Bitcoins

[jasong]

Originally Posted by chalsall

Helium, for example; it's non-renewable, but yet we let children play with it as a toy because its safe.

Off-topic: It's definitely NOT safe if a kid decides to do the squeaky voice trick for more than a minute or two.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by jasong

Off-topic: It's definitely NOT safe if a kid decides to do the squeaky voice trick for more than a minute or two.

Been there. Done that.

And I didn't just have a balloon; I had a cylinder....

[TheMawn]

Dry ice is more fun. Tell a kid to hold onto a piece of dry ice for a while and they'll understand the dangers first hand. Then they can play.


I don't know if I prefer the Gold or Stock analogy for bitcoin. I might have to lean toward gold.

It adds a single element to gold: Highly predictable rate of discovery. Other than that, I think it's more or less the same. No intrinsic value. Speculation only. Mine-able in a sense but often too expensive.

[kracker]

Sure is unstable/unpredictable.
https://crypto-trade.com/trade/btc_usd

[kladner]

NO (nitrous oxide) is entertaining in the opposite pitch direction, among other things.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by kracker

Sure is unstable/unpredictable.
https://crypto-trade.com/trade/btc_usd

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Pro blocks that site, calling it "potentially malicious". I haven't yet figured out an override for the block.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

BTW, my upcoming-holiday reading list includes J.K. Galbraith's Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went. Used hardcover copy - former library book, which I like because it has the extra clear=plastic protective sleeve on the dustjacket - arrived yesterday, total cost including shipping < $5.

A couple of vital pieces of background on Galbraith and "whence he came" in regard to his study of the history of money:

1. From the biographical blurb on back flap: "In World War II, [Galbraith] was principally in charge of price control and thus at the very center of the economic and anti-inflationary strategy of that important time."

2. The above book was published in 1975, thus a few years after the "Nixon shock" and in the middle of the ensuing decade of "stagflation", bookended by presidents Nixon and Carter, and punctuated by another shock, the one resulting from the OPEC oil embargo. The dollar lost over half its purchasing power during that decade.

I'll be posting notable snips from the book as I come across them. If this is judged as being tedious, I'll stop - no point wasting both your and my time.

That the love of money is the root of all evil can, conceivably, be disputed ... What is not in doubt is that the pursuit of money, or any enduring association with it, is capable of inducing not alone bizarre but ripely perverse behavior.

There are good reasons. Men possessed of money, like men earlier favored by noble birth and great title, have infallibly imagined that the awe and admiration that money inspires were really owing to their own wisdom or personality.
...
Money bemuses in another way. Recurrently over the centuries men have supposed that they have mastered the secret of its infinite amplification. And as reliably as they have persuaded themselves of this, they have also persuaded others. Invariably it involves the rediscovery, perhaps in slightly novel form, of some infinitely ancient fraud.

It will be asked ... if a book on the history of money should not begin with some definition of what money really is ... Teachers of elementary economics or money and banking begin with definitions of great subtlety. These are then carefully transcribed, painfully memorized and mercifully forgotten. The reader should proceed in these pages in the knowledge that money is nothing more or less than what he or she always thought it was -- what is commonly offered or received for the purchase or sale of goods, services or other things. The several forms of money and what determines what determines what they will buy are something else again. But that is the purpose of the pages following to reveal.

[jasong]

Originally Posted by TheMawn

It adds a single element to gold: Highly predictable rate of discovery. Other than that, I think it's more or less the same. No intrinsic value. Speculation only. Mine-able in a sense but often too expensive.

I both agree and disagree on the no intrinsic value part. On the one hand, nothing is valuable to 100% of the population. OTOH, gold is something that's consistently valuable in terms of consistently keeping it's value. I would argue that it isn't even a problem when the price goes down, as that tends to mean, indirectly, that it's easier to get a job in an improved economy.

Gold is for those hard times when ONLY the rich have the money.

[cheesehead]

Folks that suggest that gold has no intrinsic value seem to be forgetting that the properties of that metal make it useful in some situations, such as gold-plating pins on electronic equipment for corrosion resistance and flattening into gold leaf and ductility for drawing out into decorative items.

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

Folks that suggest that gold has no intrinsic value seem to be forgetting that the properties of that metal make it useful in some situations, such as gold-plating pins on electronic equipment for corrosion resistance and flattening into gold leaf and ductility for drawing out into decorative items.

A much more expensive and not so reliable solution like the substitutes... (read my post #54 two pages ago...)

[CRGreathouse]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

Folks that suggest that gold has no intrinsic value seem to be forgetting that the properties of that metal make it useful in some situations, such as gold-plating pins on electronic equipment for corrosion resistance and flattening into gold leaf and ductility for drawing out into decorative items.

Right. They should instead say that its price is (far) greater than its intrinsic value. If gold were not used for a store of wealth and for jewelry, etc., its price would plummet but remain positive.