If the BRICS countries were supremely well-positioned to dethrone the dollar, they would have done so by now--this year's BRICS summit was their 14th such get-together. The economic and political motivations for challenging the dollar's presumed (and greatly exaggerated) hegemony are hardly new forces in the international arena.
While recent events have placed a spotlight on the confluence of corruption that permeates the West's "rules based order", the sobering reality of all currency is that the two primary reasons governments throughout history have debased their currency are war and social spending.
China is unleashing successive rounds of monetary and fiscal stimulus just to prop up their collapsing real estate sector, a reality made worse by their ongoing "Zero COVID" lockdowns.
For its part, Russia is already flirting with expansionist monetary policies with its recent interest rate reductions, even as inflation remains in double digits. That Moscow has a war effort to fund surely plays a role in Russia's adoption of looser monetary policy.
These are not circumstances that give rise to sound money.
While cryptocurrencies are an intriguing proposition, Bitcoin itself is ultimately just an expression of existing fiat currency dynamics, which is why its value has collapsed against the world's fiat currencies even as those same currencies engage in wholesale monetary debasement.
Until cryptocurrencies establish themselves as actual currencies in use as a widely accepted medium of exchange, they will remain forever tethered to the same corrupt fiat currency system crypto fans hope to replace.
"Until" does not equal "forever". Without the "until", however, the consequence is the "forever".
Cryptocurrencies cannot displace existing fiat currencies so long as they are treated as commodity investment vehicles (vis a vis gold and precious metals) rather than the primary unit of exchange for buying ordinary goods. The commodity system that powers current crypto valuations also binds crypto to existing fiat currencies. That link must be severed or crypto will ultimately be just a footnote in the history of money.
While some countries such as El Salvador have dipped their toes into these waters by making Bitcoin legal tender, that trend has hardly caught on, and, given Bitcoin's rollercoaster ride to the bottom of late, it won't be catching on any time soon.
Cryptocurrencies are an intriguing monetary proposition. They are hardly an inevitable one.
Let's hear some of it from the "horses mouth", for the fact is..."All the paper money issued today is Federal Reserve notes. The real backing for the nation's money is faith in the strength, soundness and stability of the American economy."
~ The Hats the Federal Reserve Wears, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, pg 4
Faith is what backs our monetary system. YOUR faith. Do you still have faith?
"When plunder has become a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
~ Frederic Bastiat in "The Law"
"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation,
governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens."
~ 1980 Annual Report, Federal Reserve
Bank of Richmond, pg 6
Isn't confiscation of the wealth of the citizens a nice way of saying STEALING?
Federal Reserve Notes are not federal, represent no monetary reserves and no longer conform to the definition of notes. Failing to state who, will pay what, when or to whom - they ceased to be legal tender notes, (offers of money) over 50 years ago. They are in fact instruments of legalized THEFT.
"Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience." ~ John Locke (1690)
If the money you earn has no value and you are forced through fiat paper legislation to take it for your labor, are you not having your property (labor) destroyed and are you not being reduced to nothing but slavery? Is not the state at war with the people?
5th Plank Communist Manifesto: Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
The Federal Reserve System, created by the Federal Reserve Act of Congress in 1913, is indeed such a “national bank” and it politically manipulates interest rates and holds a monopoly on legal counterfeiting in the United States. This is exactly what Marx had in mind and completely fulfills this plank, another major socialist objective. Yet, most Americans naively believe the U.S. of A. is far from a Marxist or socialist nation.
"The writers of the constitution knew exactly what they were doing when they wrote in Article I Section 10 paragraph 1 'No state shall... make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts. ' People able to barter with gold and silver coin control government and are free. Loss of the right to trade in gold and silver coin enslaves people to the creators of psychological 'money.'":
-Merrill Jenkins, Sr.,
Money - The Greatest Hoax on Earth
"The Federal Government, with the cooperation of the Federal Reserve, has the inherent power to create money--almost any amount of it."
~ The National Debt, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, p. 8
ALMOST? Why only ALMOST? What keeps them from creating ALL they want? You? Me? Your dog? A full moon?
"...Keynes argues that inflation is a 'method of taxation' which the government uses to 'secure the command over real resources, resources just as real as those obtained by [ordinary] taxation'. 'What is raised by printing notes, ' he writes, is just as much taken from the public as is a beer duty or an income tax.' "
- 1980 Annual Report, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, pg 10
China has a digital currency, and it's already a failure. The CCP has the authority and the power to lockdown the entire nation indefinitely, and even with that level of control cannot compel Chinese citizens to use the digital yuan.
The divergent economic and political agendas of the BRICS countries makes it unlikely that group will produce a currency union any time soon, digital or otherwise. There is no Maastricht Treaty in the offing for the BRICS nations.
As I've already said in another comment, the day will come when the dollar is displaced as a leading currency. History teaches us that no empire lasts forever.
However, history also teaches us what it takes for one currency to displace another: rising wealth, power, and influence. Even with the US economy notionally overtaking the British economy as the world's largest around the turn of the 20th century, it was not until after WW1 that the dollar was a major counter to the pound sterling, and it was not until WW2 that the dollar was leveraged into a de jure global reserve status through Bretton Woods.
It took the decades from the formation of the common market until the conclusion of the Maastricht Treaty for the euro to be brought into existence--decades in which the countries of Western Europe steadily built up a global presence necessary to give the euro legitimacy.
Will the BRICS nations repeat that history? That is a possibility. But if it does happen it will be the result of years of political evolution and change, not of an opportunistic arrangement by Russia and China hoping to leverage the economic turmoil in Western Europe to their advantage.
The "dollar" has not existed for over 50 years, for you see, a "dollar" is a weight and measure of a SUBSTANCE not a piece of paper. At one time pieces of paper were circulating that stated this on them. The United States of America has on deposit ONE DOLLAR IN SILVER payable to the bearer on demand. That was a PROMISSORY NOTE that was able to be REDEEMED for the DOLLAR OF SILVER. http://bornagainclassics.com/Books/images/50-story.jpg
Well sort of. A private banking cartel that runs our monetary policy with ties to the Treasury and other branches of "government". The Federal Reserve System, created by the Federal Reserve Act of Congress in 1913, is indeed such a “national bank” and it politically manipulates interest rates and holds a monopoly on legal counterfeiting in the United States. Which is why there is a "law" against "illegal counterfeiting!" This is exactly what Marx had in mind and completely fulfills this plank, another major socialist objective. Yet, most Americans naively believe the U.S. of A. is far from a Marxist or socialist nation.
"The writers of the constitution knew exactly what they were doing when they wrote in Article I Section 10 paragraph 1 'No state shall... make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts. ' People able to barter with gold and silver coin control government and are free. Loss of the right to trade in gold and silver coin enslaves people to the creators of psychological 'money.'":
Why put all the blame on the prostitutes and ignore the johns and pimps? As long as there is an oligarchy, it will always find willing puppets to run gov'ts for its own benefit. If you don't cut off the head of the snake, nothing can be really changed.
Amen ! ...we need DEBT-FREE money almost like Ben and Abe printed, but to put a check on fed overprinting (and spending, a different related topic), I would involve the states using their 10th powers to make sure there was no over/under printing/generating of money and inter-national valuation could be subject to treaty perhaps updated by the hour if necessary !
I don‘t understand your line of reasoning at all. Bitcoin is not fiat. Fiat means „by decree“. Bitcoin is a purely free market alternative to fiat which actually is backed by something, namely the proof of work algorithm. This algorithm controls issuance of new bitcoins and is backed by energy, similar to how you need to extend energy to mine gold.
LOL! True, bitcoin isn't fiat. It's part of a major brain washing scheme to get NO THING to be worth SOME THING. And people are buying it like snake oil. If for instance...if everyone lost their wallet would bitcoin disappear? Apparently yes it would because no one could access it. If the power went off in your country would you be able to use bitcoin? If you couldn't hookup to the internet would your bitcoin be useless? COME ON PEOPLE Wake The F UP!!
Why would millions of users lose their wallet? Even if, that wouldn‘t be the end of bitcoin. And yes, you can even use bitcoin without electricity or the internet, unlike credit cards. There are hardware/paper wallets like https://offline.cash/ or OpenDime that can be used to transfer value.
Go look up the definition for fiat instead of showing everyone how ignorant you are using it that way. Fiat currency is backed by fiat legislation that declares the money to be "legal tender" by government FIAT. Bitcoin does not fit the definition. It fits the definition of IDIOTS "believe" it is worth SOMETHING when it is NO THING to begin with. FIAT: [Latin, Let it be done.] In old English practice, a short order or warrant of a judge or magistrate directing some act to be done; an authority issuing from some competent source for the doing of some legal act.
