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Placing a ceiling on the value of gold is mining technology, and the prospect that if its price gets out of whack for long on the upside a great deal more of it

• natrius 13y ago
  He claims that the ability to pay taxes in dollars and the Federal Reserve's willingness to buy up dollars to maintain their value places a floor on the value of the dollar. I disagree. In a crisis of confidence in the dollar, both factors would fail.
  • ubernostrum 13y ago
    In a crisis significant and widespread enough to crash the dollar or any other government-backed currency you'd like to pick on, it seems likely that there would also be significant disruption to electrical and communication networks, which does not suggest BitCoin is a great thing to hold for that situation. (a similar point is often raised against gold, in that a post-economic-apocalypse world would not immediately have the infrastructure to verify claims like "this is one ounce of pure gold", meaning gold's utility as a medium of exchange would not be as high as suspected by people who buy it to hedge against such apocalypses)
    • natrius 13y ago
      I'm not talking about a hypothetical doomsday scenario. Bitcoin is the crisis. The idea that holding Bitcoin is a better idea than holding dollars is spreading. The more it spreads, the higher the value of Bitcoin will be, and the lower the value of the dollar will be. Eventually, we will hit a tipping point. That's the crisis. That's the hyperinflation.
      • ubernostrum 13y ago
        And aside from wishful thinking, what evidence do you have to back your hypothesis?
        • natrius 13y ago
          None, but it's important to remember that currency is wishful thinking. The value of a non-commodity currency is what people believe it's worth. Trends in the public's beliefs about currency are incredibly significant.