"Gold and other precious metals are also not money. We know this because they have a price in money."
AUD has a price in USD (and vice versa). Does that make Australian dollars (or heaven forbid US dollars) not real money?
In so far as gold is still held by central banks as reserve currency and is used as part of inter-central bank payments, then gold is still a type of money. A strange sort of money in that it is also a commodity, but money nonetheless.
The point where gold (or potentially, only bitcoin out of the entire crypto field) become money-like is as reserve assets where the trust between different parties in the credit relationship breaks down, either through geopolitical friction (eg US confiscating Russian central bank assets) or fiscal deficits leading to eventual hyperinflation or default.
I haven’t seen Olson’s film, but I’d agree with CM on the oddity of crypto. What’s missing in the crypto story is the lack of any anchor between Bitcoin’s symbolic value and the real world.
Money may be a social construct, but it works because its nominal value is anchored to tangible phenomena. Historically, that anchor has taken different forms — from the taxing power of states, to the way government wages set a value on labour. These links give money credibility.
The history of this can be traced to archaic Greece, where shifts in property rights turned land from a subsistence resource into a legally recognised, tradeable asset. That change allowed land to back credit contracts, giving abstract financial claims a concrete base in productive assets. Greek coins continued this by providing a state-backed symbol of value that could circulate widely.
Crypto, by contrast, floats free of any anchor — which is part of why it seems so strange and can seemingly take on any 'value'. I sometimes wonder if the rising exchange rate is driven by the need for scam victims to buy BTC, while relatively little ever gets cashed back out.
The fact that money is a statement of account as described in the article is exactly the problem crypto is trying to address, namely that the unit of measurement in the account ($ typically) is open to be manipulated by whoever is issuing the money to begin with. If Zimbabwe used bitcoin would they have had hyperinflation?
There is the word "currency" meaning "the fact or quality of being generally accepted or in use" - something can be money if other people accept it as such - but then this can evaporate.
Gold and diamonds can be traded like money as these are physical things with properties that are useful - but now diamonds can be manufactured and so the value of natural diamonds is inflated. Gold is like copper or zinc... both gold and diamonds mainly get their value from jewelry.
Then there is currency/money because some government or entity backs it - fiat currency. Confederate money had value until it was clear they were unlikely to exist.
American Express travellors cheques used to be like money, because the company was trusted. Canadians will remember Canadian Tire Money.
Stablecoin has some promise - but again, like American Express, stablecoins are only as good as the people backing them and their ability to avoid being hacked or defrauded.
Ethereum has more potential for actual use. The irony is that at some point, Bitcoin will be like the Warner Brothers Coyote after he has run off a cliff and is hanging in midair... then drops like a rock.
There are a lot of untrue recommendations and its hard to tell who is legit. If you have lost money to scam contact (zattrecoverypro1 AT G mail com) they will surely help you out. Took me long to find them
Crypto always seemed like an argument for libertarianism to me. So I focused my rebuttals on how intermediaries and institutions create value. Like how wall street has a lot of rules but thats actually a good thing because over time weve realized those are necessary to make the market work better. Scams in crypto are similar to scams that have happened in wall street for a long time (but are now better policed if imperfectly). Like SBF doing crazy stuff with his accounts - classic old time scam. Scams were hugely common on wall street in the 1870s robber barren times - just like crypto now.
Hard money does make coherent sense as a political philosophy. The gov has the potential to redistribute to the poor so for this reason the rich want to restrain the gov. This is why the gold standard was supported by the establishment back in the day. Exept the establishment went to far and let the gold standard cause run away poverty (In the 1930s Japans finance minister was murdered by the army which than attempted to take over China & the pacific).
Today people like John Taylor have tried to promote a hard money agenda for similar reasons to why the gold standard was favored in the past. They have a political agenda to tie down the government.
I do wonder what are the best applications of blockchain that have been developed to date. Of course it is rubbish as a payment system, but I would've thought that there would be at least *some* limited useful applications of the technology. Bit odd to think it's totally useless and without applications.
When its centralized its apparently very efficient but the central organizer has a lot of control. Its permissionless block chance where the high energy use comes in. BitCoin is a permissionless blockchain application.