Earlier in U.S. history, the country's currency was backed by gold and in some cases, silver. (ACTUALLY EARLIER IN US HISTORY THE COUNTRY'S CURRENCY WAS GOLD AND SILVER). The federal government stopped allowing citizens to exchange currency for government gold with the passage of the Emergency Banking Act of 1933. The gold standard, which backed U.S. currency with federal gold, ended completely in 1971 when the U.S. also stopped issuing gold to foreign governments in exchange for U.S. currency.
Since that time, U.S. dollars are known to be backed by the "full faith and credit" of the U.S. government, "legal tender for all debts, public and private" but not "redeemable in lawful money at the United States Treasury or at any Federal Reserve Bank," as printing on U.S. notes used to claim. In this sense, U.S. Fed Notes are now "legal tender," rather than "lawful money," which can be exchanged for gold, silver, or any other commodity.
I believe that the Constitution makes it clear what our "money" should be. And it isn't a NO THING that fluctuates in value. If we were using gold and silver as it demands in Article 1 section 10 we wouldn't be in the situation where some made up BS electronic idea is being used for any kind of transaction. And according to the proper definition of MONEY, bit coin isn't money. IT has to be DURABLE, DIVISIBLE and a STORE OF VALUE. Something that goes from being worth NO THING to being worth 60K and then back to 20K IS NOT something that is a store of value. Gold and silver do not at this juncture in time "fluctuate" in value. A .25 cent silver quarter could buy a gallon of gas in 1964 and it still can if it is converted into Fed Notes or whatever else NO THING that you want to deal with. I suspect you would have been a proud promoter of tally sticks. You may now continue to being a sheep.
First, some data points on your Constitutional argument --
Article 1 Section 10, Clause 1 of the Constitution reads as follows:
"No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility."
The flaw in your Constitutional thesis is that Article 1 Section 10 is a binding upon the STATES. It is not a limitation upon the Congress.
There is room to argue that Section 8, Clause 5 leads to the restriction of money to gold and silver coin:
"To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;"
However, there is also the counterargument presented by Clause 6, which implies the permissibility of paper currency ("Securities"), and therefore by extension even cryptocurrency:
"To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;"
If only governments have the power to establish what is and is not "money", then the rest of your argument collapses immediately--for better or worse, Congress is arguably within its Constitutional authority to establish paper currency, and even convert that currency into fiat currency. That such may not be a sound policy does not preclude it from being a lawful one.
Regarding the remainder of your thesis:
While Bitcoin's success as a store of value is demonstrably problematic, arguing that gold and silver do not "fluctuate" in value is directly contradicted not only by current commodities data on both precious metals, but even by commentaries within Wealth of Nations on the value of gold and silver coin in terms of purchasing power--Adam Smith was quite the data geek, and provides numerous examples of the purchasing power of a quantity of silver being different at different times--i.e., "fluctuating".
A quick sampling of gold bullion futures pricing demonstrates that gold does indeed fluctuate in value.
As for your silver quarter example, that argument is true in some years but not in others.
A 1964 silver quarter contained .1808 tr oz of silver. In January 1997 the highest price for silver was $5.04/tr oz, making the silver melt value of the 1964 quarter roughly $0.91.
Not really. This fork would just be a new cryptocurrency like Bcash, BSV or Bitcoin Gold. All of these „alternative bitcoins“ are trending towards zero.
LOL. Now try the year-to-date chart of the Nasdaq, iron or gold. Everything is trending down this year because we‘re going into an recession. Just zoom out a couple of years. Bitcoin is the best performing asset in history and starting its monetization. It is 40% up since it‘s yearly low. A month ago would have been the best time to buy. Now is the second best.
Arguably, one of the reasons for Bitcoin's volatility is that it is backed by nothing except investor sentiment.
Even the dollar has more substantive backing, as despite the fulminations of many the US government is not likely to just turn its back on the dollar.
The virtue of cryptocurrency is that its mathematical foundations make blatant currency debasement notionally difficult if not impossible. That is a characteristic that crypto fans often argue gives crypto the characteristics of sound money.
While the depiction of Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies as sound money is wildly overblown, the anti-debasement feature of crypto IS a virtue that would do well in a post-fiat currency regime. However, to get to that regime crypto has to sever the commodity links that drive valuations currently and tie crypto to the existing fiat currency regime.
Whether that can occur without a substantial measure of global civil strife and violence is a question yet to be answered (although I suspect strife and violence will prove inevitable).
Free market has never, ever, beem the goal. Maintaining the staus quo is the goal. Rich get richer, poor gets to work more for less until they again are serfs, and the middlemen (the bourgeoisie as the older term is) are kept in perpetual fear of losing what they've got, should they lag or lapse in devotion to the Lords of Capitalism, and in equal perpetual greed and ambition in the hope of being uplifted to the lofty ranks of the Masters - the proverbial donkey pulling a cart through chasing a carrot on a stick.
In a free market, I could hop a plane to China, buy a steamer trunk full of brand spanking new smartphones for less than 1/10 what the price is here, fly back and sell them on the curb.
But that would undercut the owners of production, capital, money, and so on. So they instead use the state as their corporate police force to keep profits up and people down.
Leaving the people of any nation the only options: comply, or unite around something outside the control of the corporate capitalists and their "democratic" Kapos. Nation. Creed. Race. Culture. Tradition. Unfortunately, capitalists are very good at using these to sow dissention - witness political correctness, woke, and so on. Are you black if you vote Trump? Are you a real Democrat if you don't like Biden? Fallacy upon fallacy to create strife and dissention - not even the Golden Apple created as much chaos and fighting.
As a non-american watching and listening from the outside, to me it appears you are finally becoming a nation and a people. You have an ideal of what American the person is, but that ideal is to the people of your nation something quite different than it is to your corporate and political masters. To me, saying "an arab can never be a swede" is natural and right, since the only way to become a swede (or an arab for that matter) is to be born one. But American? Again, as an outsider, an American to me has no skincolour in particular, no specific faith, and no unique tradition except what has amalgamated from all the consitituent peoples origins.
But now your elites have for 50 years emphasised difference. Different everything. Smaller and smaller tribes, each more doctrinaire than the other. Europeans, africans and asians - we have all seen this in our respective histories when rulers have played empire: but your rulers are doing it to you for the only reason of keeping you splintered and at loggerheads.
The problem with your statement is the use of the word capitalism the way you are using it. We do not and have not had free market capitalism in our lifetime. We have crony capitalism which is what you are describing. True FREE MARKET capitalism was what you said at first..."In a free market, I could hop a plane to China, buy a steamer trunk full of brand spanking new smartphones for less than 1/10 what the price is here, fly back and sell them on the curb." BTW, what is a "steamer trunk"?
which is why they want us disarmed because since there are way many more of us than "them" we can also separate them from their bodies which does not bode well for them. And I say, let the separating begin! Start with Klaus Schwab that piece of human shit.
OK. Pretend I'm a really bright kindergartner. Explain how Bitcoin attains value, who controls it, etc. etc. etc. Why should I trust it more than anything else? (This isn't snark or anything near it. Take me by the hand and explain it so it makes sense to me.)
Well, I've tried to explain it to my kindergartner, so here goes...
Assuming you already know a little about the history of money, you probably know about the gold standard from years past and the fiat standard we use today. Gold was used as money for several reasons. It does not corrode, is hard to produce, and is saleable across time, which means that it stores its value for a long time and can buy roughly the same things in the future that it can buy today. But it is hard to move around, so it is not very saleable across space.
Fiat money solved the problem of saleability across space. It is really easy to move around, and as you know, money today is basically a number in your bank account. When you want to move money somewhere else, you tell your bank to subtract from the number in your account and add it to another person's account. The number stores economic value which you can use later to buy things. Unfortunately, fiat money is very easy to make, so governments inflate the currency, meaning it does not have good saleability across time.
Bitcoin solves the problems of saleability across time and space. You can easily move it across borders, but there is only a fixed amount that can be made (21 million), so it can retain its value over time. Like storing money in a bank, bitcoin is a number with economic value stored in your "account", which is an address in a network. Where banks are run by imperfect people on a centralized network (with the central bank monitoring all transactions), the bitcoin network runs with cryptography on a decentralized network.
Banks verify payments with imperfect people that you have to trust. The nodes on the bitcoin network are computers owned by imperfect people, but payments are verified through cryptography and do not require any trust. The bitcoin network is the most secure network on Earth. It is a remarkable invention built on blockchain technology that requires something called "proof-of-work" to verify transactions, which makes it virtually impossible to hack. Once the bitcoin is in your "account", no one can take it but you, as long as you have your "key" to access it.
In short:
Gold's ability to store economic value is ensured by its physical characteristics.
Fiat money's ability to store economic value is ensured by government.
