, alleged manipulation of the price of precious metals and the supposed disappearance of gold held by the United States Government at Fort Knox. The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) is a small but prominent promoter of such conspiracy theories within the gold bug community. However, such persons are widely dismissed as cranks and their beliefs as fringe by reputable economists, business leaders and government officials. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_bug#Various_themes_on_the_term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_bug#Various_themes_on_the...
MereInterest 4y ago
> Goldbugs and (apparently now) a lot of crypto enthusiasts I'd put these in the same category. The hype around Bitcoin in the early 2010s was very much focused on it being "digital gold".
- usrn 4y ago
  Maybe to some people? I was messing with it then and the hype felt more like "ssh for money."
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Yeah back then people still thought it could be used as an actual currency. It wasn’t until the seven transactions/second came to the foreground that people started talking about digital gold.
- AdamH12113 4y ago
  I was trying to be as charitable as possible, since "goldbug" is basically equivalent to "crank". I suspect there is a lot of overlap, though.
dragontamer 4y ago
Reminder that owning gold before that time was illegal in the USA. So it's not like gold was a free market under US executive order 6102. Nixon largely was just admitting the truth, that gold / dollar was no longer connected. By removing the dollar/gold peg, US citizens were allowed to own gold again. Goldbugs we're literally illegal before that so it seems really odd to demonize that point in history. The true evil to the history of gold was Roosevelt order 6102, if you really wanted to be historical about it.
b112 4y ago
and have been telling each other that the dollar is going to collapse any year now every since. Now now, there was that one time in '86, where they thought the dollar would hold up. I was there, we had tea.
gwbas1c 4y ago
> and have been telling each other that the dollar is going to collapse any year now every since. The point of pegging a currency to something tangible, like gold, is to increase confidence in the currency. When the currency is pegged, it's much harder to just print money whenever the government wants to. Thus, pegged currencies are safe to do business in because they just won't evaporate overnight. Remember: Currencies come and go, so the dollars, Euro, Yen, ect, will eventually be replaced by something else. Given the US Dollar's status as a reserve currency, it probably won't just "collapse any year now". I'm currently reading "Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail", https://www.amazon.com/Changing-World-Order-Nations-Succeed/dp/1982160276 https://www.amazon.com/Changing-World-Order-Nations-Succeed/... The author, Ray Dalio, carefully explains the signs of when a currency is going to fail.

jandrese 4y ago

Now that is some laser targeted marketing. A Venn diagram of Gold Standard Libertarians and Crypto Nerds has a whole lot of overlap. Which isn't really a surprise since both offer the chance to horde a resource with limited supply in order to passively gain wealth.

netsharc 4y ago
There's this link to an interview with Yanis Varoufakis a few days ago, he mentions the "primitive thinking" of the "Gold standard!" folks https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2022/04/23/discussing-crypto-the-left-technofeudalism-with-evgeny-morozov-crypto-syllabus-long-interview/ https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2022/04/23/discussing-crypto-... HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31133393 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31133393
- luciusdomitius 4y ago
  If Varoufakis is such a financial genius (with his eccentricity he is either that or a complete retard), then why is the country whose finances he managed the laughing stock of Europe? And why did it become like this on his watch? Disclaimer: I don't think it was all his mistakes that caused it, but his immense stupidity definitely did more harm than help. Anyway, commodity-backed money are back for a good month and they seem to be doing quite well so far. BTW with commodity-backed money you have direct mapping between wealth and environmental impact, thus eliminating the need of carbon-credits, right-to-repair regulations and a million other things.
  - coutego 4y ago
    > but his immense stupidity definitely did more harm than help. Difficult to say. It is now accepted that the management of the Greece crisis and, in general, the 2008 crisis by the EU was horribly wrong. So much so that it almost destroyed it. The reaction to the COVID crisis in 2020 by the EU was exactly the opposite that in 2008, because of the lessons learnt back then. Those lessons became obvious in part because of the "noise" of people like Varoufakis or Paul Krugman, who explained at the time why the EU strategy was a mistake and what should be done instead. Time proved them mostly right. Varoufakis' rock star attitude and insistence to stick to economic theory discussions when debating with people who were just trying to cut their own losses, rather than finding what was the correct thing to do for the common good, was probably not a winning strategy. Nevertheless, from the economics point of view (not the realpolitik point of view) it now looks he was right.
  - netsharc 4y ago
    Hah, the Greek economy was already in shambles before he and his party came to power. If you read his book "Adults in the Room"[1] about his time as finance minister, he was offering (obviously he'd say so) sane suggestions, but the Troika couldn't accept them because they'd lose face politically. E.g. ge wrote that the Spanish finance minister (from a conservative government) agreed in private that the ideas were good, but if he were to ask his parliament to ratify them (the weird EU policymaking meant every country had to agree to the rescue package, the countries would usually follow Germany's lead), the Spanish socialist party would've said "See, debt forgiveness makes sense!" and would've crucified the conservative party in the then upcoming elections. The book even had an appendix about why his and his prime minister's threat of Grexit were not bluffs (using game theory), but there was a marathon late-night discussion session between the Greek PM and Merkel, and at the end of it, it was morning, and the PM got beaten to give up Grexit and accept the Troika's destructive policies. And that's the main point, Varoufakis knew austerity wasn't going to help safe the economy, but the Troika forced Greece into those austerity measures to even continue negotiations. Paul Krugman quoted Matthew Yglesias about how these leftists who got elected in Greece were really serious about fixing their country the way they wanted it, and how Brussels rejected them because they're not part of the clique and don't want to be[2] > In the era of globalization and EU-ification, I think the leaders of small countries are actually in a somewhat different situation. If you leave office held in high esteem by the Davos set, there are any number of European Commission or IMF or whatnot gigs that you might be eligible for even if you’re absolutely despised by your fellow countrymen. Indeed, in some ways being absolutely despised would be a plus. The ultimate demonstration of solidarity to the “international community” would be to do what the international community wants even in the face of massive resistance from your domestic political constituency. But I have a feeling you're not here to learn and be changed of your opinion, you already know you're right, correct? [1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/15/adults-in-room-battle-europes-deep-establishment-yanis-varoufakis-review https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/15/adults-in-room... [2] https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/greece-the-tie-that-doesnt-bind/ https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/greece-the-tie-...
luciusdomitius 4y ago
Could you provide some data on those studies?
shakow 4y ago
Cryptocurrencies are far from all being in limited supply.

