-- Wences Casares
If you consistently spend more than you bring home every month, what is the inevitable outcome?
INCOME
So how does the Federal Government pull this off?
cigarettes, mackerel, gold, silver, stone disks, notes, coins, digital gold...
"Backed by the full faith and credit of the US government"
A currency with little or no intrinsic value but made legal tender by fiat (order) of the government
"According to a study of 775 fiat currencies by DollarDaze.org, there is no historical precedence for a fiat currency that has succeeded in holding its value."
Governments failed their people
Governments failed themselves
Buying time until ^^^
Deflation is bad
Debt & Consumption
Bail out inefficient companies
Government control
Fiat currency
Deflation is normal
Savings & Investment
Let inefficient corporations fail
Free markets
Gold standard, finite resource
Gold flakes discovered in Paleolithic caves dating back as far as 40,000 B.C.
Gold prized by Egyptian pharaohs and temple priests in 3,000 B.C.
Fort Knox
Approx 2.3% of world's refined gold is here
Worth about $100B
1775 - 1792: floating
Gold Reserve Act (FDR) - Illegal to own gold until 1964
Bretton-Woods system - International trade agreement
Nixon shock (executive order) - eliminate deflation
Coinage Act of 1834 (AJ) - Silver:Gold 15:1 to 16:1
Coinage Act of 1792 (GW) - introduced USD currency
Continentals not backed by gold
Floating to pay war debts - Civil War, WWI
1913 - Federal Reserve established (WW)
Floating to pay war debts - WWII
1792 - 1834: $19.39/oz
1834 - 1933: $20.67/oz
1934 - 1965: $35.00/oz
1945 - 1971: $35.00/oz
1971 - now: floating
1913, Creation of the Federal Reserve
1971, End of the gold standard
An actual electronic transfer of something is revolutionary
property
Internet / email / files - one big copy machine
trusted third party
A central authority certifies it to be true
7 transactions per second top speed (currently)
Not fully private
VISA card ~ 24,000 TPS
Bitcoin: 1MB block size, 10 minute block time, 21 million coins
Litecoin: 2.5 minute block time, 84 million coins
Bitcoin Cash: 8MB block size, centralized mining risk
Additional scalability improvements coming:
Bitcoin: currency
Etherium: smart contracts
Filecoin: decentralized cloud storage ($257MM ICO)
Bitcoin: pseudo-anonymous
Monero:
Dash:
ZCash:
Bitcoin: blockchain
IOTA: tangle
Hashgraph coins...