Bitcoin's ability to store economic value is ensured by cryptography.
This is by no means a perfect explanation, but hopefully it is a decent intro :)
This was beautifully clear until we got to Bitcoin...
Bear with me as I try to confirm my understanding here, and you can fix my flawed interpretations. Cryptography is just really a form of writing or language, yes? Very smart people created this blockchain technology and surely, at some point or other, very smart people can figure out how to corrupt it?
Who set the 21 million figure, and how to assign value to it? Isn't the value based on a sort of equivalence to other arbitrary values? What happens if those computers crash?
I'm always bemused at how empires were run starting thousands of years ago by men with scratchy-tooly thingies making marks on markable thingies and thereby moving value across the world. This still seems to be that, in a fancier way.
I appreciate very much that you responded to my question and I'd love to be able to understand further the concept and its security here.
Your questions about bitcoin shows you are using reason, logic and common sense to come to a critical thinking position, UNLIKE those who are bit coin advocates. They have FAITH. which is not based on reason, logic or common sense. They say I HAVE FAITH that only 21 million will ever exist. I HAVE FAITH that the power grid will stay on forever and that computers won't crash. I have FAITH that no one will hack or corrupt this hackable corruptible idea! You on the other hand haven't left your reason, logic and common sense at the threshold of the bit coin church.
Bitcoin can be tricky to wrap your head around. I am by no means an expert, so I am also still learning :)
Cryptography is not a language as much as a lock and key technology. You use algorithms to scramble data and generate a key so that only those with the key can access the data.
The reason that the bitcoin blockchain is so unique is because the method it uses to encrypt information is nearly impossible to hack. Yes, in theory, you can break into anything and corrupt it, but you would need an enormous amount of time and resources. Each block on the blockchain is stored in every node, so computers crashing is not an issue. You can even run a node and download the blockchain on your home computer, though I don't recommend that since there are special computers designed to run as nodes.
Satoshi Nakamoto was the anonymous creator of bitcoin, and I honestly don't know why he chose 21 million, but I do know he wanted to cap the supply.
In the beginning, bitcoin had no value. It was merely units on a ledger. However, at some point, for some reason, people on the bitcoin network began trading bitcoin for other things. As more and more people recognized its value in making sales across space and across time (like I mention in the previous comment) it steadily became more valuable to people. This is where the issue of how bitcoin is valued is confusing. We give things value because they fulfill a need. No one honestly really knows specifically why bitcoin has value as a money. Is it because it is easy to transfer across borders? Maybe. Is it because it is a currency that is not inflationary? Maybe. But we do know that for whatever reason, people give it value because of what it can do. That's not a very satisfying answer for most people, but the reality is that it went from $0.00 to ~$380 billion in 14 years, so it is clearly doing something right.
I think your intuition is right with the comment about empires being run by men with scratchy-tools XD Bitcoin essentially is a technology to accomplish that very thing: moving value across the world and storing it in a secure place for future exchange.
Thank you for your patience! Especially because I feel very toddler-like, compelled to keep asking "why?"!
Who controls those secure computers (which are sort of like oil jars in caves)?
Algorithms are math and math is a language, yes?
I wish there was a magic answer to powerful people, everywhere throughout time, devising and controlling the means which non-powerful people must use to pay for needs. I'm not quite ready to trust that someone managed to provide it, entirely without hidden costs of its own.
And I appreciate anyone taking time to answer my questions. These matters are an alien world to me, and I often feel a bit wistful, out here with my nose pressed against the window of the candy shop, knowing something quite tasty must be inside but I haven't the--uh--coin with which to enter.
One addition: I think the reason why bitcoin is often demonized, e.g. as a climate killer or a tool for criminals, is that it is beyond the control of the fiat elite.
No person in bitcoin is powerful enough to change it without majority consensus. And yes, they tried (google „blocksize wars“). If you change the bitcoin algorithm in a way that is not accepted by the majority of the bitcoin nodes, all you get is a new cryptocurrency that is a fork of bitcoin, but not the real bitcoin.
The cool thing about bitcoin is that everyone can run one of these computers that secure the network. All you need to do is to download some software code. These secure computers are called nodes.
Additionally, everyone with a computer can take part in the process of creating new bitcoins through the proof of work algorithm (called mining), but you need specialized equipment and cheap energy to do it profitably. Currently it is estimated to cost $12k to $20k to produce a new bitcoin, while bitcoin price is at $24k.
At the very least, we need to take back control of the money supply from central banks. It would then be an easy matter for the Treasury to issue money (e.g. greenbacks) that is debt free. The root of our money problems lies in the central bankers's profit motive, and the interest we pay on the debt is used to control and enslave us all.
That is not really how our monetary system works. The only backing our fiat system has is treasuries. Just look into the balance sheets of Fed and commercial banks. The pristine collateral is treasuries. This means that in this ponzi scheme that is fiat currency, the only way to stimulate more growth is more government debt.
As I understand it, Lincoln and his Treasury Secretary issued greenbacks to finance the Civil War. They were backed only by the full faith and confidence of the Government. There was no debt backing of these greenbacks, and no interest payments.
We have been conditioned to believe that government spending must be financed by debt. Bankers want us to believe that, but it's not true.
And you would have us believe that government spending can be backed by nothing but "because we said so". Why not just have the government issue notes demanding a portion of your resources, labor, and time with no promise of you getting anything in return? Issuing money backed by nothing is theft. At least in Fuedal systems the aristocratic rulers where honest about the fact that they could claim any resources that the population might have. This idea is MMT nonsense, and BTW, The Soviet Union, Cuba, and North Korea operated their economies under what is essentially MMT.
The only problem with your thesis is the dollar has strengthened against all major currencies the past several years. Simply supply and demand, and more people want the dollar than the yen, euro, or pound for whatever reason. Doesn't need to make sense.
The high demand of the dollar is due primarily to the fact that OPEC only accepts dollars for oil purchases. This is one reason why China runs a trade surplus and buys up US treasuries. I touch on the petro-dollar system with regards to the decline of American manufacturing here:
It's true that there has been talk about about a new global currency for a while with nothing to show for it. What is different this time around is the crisis in Ukraine and the Western sanctions on Russia. By crippling their own domestic energy production and alienating the Russians, the West is pushing Russia further into the arms of China, thus shifting the balance of power eastward. I'm not sure if anything will come out of BRICS specifically, but major countries know they can contest America's power by looking for new ways to pay for oil without using dollars. Russia's alienation opens that door. I would not expect a new reserve currency to appear overnight, but it would not surprise me if major countries mount a more serious effort to challenge dollar hegemony in the near future.
While the 1974 secret agreement with Saudi Arabia did result in Saudi Arabia plowing oil revenues into US Treasuries, OPEC has since 2016 been "OPEC+", with the "+" being primarily Russia, which is the world's largest exporter of oil products. Russia's price/production dispute with Saudi Arabia in 2020 underscores Russia's growing influence within that cartel. Russia's insistence on being paid in rubles for its energy exports to Europe and elsewhere also underscores its economic muscle in energy markets. And Russia has largely avoided US Treasuries since 2018.
Where the major threat to the petrodollar system lies is not in any rapprochement between Russia and China (which is not exactly a new phenomenon but has been building since the fall of the Soviet Union, and will likely continue until the two countries eventually collide in competition for Asian resources) but Russia's dominance within the OPEC+ cartel--a dominance which is already a fait accompli.
However, for any successor to the petrodollar system to unfold, there has to be a capital marketplace for the OPEC+ nations to invest oil revenues. Moscow doesn't have that, and China's markets, while growing, have significantly underperformed over the past five years relative to the US, Europe, Japan, and even India.
Thus, with Russia's war effort in Ukraine consuming an unknown portion of Russian GDP, and China's economy in an even more parlous state than the US, the BRICS talk of a "new global currency" is at this point more wishful thinking than anything else. The BRICS group of nations is simply not in a position today to roll out a credible new currency vis-a-vis the euro, and the two mainstays of that group, Russia and China, are facing some pretty significant economic headwinds in the near term (while Russia's economy nominally is doing well, wars have always been a net drain on a country's resources, and I highly doubt Ukraine will prove any different for Russia). BRICS is not likely to be in a position to challenge dollar hegemony for a number of years at least; the foundation just isn't there yet.
Ultimately, as others have speculated as well, just as the geopolitical situation is shifting to a multipolar situation, in the event of the dollar's loss of hegemonic status the world's currencies are likely to shift to a multi-reserve currency arrangement, where no one currency achieves the hegemonic status accorded the dollar--or at least attempt to do so. How fiat currencies function in a competitive multipolar political environment is a question yet to be answered.--I suspect the answer will be some variation of "not well".
Which may be the best and strongest reason for the dollar to continue in its current position for a bit longer than many suggest--the likely alternative is not a new currency hegemon but global currency chaos.
