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The problems with the gold standard is we had one and everyone lied about how much gold they had, Causing the lost decade in the 70s/80s. Maybe BRICS will prop

The problems with the gold standard is we had one and everyone lied about how much gold they had, Causing the lost decade in the 70s/80s. Maybe BRICS will propose a solution that uses Blockchain to verify gold ledgers.

adhesive_wombat 4y ago
The ledger is verified but how do you know the gold is really there?
- georgeplusplus 4y ago
  You ask for the counterparty to send it. Historically, the dollar was the ledger and redeemable in gold. Which the USA printed a lot more than it said it did. A ledger would stop this kind of abuse.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    The ledger wouldn't stop the abuse at all. USDT is a ledger. The ledger didn't change at all when Binance's public position moved from "every USDT is backed with an actual dollar" to "well we have a reserve of dollars and some... er ... other assets", and nothing about the ledger tells you if Binance ever had the dollars in the first place.
  - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
    That would only prove that there's enough gold in a pile to send you some. It doesn't prove the entire ledger is accurate. If you're dealing with physical goods, there's always an analogue hole unless there's a (usually centralised) authority standing by to penalise attempts to subvert the system. One can conceive of "for-now-unforgeable" NFT-isation of physical items, perhaps based on random physical phenomena like metal grain patterns, with the fingerprints stored in the blockchain. But this would be expensive and is a disadvantage compared to the "gold in a pile at least as big as we told you" system. And it's still open to kinds of abuse: e.g. you can secretly melt some coins down and recast them into new ones, as long as you can avoid anyone asking to see the "burned" ones, and you can also file fake fingerprints for coins that don't exist, that no one really owns, in the ledger so they won't need to be proven, but they inflate your ledger's value.
Yoric 4y ago
How could blockchain verify anything physical?
- HashBasher 4y ago
  It can't.
- georgeplusplus 4y ago
  I'm not talking about physical verification but the idea that having a public ledger of each countries gold would add transparency. Whenever gold is moved it would be reflected on the ledger for all other central banks to see. The problem with the gold standard era was countries, particularly the USA, claiming it had a lot more gold than it did and you just had to take them at their word. It wasn't until Charles de Gaulle called them out and demanded the physical transfer.
  - Yoric 4y ago
    Not sure what a ledger would change to the problem.
  - CapstanRoller 4y ago
    Ledgers do not necessarily add transparency, because it's easy to document all sorts of fictitious transactions. What you really want are audits.

adhesive_wombat 4y ago

The ledger is verified but how do you know the gold is really there?

georgeplusplus 4y ago
You ask for the counterparty to send it. Historically, the dollar was the ledger and redeemable in gold. Which the USA printed a lot more than it said it did. A ledger would stop this kind of abuse.
- notahacker 4y ago
  The ledger wouldn't stop the abuse at all. USDT is a ledger. The ledger didn't change at all when Binance's public position moved from "every USDT is backed with an actual dollar" to "well we have a reserve of dollars and some... er ... other assets", and nothing about the ledger tells you if Binance ever had the dollars in the first place.
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  That would only prove that there's enough gold in a pile to send you some. It doesn't prove the entire ledger is accurate. If you're dealing with physical goods, there's always an analogue hole unless there's a (usually centralised) authority standing by to penalise attempts to subvert the system. One can conceive of "for-now-unforgeable" NFT-isation of physical items, perhaps based on random physical phenomena like metal grain patterns, with the fingerprints stored in the blockchain. But this would be expensive and is a disadvantage compared to the "gold in a pile at least as big as we told you" system. And it's still open to kinds of abuse: e.g. you can secretly melt some coins down and recast them into new ones, as long as you can avoid anyone asking to see the "burned" ones, and you can also file fake fingerprints for coins that don't exist, that no one really owns, in the ledger so they won't need to be proven, but they inflate your ledger's value.

Yoric 4y ago

How could blockchain verify anything physical?

HashBasher 4y ago
It can't.
georgeplusplus 4y ago
I'm not talking about physical verification but the idea that having a public ledger of each countries gold would add transparency. Whenever gold is moved it would be reflected on the ledger for all other central banks to see. The problem with the gold standard era was countries, particularly the USA, claiming it had a lot more gold than it did and you just had to take them at their word. It wasn't until Charles de Gaulle called them out and demanded the physical transfer.
- Yoric 4y ago
  Not sure what a ledger would change to the problem.
- CapstanRoller 4y ago
  Ledgers do not necessarily add transparency, because it's easy to document all sorts of fictitious transactions. What you really want are audits.