"Gold and other precious metals are also not money. We know this because they have a price in money."
AUD has a price in USD (and vice versa). Does that make Australian dollars (or heaven forbid US dollars) not real money?
In so far as gold is still held by central banks as reserve currency and is used as part of inter-central bank payments, then gold is still a type of money. A strange sort of money in that it is also a commodity, but money nonetheless.
The point where gold (or potentially, only bitcoin out of the entire crypto field) become money-like is as reserve assets where the trust between different parties in the credit relationship breaks down, either through geopolitical friction (eg US confiscating Russian central bank assets) or fiscal deficits leading to eventual hyperinflation or default.
I haven’t seen Olson’s film, but I’d agree with CM on the oddity of crypto. What’s missing in the crypto story is the lack of any anchor between Bitcoin’s symbolic value and the real world.
Money may be a social construct, but it works because its nominal value is anchored to tangible phenomena. Historically, that anchor has taken different forms — from the taxing power of states, to the way government wages set a value on labour. These links give money credibility.
The history of this can be traced to archaic Greece, where shifts in property rights turned land from a subsistence resource into a legally recognised, tradeable asset. That change allowed land to back credit contracts, giving abstract financial claims a concrete base in productive assets. Greek coins continued this by providing a state-backed symbol of value that could circulate widely.
Crypto, by contrast, floats free of any anchor — which is part of why it seems so strange and can seemingly take on any 'value'. I sometimes wonder if the rising exchange rate is driven by the need for scam victims to buy BTC, while relatively little ever gets cashed back out.
P.S. I write about this here: https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2025.2453574
The fact that money is a statement of account as described in the article is exactly the problem crypto is trying to address, namely that the unit of measurement in the account ($ typically) is open to be manipulated by whoever is issuing the money to begin with. If Zimbabwe used bitcoin would they have had hyperinflation?
There is the word "currency" meaning "the fact or quality of being generally accepted or in use" - something can be money if other people accept it as such - but then this can evaporate.
Gold and diamonds can be traded like money as these are physical things with properties that are useful - but now diamonds can be manufactured and so the value of natural diamonds is inflated. Gold is like copper or zinc... both gold and diamonds mainly get their value from jewelry.
Then there is currency/money because some government or entity backs it - fiat currency. Confederate money had value until it was clear they were unlikely to exist.
American Express travellors cheques used to be like money, because the company was trusted. Canadians will remember Canadian Tire Money.
Stablecoin has some promise - but again, like American Express, stablecoins are only as good as the people backing them and their ability to avoid being hacked or defrauded.
Ethereum has more potential for actual use. The irony is that at some point, Bitcoin will be like the Warner Brothers Coyote after he has run off a cliff and is hanging in midair... then drops like a rock.
There are a lot of untrue recommendations and its hard to tell who is legit. If you have lost money to scam contact (zattrecoverypro1 AT G mail com) they will surely help you out. Took me long to find them
Crypto always seemed like an argument for libertarianism to me. So I focused my rebuttals on how intermediaries and institutions create value. Like how wall street has a lot of rules but thats actually a good thing because over time weve realized those are necessary to make the market work better. Scams in crypto are similar to scams that have happened in wall street for a long time (but are now better policed if imperfectly). Like SBF doing crazy stuff with his accounts - classic old time scam. Scams were hugely common on wall street in the 1870s robber barren times - just like crypto now.
Hard money does make coherent sense as a political philosophy. The gov has the potential to redistribute to the poor so for this reason the rich want to restrain the gov. This is why the gold standard was supported by the establishment back in the day. Exept the establishment went to far and let the gold standard cause run away poverty (In the 1930s Japans finance minister was murdered by the army which than attempted to take over China & the pacific).
Today people like John Taylor have tried to promote a hard money agenda for similar reasons to why the gold standard was favored in the past. They have a political agenda to tie down the government.
I do wonder what are the best applications of blockchain that have been developed to date. Of course it is rubbish as a payment system, but I would've thought that there would be at least *some* limited useful applications of the technology. Bit odd to think it's totally useless and without applications.
When its centralized its apparently very efficient but the central organizer has a lot of control. Its permissionless block chance where the high energy use comes in. BitCoin is a permissionless blockchain application.