The dollar's recent strengthening against other major currencies highlights a reality that many simply refuse to acknowledge: The dollar's mythic "global reserve currency" status is more fantasy than fact.
While the dollar does comprise a significant portion of foreign currency reserves for a number of countries, it is not the currency most frequently used in the SWIFT international bank messaging system. The euro holds that distinction.
Moreover, the dollar's "global reserve" status is largely the result of the de jure declaration of the dollar as the global reserve currency in the 1944 Bretton Woods agreements, which established formal exchange rates for other currencies in terms of the dollar, while the dollar maintained a $35/t oz gold peg. However, Bretton Woods collapsed in 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window, and its successor, the Smithsonian Agreement, fell apart by 1973, when the world embraced fully floating exchange rates. Since that time, there are neither political nor legal restrictions barring the introduction of another currency to occupy the hegemonic slot notionally enjoyed by the dollar.
Will a currency eventually arise to dethrone the dollar as a leading global currency? Almost certainly. However, it will happen not because of a moment of political maneuvering in a time of global crisis, but because the backer of said currency has established itself as having the military, political, and economic gravitas to justify a measure of confidence in its stability.
Dethroning the dollar, just as when the dollar dethroned the pound sterling, will happen organically or not at all.
In the future, when you go to trade some of that gold or sterling for thirty rounds of 5.56 ammo, and you ask "How much," the dealer is liable to say "All of it."
There‘s a simple reason for that. Other countries, especially Europe and Japan are in much further in the death spiral of their economies and, hence, their currencies.
Jordan, the founding fathers DID seperate the money from the state in actuality. As Merrill Jenkins has stated in his book, "Money The Greatest Hoax on Earth", "The writers of the constitution knew exactly what they were doing when they wrote in Article I Section 10 paragraph 1 'No state shall... make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts. ' People able to barter with gold and silver coin control government and are free. Loss of the right to trade in gold and silver coin enslaves people to the creators of psychological 'money.'":
-Merrill Jenkins, Sr.,
Money - The Greatest Hoax on Earth
Note his statement... BARTER with gold and silver coin... Let me say this...
That is why I post this quite regularly. And I know it is a bit of a read but it is WHY we are in the predicament we are in right now.
There is a reason that "they" don't listen to the people anymore. It is also the reason they ignore the provisions of the 2nd amendment. The reason is that the lynch pins to the Constitution were removed in 1903 & 1913. In 1903 the blatantly UNconstitutional Dick Act, which was a blatant act of TREASON, eviscerated states rights with the ending of STATE militias. Those first 13 words of the 2nd Amendment are perhaps the most IMPORTANT 13 words in the whole Constitution. A well regulated MILITIA being NECESSARY for the SECURITY of a FREE State. It is the ONLY place the word NECESSARY is used in the Bill of Rights.
And once that happened it became easier to do what they did in 1913. Which was removing the monetary system from the hands of We The People.
Once the control of the monetary system was taken from the people and those in control could create all they wanted out of thin air with the collusion of the Federal Reserve, none of what we think matters anymore. None of what we do matters anymore. ESPECIALLY since we don't have the MILITIAS to enforce the Constitution.
They have effectively enslaved the world to their fiat money systems based on nothing that they create out of thin air and are able to use to do whatever they want. We have no say in what they do. They control us because they have stolen the lynch pins to the system that was designed by our founding fathers to work. No, it was not perfect, as mankind is not perfect, but it gave us a very limited government that was taken away from us when the monetary pin was stolen in 1913. You see, Article 1 Section 10 and Article 1 Section 8 and the first 13 words of the 2nd Amendment ARE what hold the whole governmental apparatus together. Without it, we are nothing but serfs on a plantation that they control with their fiat unlawful, unGodly, theft system of paper money backed by nothing, created out of thin air with no recourse.
Understand, that when the money had SUBSTANCE of SOME THING, and not just IMAGINATION, one of the recourse's we the people had was to withhold taxes which could effectively shut the government down if they were engaged in some sort of insanity that no one agreed upon. Today, we could all quit paying them and they would just print up what they needed and thumb their noses at us. Worse yet, they create it without even printing. They just create numbers on a computer and print out checks.
COMMUNIST MANIFESTO:
Fifth Plank: Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. (The Federal Reserve Bank, 1913- -the system of privately-owned Federal Reserve banks which maintain a monopoly on the valueless debt "money" in circulation.) And the monopoly is ENFORCED by Federal firepower. Violating the very principle of the first 13 words of the 2nd Amendment.
The Federal Reserve is a blatant violation of Articles 1 section 8 and 10. Those are the two places that Roger Sherman, the founding father that signed all three of our founding documents put paper money in a casket and for all intents nailed it close. But due to the apathy of earlier generations their progeny are suffering under this sick theft system.
What are those two provisions? The Federal reserve "notes" violate Article 1 section 10 of the US Constitution which states in part, No State shall...coin Money; ... make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts. And section 8 says CONGRESS shall have the power to COIN MONEY, regulate the value there of and to fix a standard of weights and measures. COIN doesn't mean paper money. COIN doesn't mean gold or silver "backed" paper money. COIN MEANS WHAT IS SAYS!
Sadly enough, with a little research you can see the United States is a functional communist country with all 10 planks of the Communist Manifesto in place. And it has been that way for many years. And that most Americans would fight to the death to keep it that way. Voting is a joke, writing your CONgressman/woman/it is also a joke, (heavy on the CON) almost anything we do is a JOKE TO THEM because THEY control the MONEY, or should I say TOKENS.
If we were using the gold and silver coin that the founding father, Judge Roger Sherman had wanted, the prices of goods and services would actally go down due to the law of supply and demand. Think about it. And if you want to read WHY Judge Sherman made sure the monetary clauses were placed in the Constition, read his Caveat against a fluctuating medium of exchange. A Caveat Against Injustice, or an Inquiry Into the Evils of a Flucuating medium of Exchange released by Spencer Judd Publishers many years ago.
If you think the $ is toilet paper then BRICS is a corn cob and Bitcoin is a photo of a corn cob. Conceptually digital blockchain currency is a solution but sadly Bitcoin has already been highjacked by the Chinese. See "The End of the World Is Just Beginning", by Peter Zeihan.
The FED has been creating $$$ to fund the overseas Central Banks, buy assets/bonds/ bailout the big banks, and keep the REPO markets going. It is an artificial rigged system. Moreover the FED is akin to the Mafia, it takes it cut from money printing and the rest of the profits go back to the Federal government. So if the FED takes in say 500$Billion in interest payments, the FED takes 6% and the rest goes back to the government , meanwhile the public is said to owe $trillions. We are on the verge of modern monetary theory whereby tokens will be handed out directly from the Federal government/FED and the big banks will be bypassed as the Bond buying scheme will end.
If the BRICS countries were supremely well-positioned to dethrone the dollar, they would have done so by now--this year's BRICS summit was their 14th such get-together. The economic and political motivations for challenging the dollar's presumed (and greatly exaggerated) hegemony are hardly new forces in the international arena.
While recent events have placed a spotlight on the confluence of corruption that permeates the West's "rules based order", the sobering reality of all currency is that the two primary reasons governments throughout history have debased their currency are war and social spending.
China is unleashing successive rounds of monetary and fiscal stimulus just to prop up their collapsing real estate sector, a reality made worse by their ongoing "Zero COVID" lockdowns.
For its part, Russia is already flirting with expansionist monetary policies with its recent interest rate reductions, even as inflation remains in double digits. That Moscow has a war effort to fund surely plays a role in Russia's adoption of looser monetary policy.
These are not circumstances that give rise to sound money.
While cryptocurrencies are an intriguing proposition, Bitcoin itself is ultimately just an expression of existing fiat currency dynamics, which is why its value has collapsed against the world's fiat currencies even as those same currencies engage in wholesale monetary debasement.
Until cryptocurrencies establish themselves as actual currencies in use as a widely accepted medium of exchange, they will remain forever tethered to the same corrupt fiat currency system crypto fans hope to replace.
Why does "until" equal "forever" in your last sentence? I thought "The End of History" was a failed theory.
"Until" does not equal "forever". Without the "until", however, the consequence is the "forever".
Cryptocurrencies cannot displace existing fiat currencies so long as they are treated as commodity investment vehicles (vis a vis gold and precious metals) rather than the primary unit of exchange for buying ordinary goods. The commodity system that powers current crypto valuations also binds crypto to existing fiat currencies. That link must be severed or crypto will ultimately be just a footnote in the history of money.
While some countries such as El Salvador have dipped their toes into these waters by making Bitcoin legal tender, that trend has hardly caught on, and, given Bitcoin's rollercoaster ride to the bottom of late, it won't be catching on any time soon.
