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I’ve been hoping we get #3 but with commodities and precious metals. I want a “stable token” that represents barrels of oil, wheat, etc or physical gold, silve

I’ve been hoping we get #3 but with commodities and precious metals. I want a “stable token” that represents barrels of oil, wheat, etc or physical gold, silver, etc. The argument against the gold standard is that there isn’t “enough” to represent money — but I think we’d gain a lot of stability if prices were denominated in a basket of commodities.

causalmodels 4y ago
Not really sure this would work. The problem with physical commodities is that you actually have to store them somewhere.
- tomatocracy 4y ago
  Not to mention that there is already a small industry which does this electronically (LME warehouses) and in a way which is trusted by the largest traders in the business. Why wouldn't you just use that instead?
- hypertele-Xii 4y ago
  Having to store digital crap securely turns out to be a far bigger problem than most people realized. Maybe still less than physical commodities, but let's not pretend crypto is "free" and easy to store and takes up no space.
  - causalmodels 4y ago
    The cost of storing a digital asset be it USD, a futures contract, or crypto is significantly less than paying to store physical goods. I don't see how this is up for debate.
nradov 4y ago
There are already ETFs which hold precious metals and other commodities. But most commodities aren't really "stable" stores of value themselves. Large quantities of wheat or oil can only be stored for a few years at most before they start to rot or decay. Storage is also quite expensive, especially when you run out of big oil tanks and have to charter tankers to hold the overflow.
SilasX 4y ago
They have XAUT and PAXG as ERC20 tokenized gold. Article (sorry if shady): https://www.publish0x.com/journey-to-the-cryptocurrency-ocean/tokenized-gold-paxg-xaut-xyylrgo https://www.publish0x.com/journey-to-the-cryptocurrency-ocea...
landemva 4y ago
>> The argument against the gold standard is that there isn’t “enough” to represent money I hadn't heard anyone seriously say that. What amount of additional gold should be mined to fix this alleged problem? Since there are 84M Litecoin, is LTC 4x better than BTC with 21M? https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/040515/what-litecoin-and-how-does-it-work.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/040515/what-...
lottin 4y ago
> The argument against the gold standard is that there isn’t “enough” to represent money I literally have never heard this argument against the gold standard. What amount of gold would be needed for it to be able to sufficiently "represent money"? And why do you need gold to "represent money" anyway? Isn't gold itself money under the gold standard?
- not2b 4y ago
  During the 19th century, the gold standard led to crazy inflation as new gold was found, followed by crazy deflation as the gold strikes got used up. Farmers were struggling because the money they borrowed to be able to grow crops would drop so much in value by harvest time. This is what William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech was about: he was pushing for the free coinage of silver at a ratio of silver to gold of 16 to 1. This would have increased the money supply (silver as well as gold would be money) and replaced a deflationary environment to an inflationary one. Now, you can argue that this proposal was a gimmick and argue about whether it would have worked. But the point remains that the gold standard as implemented in the 19th century was a disaster for debtors and farmers had to borrow every year, unless new gold was discovered somewhere recently.

causalmodels 4y ago

Not really sure this would work. The problem with physical commodities is that you actually have to store them somewhere.

tomatocracy 4y ago
Not to mention that there is already a small industry which does this electronically (LME warehouses) and in a way which is trusted by the largest traders in the business. Why wouldn't you just use that instead?
hypertele-Xii 4y ago
Having to store digital crap securely turns out to be a far bigger problem than most people realized. Maybe still less than physical commodities, but let's not pretend crypto is "free" and easy to store and takes up no space.
- causalmodels 4y ago
  The cost of storing a digital asset be it USD, a futures contract, or crypto is significantly less than paying to store physical goods. I don't see how this is up for debate.

nradov 4y ago

There are already ETFs which hold precious metals and other commodities. But most commodities aren't really "stable" stores of value themselves. Large quantities of wheat or oil can only be stored for a few years at most before they start to rot or decay. Storage is also quite expensive, especially when you run out of big oil tanks and have to charter tankers to hold the overflow.

SilasX 4y ago

They have XAUT and PAXG as ERC20 tokenized gold. Article (sorry if shady): https://www.publish0x.com/journey-to-the-cryptocurrency-ocean/tokenized-gold-paxg-xaut-xyylrgo https://www.publish0x.com/journey-to-the-cryptocurrency-ocea...

landemva 4y ago

>> The argument against the gold standard is that there isn’t “enough” to represent money I hadn't heard anyone seriously say that. What amount of additional gold should be mined to fix this alleged problem? Since there are 84M Litecoin, is LTC 4x better than BTC with 21M? https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/040515/what-litecoin-and-how-does-it-work.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/040515/what-...

lottin 4y ago

> The argument against the gold standard is that there isn’t “enough” to represent money I literally have never heard this argument against the gold standard. What amount of gold would be needed for it to be able to sufficiently "represent money"? And why do you need gold to "represent money" anyway? Isn't gold itself money under the gold standard?

not2b 4y ago
During the 19th century, the gold standard led to crazy inflation as new gold was found, followed by crazy deflation as the gold strikes got used up. Farmers were struggling because the money they borrowed to be able to grow crops would drop so much in value by harvest time. This is what William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech was about: he was pushing for the free coinage of silver at a ratio of silver to gold of 16 to 1. This would have increased the money supply (silver as well as gold would be money) and replaced a deflationary environment to an inflationary one. Now, you can argue that this proposal was a gimmick and argue about whether it would have worked. But the point remains that the gold standard as implemented in the 19th century was a disaster for debtors and farmers had to borrow every year, unless new gold was discovered somewhere recently.