Bitcoin

As it turns out: The dollar's specific utility is as money, too.

You can't eat gold or silver. You can burn it to keep warm. You can't even really fashion primitive tools out of it.

Gold has value because it's shiny and rare. That's it. It works as currency because we (us, you, me, humans, the world) accept it as currency. It's pretty portable, and as you said, easily dividable.

The dollar is valuable also because it's pretty portable and easily dividable. It works as currency because we (us, you, me, humans, the world) accept it as currency. The great news for Americans is we control the world's only dollar mine. ... and we protect it with the greatest military the world has ever known.

How long have the "End Fiat Currency!!!!!" folks been predicting doom and gloom? When will those predictions finally come true?

And were we any safer from economic calamity back when the world embraced the gold standard?

 

As is Bitcoin's, right? I'm not sure why Ragu thinks that gold has utility but bitcoin does not. Pedigree?

 

Gold has universal acceptance as currency; bitcoin doesn't.

 

There was a show about the Bitcoin on NPR.

Monetary experts put the utility value of gold (its value as a material in electronics and industry) at about 20 percent of its market value.

Though gold does have some physical value, most of its value comes from being an accepted form of economic exchange (money).

 

There is also this fun story of a Norwegian man, who bought $27 worth of Bitcoins in '09, forgets about them, then discovers four years later that they're worth $800K+

http://www.uproxx.com/webculture/2013/10/norwegian-man-bought-27-worth-bitcoins-2009-now-800000/

Kicking myself now .... even though I had never heard of it until about 2 months ago.

 

There is an important difference between the sort of scarcity that gold and silver bring vs. the kind of scarcity bitcoins bring. There may only be 21 million bitcoins ever, but it's relatively simple to create functionally equivalent copies. Litecoin and several others have already done so.

 

I'd like to see him actually try to get $800k out of them.

 

Hahahaha. Another one? Seriously?

These are beginning to happen every few months.

"Hey guys, I created this site where you can deposit your completely untraceable, untrackable currency. ... Ooops, we got hacked and it's all gone. Pardon me while I go retire on the millions I earned in a completely unrelated way."

 

There was another story about the guy, which I'm too lazy to look up right now, in which he did cash in about half of his bitcoins for $400K or so in real money.