Cryptocurrencies are an intriguing monetary proposition. They are hardly an inevitable one.
Ride to the bottom? Those tokens are still worth a small fortune, despite the nonstop disparagement.
A ~50% YTD loss in value against the dollar, the yuan, and the euro for both Bitcoin and Ethereum makes "ride to the bottom" an apt description.
https://www.google.com/finance/quote/BTC-USD?comparison=BTC-CNY%2CBTC-EUR%2CETH-USD%2CETH-CNY&window=YTD
Oh well, the USD has lost 27% vs. a stick of butter this year. Change happens.
Let's hear some of it from the "horses mouth", for the fact is..."All the paper money issued today is Federal Reserve notes. The real backing for the nation's money is faith in the strength, soundness and stability of the American economy."
~ The Hats the Federal Reserve Wears, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, pg 4
Faith is what backs our monetary system. YOUR faith. Do you still have faith?
"When plunder has become a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
~ Frederic Bastiat in "The Law"
"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation,
governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens."
~ 1980 Annual Report, Federal Reserve
Bank of Richmond, pg 6
Isn't confiscation of the wealth of the citizens a nice way of saying STEALING?
Federal Reserve Notes are not federal, represent no monetary reserves and no longer conform to the definition of notes. Failing to state who, will pay what, when or to whom - they ceased to be legal tender notes, (offers of money) over 50 years ago. They are in fact instruments of legalized THEFT.
"Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience." ~ John Locke (1690)
If the money you earn has no value and you are forced through fiat paper legislation to take it for your labor, are you not having your property (labor) destroyed and are you not being reduced to nothing but slavery? Is not the state at war with the people?
5th Plank Communist Manifesto: Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
The Federal Reserve System, created by the Federal Reserve Act of Congress in 1913, is indeed such a “national bank” and it politically manipulates interest rates and holds a monopoly on legal counterfeiting in the United States. This is exactly what Marx had in mind and completely fulfills this plank, another major socialist objective. Yet, most Americans naively believe the U.S. of A. is far from a Marxist or socialist nation.
"The writers of the constitution knew exactly what they were doing when they wrote in Article I Section 10 paragraph 1 'No state shall... make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts. ' People able to barter with gold and silver coin control government and are free. Loss of the right to trade in gold and silver coin enslaves people to the creators of psychological 'money.'":
-Merrill Jenkins, Sr.,
Money - The Greatest Hoax on Earth
"The Federal Government, with the cooperation of the Federal Reserve, has the inherent power to create money--almost any amount of it."
~ The National Debt, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, p. 8
ALMOST? Why only ALMOST? What keeps them from creating ALL they want? You? Me? Your dog? A full moon?
"...Keynes argues that inflation is a 'method of taxation' which the government uses to 'secure the command over real resources, resources just as real as those obtained by [ordinary] taxation'. 'What is raised by printing notes, ' he writes, is just as much taken from the public as is a beer duty or an income tax.' "
- 1980 Annual Report, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, pg 10
If BRIC are planning to use their own digital currencies & they are widely accepted they could make a claim on world reserve
China has a digital currency, and it's already a failure. The CCP has the authority and the power to lockdown the entire nation indefinitely, and even with that level of control cannot compel Chinese citizens to use the digital yuan.
The divergent economic and political agendas of the BRICS countries makes it unlikely that group will produce a currency union any time soon, digital or otherwise. There is no Maastricht Treaty in the offing for the BRICS nations.
So will the dollar will continue to reign strong? With no challengers?
As I've already said in another comment, the day will come when the dollar is displaced as a leading currency. History teaches us that no empire lasts forever.
However, history also teaches us what it takes for one currency to displace another: rising wealth, power, and influence. Even with the US economy notionally overtaking the British economy as the world's largest around the turn of the 20th century, it was not until after WW1 that the dollar was a major counter to the pound sterling, and it was not until WW2 that the dollar was leveraged into a de jure global reserve status through Bretton Woods.
It took the decades from the formation of the common market until the conclusion of the Maastricht Treaty for the euro to be brought into existence--decades in which the countries of Western Europe steadily built up a global presence necessary to give the euro legitimacy.
Will the BRICS nations repeat that history? That is a possibility. But if it does happen it will be the result of years of political evolution and change, not of an opportunistic arrangement by Russia and China hoping to leverage the economic turmoil in Western Europe to their advantage.
The "dollar" has not existed for over 50 years, for you see, a "dollar" is a weight and measure of a SUBSTANCE not a piece of paper. At one time pieces of paper were circulating that stated this on them. The United States of America has on deposit ONE DOLLAR IN SILVER payable to the bearer on demand. That was a PROMISSORY NOTE that was able to be REDEEMED for the DOLLAR OF SILVER. http://bornagainclassics.com/Books/images/50-story.jpg
No they don't care about us Jordan that’s correct.
They aren't noble either & I’ve been saying this for a very long time -
they hate us & spit in our faces.
Let's change that. We can do it if we simply consent as a collective to this:
http://pppway.net/#Vision
The Federal Reserve is a private banking cartel.
Well sort of. A private banking cartel that runs our monetary policy with ties to the Treasury and other branches of "government". The Federal Reserve System, created by the Federal Reserve Act of Congress in 1913, is indeed such a “national bank” and it politically manipulates interest rates and holds a monopoly on legal counterfeiting in the United States. Which is why there is a "law" against "illegal counterfeiting!" This is exactly what Marx had in mind and completely fulfills this plank, another major socialist objective. Yet, most Americans naively believe the U.S. of A. is far from a Marxist or socialist nation.
"The writers of the constitution knew exactly what they were doing when they wrote in Article I Section 10 paragraph 1 'No state shall... make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts. ' People able to barter with gold and silver coin control government and are free. Loss of the right to trade in gold and silver coin enslaves people to the creators of psychological 'money.'":
-Merrill Jenkins, Sr.,
Money - The Greatest Hoax on Earth
Well said.
Why put all the blame on the prostitutes and ignore the johns and pimps? As long as there is an oligarchy, it will always find willing puppets to run gov'ts for its own benefit. If you don't cut off the head of the snake, nothing can be really changed.
They cite low unemployment as an important positive economic indicator. But if we were all slaves, employment would also be high.
What do you mean "if"?
How do you know the dollar isn’t already separated from the government?
And bitcoin is a truer fiat than the dollar. Since the dollar is a debt-backed fiat currency. If you reject fiat, you need to reject bitcoin.
Amen ! ...we need DEBT-FREE money almost like Ben and Abe printed, but to put a check on fed overprinting (and spending, a different related topic), I would involve the states using their 10th powers to make sure there was no over/under printing/generating of money and inter-national valuation could be subject to treaty perhaps updated by the hour if necessary !
I don‘t understand your line of reasoning at all. Bitcoin is not fiat. Fiat means „by decree“. Bitcoin is a purely free market alternative to fiat which actually is backed by something, namely the proof of work algorithm. This algorithm controls issuance of new bitcoins and is backed by energy, similar to how you need to extend energy to mine gold.
LOL! True, bitcoin isn't fiat. It's part of a major brain washing scheme to get NO THING to be worth SOME THING. And people are buying it like snake oil. If for instance...if everyone lost their wallet would bitcoin disappear? Apparently yes it would because no one could access it. If the power went off in your country would you be able to use bitcoin? If you couldn't hookup to the internet would your bitcoin be useless? COME ON PEOPLE Wake The F UP!!
Why would millions of users lose their wallet? Even if, that wouldn‘t be the end of bitcoin. And yes, you can even use bitcoin without electricity or the internet, unlike credit cards. There are hardware/paper wallets like https://offline.cash/ or OpenDime that can be used to transfer value.
_Have at it!
Bitcoin can be forked to split the currency, and the 21 million Bitcoin limit can be modified.
That is an arbitrary expansion of the currency, ergo, fiat.
Go look up the definition for fiat instead of showing everyone how ignorant you are using it that way. Fiat currency is backed by fiat legislation that declares the money to be "legal tender" by government FIAT. Bitcoin does not fit the definition. It fits the definition of IDIOTS "believe" it is worth SOMETHING when it is NO THING to begin with. FIAT: [Latin, Let it be done.] In old English practice, a short order or warrant of a judge or magistrate directing some act to be done; an authority issuing from some competent source for the doing of some legal act.
Earlier in U.S. history, the country's currency was backed by gold and in some cases, silver. (ACTUALLY EARLIER IN US HISTORY THE COUNTRY'S CURRENCY WAS GOLD AND SILVER). The federal government stopped allowing citizens to exchange currency for government gold with the passage of the Emergency Banking Act of 1933. The gold standard, which backed U.S. currency with federal gold, ended completely in 1971 when the U.S. also stopped issuing gold to foreign governments in exchange for U.S. currency.