peterpost2 4y ago

Thanks, that's a lot more compact to read

unwind 4y ago

Also, from [1] since I'm fin-blind: A gold bug is someone who expounds the virtues of gold as an investment, and who thinks its price will perpetually increase. [1]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/goldbug.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/goldbug.asp

roenxi 4y ago
That doesn't sound right: 1) Obviously the price of gold will perpetually increase - there is an official policy of low single digit annual inflation. The price of everything is expected to perpetually increase unless it an obsolete good. It isn't like gold bugs are even a little unusual in observing this. 2) I thought the point of gold bugs generally to spruik gold as a speculative gamble on the theory it will go up like crazy. Note that as an investment gold does pretty well, it usually posts "real" price gains YoY. Or, for people who believe more in reality, the rock stays about the same and official inflation stats undercall asset price inflation every year like clockwork. Gold bugs are the ones who think that is unreasonably poor performance.
AdamH12113 4y ago
Wikipedia[1] has a fuller set of definitions: * An investor or speculator who is very bullish in buying the commodity gold, or similarly themed financial products such as junior mining companies, gold certificates, bullion ETFs, and other derivative instruments related to precious metals. * A person who opposes or criticizes the use of fiat currency and supports a return to the use of the gold standard or some other currency system based on the value of gold and other hard assets. * Someone who considers one commodity, usually gold, "the appropriate measure of wealth, regardless of the quantity of other goods and services that it can buy". * A person, often with views summarized above, that subscribes to conspiracy theories relating to gold and silver, frequently including but not limited to, alleged manipulation of the price of precious metals and the supposed disappearance of gold held by the United States Government at Fort Knox. The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) is a small but prominent promoter of such conspiracy theories within the gold bug community. However, such persons are widely dismissed as cranks and their beliefs as fringe by reputable economists, business leaders and government officials. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_bug#Various_themes_on_the_term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_bug#Various_themes_on_the...

MereInterest 4y ago

> Goldbugs and (apparently now) a lot of crypto enthusiasts I'd put these in the same category. The hype around Bitcoin in the early 2010s was very much focused on it being "digital gold".

usrn 4y ago
Maybe to some people? I was messing with it then and the hype felt more like "ssh for money."
- bombcar 4y ago
  Yeah back then people still thought it could be used as an actual currency. It wasn’t until the seven transactions/second came to the foreground that people started talking about digital gold.
AdamH12113 4y ago
I was trying to be as charitable as possible, since "goldbug" is basically equivalent to "crank". I suspect there is a lot of overlap, though.

dragontamer 4y ago

Reminder that owning gold before that time was illegal in the USA. So it's not like gold was a free market under US executive order 6102. Nixon largely was just admitting the truth, that gold / dollar was no longer connected. By removing the dollar/gold peg, US citizens were allowed to own gold again. Goldbugs we're literally illegal before that so it seems really odd to demonize that point in history. The true evil to the history of gold was Roosevelt order 6102, if you really wanted to be historical about it.

b112 4y ago

and have been telling each other that the dollar is going to collapse any year now every since. Now now, there was that one time in '86, where they thought the dollar would hold up. I was there, we had tea.

gwbas1c 4y ago

> and have been telling each other that the dollar is going to collapse any year now every since. The point of pegging a currency to something tangible, like gold, is to increase confidence in the currency. When the currency is pegged, it's much harder to just print money whenever the government wants to. Thus, pegged currencies are safe to do business in because they just won't evaporate overnight. Remember: Currencies come and go, so the dollars, Euro, Yen, ect, will eventually be replaced by something else. Given the US Dollar's status as a reserve currency, it probably won't just "collapse any year now". I'm currently reading "Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail", https://www.amazon.com/Changing-World-Order-Nations-Succeed/dp/1982160276 https://www.amazon.com/Changing-World-Order-Nations-Succeed/... The author, Ray Dalio, carefully explains the signs of when a currency is going to fail.