Since that time, U.S. dollars are known to be backed by the "full faith and credit" of the U.S. government, "legal tender for all debts, public and private" but not "redeemable in lawful money at the United States Treasury or at any Federal Reserve Bank," as printing on U.S. notes used to claim. In this sense, U.S. Fed Notes are now "legal tender," rather than "lawful money," which can be exchanged for gold, silver, or any other commodity.
Look at this image with the attached text: http://bornagainclassics.com/Books/images/50-story.jpg I think it explains it well.
By your logic, Bitcoin is not even money since it's not government issued.
You may now continue with your regularly scheduled ranting.
I believe that the Constitution makes it clear what our "money" should be. And it isn't a NO THING that fluctuates in value. If we were using gold and silver as it demands in Article 1 section 10 we wouldn't be in the situation where some made up BS electronic idea is being used for any kind of transaction. And according to the proper definition of MONEY, bit coin isn't money. IT has to be DURABLE, DIVISIBLE and a STORE OF VALUE. Something that goes from being worth NO THING to being worth 60K and then back to 20K IS NOT something that is a store of value. Gold and silver do not at this juncture in time "fluctuate" in value. A .25 cent silver quarter could buy a gallon of gas in 1964 and it still can if it is converted into Fed Notes or whatever else NO THING that you want to deal with. I suspect you would have been a proud promoter of tally sticks. You may now continue to being a sheep.
First, some data points on your Constitutional argument --
Article 1 Section 10, Clause 1 of the Constitution reads as follows:
"No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility."
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript
The flaw in your Constitutional thesis is that Article 1 Section 10 is a binding upon the STATES. It is not a limitation upon the Congress.
There is room to argue that Section 8, Clause 5 leads to the restriction of money to gold and silver coin:
"To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;"
However, there is also the counterargument presented by Clause 6, which implies the permissibility of paper currency ("Securities"), and therefore by extension even cryptocurrency:
"To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;"
If only governments have the power to establish what is and is not "money", then the rest of your argument collapses immediately--for better or worse, Congress is arguably within its Constitutional authority to establish paper currency, and even convert that currency into fiat currency. That such may not be a sound policy does not preclude it from being a lawful one.
Regarding the remainder of your thesis:
While Bitcoin's success as a store of value is demonstrably problematic, arguing that gold and silver do not "fluctuate" in value is directly contradicted not only by current commodities data on both precious metals, but even by commentaries within Wealth of Nations on the value of gold and silver coin in terms of purchasing power--Adam Smith was quite the data geek, and provides numerous examples of the purchasing power of a quantity of silver being different at different times--i.e., "fluctuating".
A quick sampling of gold bullion futures pricing demonstrates that gold does indeed fluctuate in value.
https://www.investing.com/commodities/gold-bullion
As for your silver quarter example, that argument is true in some years but not in others.
A 1964 silver quarter contained .1808 tr oz of silver. In January 1997 the highest price for silver was $5.04/tr oz, making the silver melt value of the 1964 quarter roughly $0.91.
https://sdbullion.com/silver-prices
A gallon of gas in January 1997 cost on average $1.283/gallon
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=emm_epm0_pte_nus_dpg&f=m
This means your 1964 quarter would have purchased only 7/10 of a gallon of gas--LESS than in 1964.
That's a decline in value of the silver.
Those are the facts, and they do not reconcile to your thesis at all.
Reality still is a thing, even in this upside-down era.
Not really. This fork would just be a new cryptocurrency like Bcash, BSV or Bitcoin Gold. All of these „alternative bitcoins“ are trending towards zero.
So is Bitcoin.
https://www.google.com/finance/quote/BTC-USD?comparison=BTC-CNY%2CBTC-EUR%2CETH-USD%2CETH-CNY&window=YTD
LOL. Now try the year-to-date chart of the Nasdaq, iron or gold. Everything is trending down this year because we‘re going into an recession. Just zoom out a couple of years. Bitcoin is the best performing asset in history and starting its monetization. It is 40% up since it‘s yearly low. A month ago would have been the best time to buy. Now is the second best.
Good luck with that
it is literally decreed into existence by its creator(s).
Arguably, one of the reasons for Bitcoin's volatility is that it is backed by nothing except investor sentiment.
Even the dollar has more substantive backing, as despite the fulminations of many the US government is not likely to just turn its back on the dollar.
The virtue of cryptocurrency is that its mathematical foundations make blatant currency debasement notionally difficult if not impossible. That is a characteristic that crypto fans often argue gives crypto the characteristics of sound money.
While the depiction of Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies as sound money is wildly overblown, the anti-debasement feature of crypto IS a virtue that would do well in a post-fiat currency regime. However, to get to that regime crypto has to sever the commodity links that drive valuations currently and tie crypto to the existing fiat currency regime.
Whether that can occur without a substantial measure of global civil strife and violence is a question yet to be answered (although I suspect strife and violence will prove inevitable).
Free market has never, ever, beem the goal. Maintaining the staus quo is the goal. Rich get richer, poor gets to work more for less until they again are serfs, and the middlemen (the bourgeoisie as the older term is) are kept in perpetual fear of losing what they've got, should they lag or lapse in devotion to the Lords of Capitalism, and in equal perpetual greed and ambition in the hope of being uplifted to the lofty ranks of the Masters - the proverbial donkey pulling a cart through chasing a carrot on a stick.
In a free market, I could hop a plane to China, buy a steamer trunk full of brand spanking new smartphones for less than 1/10 what the price is here, fly back and sell them on the curb.
But that would undercut the owners of production, capital, money, and so on. So they instead use the state as their corporate police force to keep profits up and people down.
Leaving the people of any nation the only options: comply, or unite around something outside the control of the corporate capitalists and their "democratic" Kapos. Nation. Creed. Race. Culture. Tradition. Unfortunately, capitalists are very good at using these to sow dissention - witness political correctness, woke, and so on. Are you black if you vote Trump? Are you a real Democrat if you don't like Biden? Fallacy upon fallacy to create strife and dissention - not even the Golden Apple created as much chaos and fighting.
As a non-american watching and listening from the outside, to me it appears you are finally becoming a nation and a people. You have an ideal of what American the person is, but that ideal is to the people of your nation something quite different than it is to your corporate and political masters. To me, saying "an arab can never be a swede" is natural and right, since the only way to become a swede (or an arab for that matter) is to be born one. But American? Again, as an outsider, an American to me has no skincolour in particular, no specific faith, and no unique tradition except what has amalgamated from all the consitituent peoples origins.
But now your elites have for 50 years emphasised difference. Different everything. Smaller and smaller tribes, each more doctrinaire than the other. Europeans, africans and asians - we have all seen this in our respective histories when rulers have played empire: but your rulers are doing it to you for the only reason of keeping you splintered and at loggerheads.
Divided like that your nation cannot stand.
The problem with your statement is the use of the word capitalism the way you are using it. We do not and have not had free market capitalism in our lifetime. We have crony capitalism which is what you are describing. True FREE MARKET capitalism was what you said at first..."In a free market, I could hop a plane to China, buy a steamer trunk full of brand spanking new smartphones for less than 1/10 what the price is here, fly back and sell them on the curb." BTW, what is a "steamer trunk"?
Alas., It is too late now! They will separate you from your body before you even daydream of it.
which is why they want us disarmed because since there are way many more of us than "them" we can also separate them from their bodies which does not bode well for them. And I say, let the separating begin! Start with Klaus Schwab that piece of human shit.
In general, applying common sense and basic questioning, ignore or do the opposite of what they tell us or want.
OK. Pretend I'm a really bright kindergartner. Explain how Bitcoin attains value, who controls it, etc. etc. etc. Why should I trust it more than anything else? (This isn't snark or anything near it. Take me by the hand and explain it so it makes sense to me.)
Well, I've tried to explain it to my kindergartner, so here goes...
Assuming you already know a little about the history of money, you probably know about the gold standard from years past and the fiat standard we use today. Gold was used as money for several reasons. It does not corrode, is hard to produce, and is saleable across time, which means that it stores its value for a long time and can buy roughly the same things in the future that it can buy today. But it is hard to move around, so it is not very saleable across space.
Fiat money solved the problem of saleability across space. It is really easy to move around, and as you know, money today is basically a number in your bank account. When you want to move money somewhere else, you tell your bank to subtract from the number in your account and add it to another person's account. The number stores economic value which you can use later to buy things. Unfortunately, fiat money is very easy to make, so governments inflate the currency, meaning it does not have good saleability across time.
Bitcoin solves the problems of saleability across time and space. You can easily move it across borders, but there is only a fixed amount that can be made (21 million), so it can retain its value over time. Like storing money in a bank, bitcoin is a number with economic value stored in your "account", which is an address in a network. Where banks are run by imperfect people on a centralized network (with the central bank monitoring all transactions), the bitcoin network runs with cryptography on a decentralized network.
Banks verify payments with imperfect people that you have to trust. The nodes on the bitcoin network are computers owned by imperfect people, but payments are verified through cryptography and do not require any trust. The bitcoin network is the most secure network on Earth. It is a remarkable invention built on blockchain technology that requires something called "proof-of-work" to verify transactions, which makes it virtually impossible to hack. Once the bitcoin is in your "account", no one can take it but you, as long as you have your "key" to access it.
In short:
Gold's ability to store economic value is ensured by its physical characteristics.
Fiat money's ability to store economic value is ensured by government.
Bitcoin's ability to store economic value is ensured by cryptography.
This is by no means a perfect explanation, but hopefully it is a decent intro :)
This was beautifully clear until we got to Bitcoin...
Bear with me as I try to confirm my understanding here, and you can fix my flawed interpretations. Cryptography is just really a form of writing or language, yes? Very smart people created this blockchain technology and surely, at some point or other, very smart people can figure out how to corrupt it?
Who set the 21 million figure, and how to assign value to it? Isn't the value based on a sort of equivalence to other arbitrary values? What happens if those computers crash?
I'm always bemused at how empires were run starting thousands of years ago by men with scratchy-tooly thingies making marks on markable thingies and thereby moving value across the world. This still seems to be that, in a fancier way.
I appreciate very much that you responded to my question and I'd love to be able to understand further the concept and its security here.
Your questions about bitcoin shows you are using reason, logic and common sense to come to a critical thinking position, UNLIKE those who are bit coin advocates. They have FAITH. which is not based on reason, logic or common sense. They say I HAVE FAITH that only 21 million will ever exist. I HAVE FAITH that the power grid will stay on forever and that computers won't crash. I have FAITH that no one will hack or corrupt this hackable corruptible idea! You on the other hand haven't left your reason, logic and common sense at the threshold of the bit coin church.
Don't give me so much credit. I'm just naturally suspicious...
Bitcoin can be tricky to wrap your head around. I am by no means an expert, so I am also still learning :)
Cryptography is not a language as much as a lock and key technology. You use algorithms to scramble data and generate a key so that only those with the key can access the data.
The reason that the bitcoin blockchain is so unique is because the method it uses to encrypt information is nearly impossible to hack. Yes, in theory, you can break into anything and corrupt it, but you would need an enormous amount of time and resources. Each block on the blockchain is stored in every node, so computers crashing is not an issue. You can even run a node and download the blockchain on your home computer, though I don't recommend that since there are special computers designed to run as nodes.
Satoshi Nakamoto was the anonymous creator of bitcoin, and I honestly don't know why he chose 21 million, but I do know he wanted to cap the supply.
In the beginning, bitcoin had no value. It was merely units on a ledger. However, at some point, for some reason, people on the bitcoin network began trading bitcoin for other things. As more and more people recognized its value in making sales across space and across time (like I mention in the previous comment) it steadily became more valuable to people. This is where the issue of how bitcoin is valued is confusing. We give things value because they fulfill a need. No one honestly really knows specifically why bitcoin has value as a money. Is it because it is easy to transfer across borders? Maybe. Is it because it is a currency that is not inflationary? Maybe. But we do know that for whatever reason, people give it value because of what it can do. That's not a very satisfying answer for most people, but the reality is that it went from $0.00 to ~$380 billion in 14 years, so it is clearly doing something right.
I think your intuition is right with the comment about empires being run by men with scratchy-tools XD Bitcoin essentially is a technology to accomplish that very thing: moving value across the world and storing it in a secure place for future exchange.
Thank you for your patience! Especially because I feel very toddler-like, compelled to keep asking "why?"!
Who controls those secure computers (which are sort of like oil jars in caves)?
Algorithms are math and math is a language, yes?
I wish there was a magic answer to powerful people, everywhere throughout time, devising and controlling the means which non-powerful people must use to pay for needs. I'm not quite ready to trust that someone managed to provide it, entirely without hidden costs of its own.
This philosophical article is great at showing how extraordinary bitcoin is: https://allenfarrington.medium.com/bitcoin-is-venice-8414dda42070
Thank you!
And I appreciate anyone taking time to answer my questions. These matters are an alien world to me, and I often feel a bit wistful, out here with my nose pressed against the window of the candy shop, knowing something quite tasty must be inside but I haven't the--uh--coin with which to enter.
One addition: I think the reason why bitcoin is often demonized, e.g. as a climate killer or a tool for criminals, is that it is beyond the control of the fiat elite.
No person in bitcoin is powerful enough to change it without majority consensus. And yes, they tried (google „blocksize wars“). If you change the bitcoin algorithm in a way that is not accepted by the majority of the bitcoin nodes, all you get is a new cryptocurrency that is a fork of bitcoin, but not the real bitcoin.
The cool thing about bitcoin is that everyone can run one of these computers that secure the network. All you need to do is to download some software code. These secure computers are called nodes.
Additionally, everyone with a computer can take part in the process of creating new bitcoins through the proof of work algorithm (called mining), but you need specialized equipment and cheap energy to do it profitably. Currently it is estimated to cost $12k to $20k to produce a new bitcoin, while bitcoin price is at $24k.
You are right, cryptographic algorithms are speech and are protected under the First Amendment: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-established-code-speech
At the very least, we need to take back control of the money supply from central banks. It would then be an easy matter for the Treasury to issue money (e.g. greenbacks) that is debt free. The root of our money problems lies in the central bankers's profit motive, and the interest we pay on the debt is used to control and enslave us all.
That is not really how our monetary system works. The only backing our fiat system has is treasuries. Just look into the balance sheets of Fed and commercial banks. The pristine collateral is treasuries. This means that in this ponzi scheme that is fiat currency, the only way to stimulate more growth is more government debt.
As I understand it, Lincoln and his Treasury Secretary issued greenbacks to finance the Civil War. They were backed only by the full faith and confidence of the Government. There was no debt backing of these greenbacks, and no interest payments.
We have been conditioned to believe that government spending must be financed by debt. Bankers want us to believe that, but it's not true.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTPopNG6LRM
And you would have us believe that government spending can be backed by nothing but "because we said so". Why not just have the government issue notes demanding a portion of your resources, labor, and time with no promise of you getting anything in return? Issuing money backed by nothing is theft. At least in Fuedal systems the aristocratic rulers where honest about the fact that they could claim any resources that the population might have. This idea is MMT nonsense, and BTW, The Soviet Union, Cuba, and North Korea operated their economies under what is essentially MMT.
The only problem with your thesis is the dollar has strengthened against all major currencies the past several years. Simply supply and demand, and more people want the dollar than the yen, euro, or pound for whatever reason. Doesn't need to make sense.
The high demand of the dollar is due primarily to the fact that OPEC only accepts dollars for oil purchases. This is one reason why China runs a trade surplus and buys up US treasuries. I touch on the petro-dollar system with regards to the decline of American manufacturing here:
https://stephenjwood.substack.com/p/8-reasons-for-the-decline-of-american
It's true that there has been talk about about a new global currency for a while with nothing to show for it. What is different this time around is the crisis in Ukraine and the Western sanctions on Russia. By crippling their own domestic energy production and alienating the Russians, the West is pushing Russia further into the arms of China, thus shifting the balance of power eastward. I'm not sure if anything will come out of BRICS specifically, but major countries know they can contest America's power by looking for new ways to pay for oil without using dollars. Russia's alienation opens that door. I would not expect a new reserve currency to appear overnight, but it would not surprise me if major countries mount a more serious effort to challenge dollar hegemony in the near future.
While the 1974 secret agreement with Saudi Arabia did result in Saudi Arabia plowing oil revenues into US Treasuries, OPEC has since 2016 been "OPEC+", with the "+" being primarily Russia, which is the world's largest exporter of oil products. Russia's price/production dispute with Saudi Arabia in 2020 underscores Russia's growing influence within that cartel. Russia's insistence on being paid in rubles for its energy exports to Europe and elsewhere also underscores its economic muscle in energy markets. And Russia has largely avoided US Treasuries since 2018.
Where the major threat to the petrodollar system lies is not in any rapprochement between Russia and China (which is not exactly a new phenomenon but has been building since the fall of the Soviet Union, and will likely continue until the two countries eventually collide in competition for Asian resources) but Russia's dominance within the OPEC+ cartel--a dominance which is already a fait accompli.
However, for any successor to the petrodollar system to unfold, there has to be a capital marketplace for the OPEC+ nations to invest oil revenues. Moscow doesn't have that, and China's markets, while growing, have significantly underperformed over the past five years relative to the US, Europe, Japan, and even India.
https://www.google.com/finance/quote/.INX:INDEXSP?comparison=INDEXNIKKEI%3ANI225%2CINDEXEURO%3APX1%2CSHE%3A399106%2CINDEXBOM%3ASENSEX&window=5Y
Thus, with Russia's war effort in Ukraine consuming an unknown portion of Russian GDP, and China's economy in an even more parlous state than the US, the BRICS talk of a "new global currency" is at this point more wishful thinking than anything else. The BRICS group of nations is simply not in a position today to roll out a credible new currency vis-a-vis the euro, and the two mainstays of that group, Russia and China, are facing some pretty significant economic headwinds in the near term (while Russia's economy nominally is doing well, wars have always been a net drain on a country's resources, and I highly doubt Ukraine will prove any different for Russia). BRICS is not likely to be in a position to challenge dollar hegemony for a number of years at least; the foundation just isn't there yet.
Ultimately, as others have speculated as well, just as the geopolitical situation is shifting to a multipolar situation, in the event of the dollar's loss of hegemonic status the world's currencies are likely to shift to a multi-reserve currency arrangement, where no one currency achieves the hegemonic status accorded the dollar--or at least attempt to do so. How fiat currencies function in a competitive multipolar political environment is a question yet to be answered.--I suspect the answer will be some variation of "not well".
Which may be the best and strongest reason for the dollar to continue in its current position for a bit longer than many suggest--the likely alternative is not a new currency hegemon but global currency chaos.
The dollar's recent strengthening against other major currencies highlights a reality that many simply refuse to acknowledge: The dollar's mythic "global reserve currency" status is more fantasy than fact.
While the dollar does comprise a significant portion of foreign currency reserves for a number of countries, it is not the currency most frequently used in the SWIFT international bank messaging system. The euro holds that distinction.
Moreover, the dollar's "global reserve" status is largely the result of the de jure declaration of the dollar as the global reserve currency in the 1944 Bretton Woods agreements, which established formal exchange rates for other currencies in terms of the dollar, while the dollar maintained a $35/t oz gold peg. However, Bretton Woods collapsed in 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window, and its successor, the Smithsonian Agreement, fell apart by 1973, when the world embraced fully floating exchange rates. Since that time, there are neither political nor legal restrictions barring the introduction of another currency to occupy the hegemonic slot notionally enjoyed by the dollar.
Will a currency eventually arise to dethrone the dollar as a leading global currency? Almost certainly. However, it will happen not because of a moment of political maneuvering in a time of global crisis, but because the backer of said currency has established itself as having the military, political, and economic gravitas to justify a measure of confidence in its stability.
Dethroning the dollar, just as when the dollar dethroned the pound sterling, will happen organically or not at all.
In the future, when you go to trade some of that gold or sterling for thirty rounds of 5.56 ammo, and you ask "How much," the dealer is liable to say "All of it."
That's an argument for making the 5.56 NATO milspec round the new global reserve currency.
Just sayin'....
Naw, Black Hills MK 262 5.56 77gr OTM (Open Tip Match).
I bought a metric crapload at 30 cents a round, now they are pushing $2 each or even more if you actually want to get some!
There‘s a simple reason for that. Other countries, especially Europe and Japan are in much further in the death spiral of their economies and, hence, their currencies.
Bitcoin maximalists are neoliberalism at its worst
This explains in detail what is going on with the monetary system...
https://courageouslion380.substack.com/p/a-caveat-against-injustice
Jordan, the founding fathers DID seperate the money from the state in actuality. As Merrill Jenkins has stated in his book, "Money The Greatest Hoax on Earth", "The writers of the constitution knew exactly what they were doing when they wrote in Article I Section 10 paragraph 1 'No state shall... make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts. ' People able to barter with gold and silver coin control government and are free. Loss of the right to trade in gold and silver coin enslaves people to the creators of psychological 'money.'":
-Merrill Jenkins, Sr.,
Money - The Greatest Hoax on Earth
Note his statement... BARTER with gold and silver coin... Let me say this...
That is why I post this quite regularly. And I know it is a bit of a read but it is WHY we are in the predicament we are in right now.
There is a reason that "they" don't listen to the people anymore. It is also the reason they ignore the provisions of the 2nd amendment. The reason is that the lynch pins to the Constitution were removed in 1903 & 1913. In 1903 the blatantly UNconstitutional Dick Act, which was a blatant act of TREASON, eviscerated states rights with the ending of STATE militias. Those first 13 words of the 2nd Amendment are perhaps the most IMPORTANT 13 words in the whole Constitution. A well regulated MILITIA being NECESSARY for the SECURITY of a FREE State. It is the ONLY place the word NECESSARY is used in the Bill of Rights.
And once that happened it became easier to do what they did in 1913. Which was removing the monetary system from the hands of We The People.
Once the control of the monetary system was taken from the people and those in control could create all they wanted out of thin air with the collusion of the Federal Reserve, none of what we think matters anymore. None of what we do matters anymore. ESPECIALLY since we don't have the MILITIAS to enforce the Constitution.
They have effectively enslaved the world to their fiat money systems based on nothing that they create out of thin air and are able to use to do whatever they want. We have no say in what they do. They control us because they have stolen the lynch pins to the system that was designed by our founding fathers to work. No, it was not perfect, as mankind is not perfect, but it gave us a very limited government that was taken away from us when the monetary pin was stolen in 1913. You see, Article 1 Section 10 and Article 1 Section 8 and the first 13 words of the 2nd Amendment ARE what hold the whole governmental apparatus together. Without it, we are nothing but serfs on a plantation that they control with their fiat unlawful, unGodly, theft system of paper money backed by nothing, created out of thin air with no recourse.
Understand, that when the money had SUBSTANCE of SOME THING, and not just IMAGINATION, one of the recourse's we the people had was to withhold taxes which could effectively shut the government down if they were engaged in some sort of insanity that no one agreed upon. Today, we could all quit paying them and they would just print up what they needed and thumb their noses at us. Worse yet, they create it without even printing. They just create numbers on a computer and print out checks.
COMMUNIST MANIFESTO:
Fifth Plank: Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. (The Federal Reserve Bank, 1913- -the system of privately-owned Federal Reserve banks which maintain a monopoly on the valueless debt "money" in circulation.) And the monopoly is ENFORCED by Federal firepower. Violating the very principle of the first 13 words of the 2nd Amendment.
The Federal Reserve is a blatant violation of Articles 1 section 8 and 10. Those are the two places that Roger Sherman, the founding father that signed all three of our founding documents put paper money in a casket and for all intents nailed it close. But due to the apathy of earlier generations their progeny are suffering under this sick theft system.
What are those two provisions? The Federal reserve "notes" violate Article 1 section 10 of the US Constitution which states in part, No State shall...coin Money; ... make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts. And section 8 says CONGRESS shall have the power to COIN MONEY, regulate the value there of and to fix a standard of weights and measures. COIN doesn't mean paper money. COIN doesn't mean gold or silver "backed" paper money. COIN MEANS WHAT IS SAYS!
Sadly enough, with a little research you can see the United States is a functional communist country with all 10 planks of the Communist Manifesto in place. And it has been that way for many years. And that most Americans would fight to the death to keep it that way. Voting is a joke, writing your CONgressman/woman/it is also a joke, (heavy on the CON) almost anything we do is a JOKE TO THEM because THEY control the MONEY, or should I say TOKENS.
If we were using the gold and silver coin that the founding father, Judge Roger Sherman had wanted, the prices of goods and services would actally go down due to the law of supply and demand. Think about it. And if you want to read WHY Judge Sherman made sure the monetary clauses were placed in the Constition, read his Caveat against a fluctuating medium of exchange. A Caveat Against Injustice, or an Inquiry Into the Evils of a Flucuating medium of Exchange released by Spencer Judd Publishers many years ago.
http://bornagainclassics.com/Books/ACaveatAgainstInjustice-Shermann/
If you think the $ is toilet paper then BRICS is a corn cob and Bitcoin is a photo of a corn cob. Conceptually digital blockchain currency is a solution but sadly Bitcoin has already been highjacked by the Chinese. See "The End of the World Is Just Beginning", by Peter Zeihan.
The FED has been creating $$$ to fund the overseas Central Banks, buy assets/bonds/ bailout the big banks, and keep the REPO markets going. It is an artificial rigged system. Moreover the FED is akin to the Mafia, it takes it cut from money printing and the rest of the profits go back to the Federal government. So if the FED takes in say 500$Billion in interest payments, the FED takes 6% and the rest goes back to the government , meanwhile the public is said to owe $trillions. We are on the verge of modern monetary theory whereby tokens will be handed out directly from the Federal government/FED and the big banks will be bypassed as the Bond buying scheme will end.