I try to occasionally share my thoughts with politicians that represent me. Who knows how much they take heed of what we say? We all have our own pet projects that interest us and perhaps these don’t interest our politicians. I also try to share my thoughts with others through this blog and in person, in hopes that it will influence them to also come around to my way of thinking. That all being said, below is an email I recently sent to an Iowa state representative about Bitcoin. The history is this person is a Democrat. We have had a couple previous emails about Bitcoin and they were concerned about the environmental impacts of Bitcoin.
Dear Representative –
Quick thoughts for the night. I really hope you will continue to learn about bitcoin. It is a very important tool for protecting individuals’ wealth in the future. It is also helping people in developing countries today.
Perhaps you’ve seen this article sent to the US Congress by Human Rights leaders asking them to learn about how bitcoin is helping the poorest in the world.
The other point about bitcoin mining specifically is it helps reduce emissions. It does not add emissions. It uses the cheapest waste power. Most miners have load sharing agreements to turn off when excess power is needed. This is good for grid stability and for emissions reduction.
There is a bitcoin mining company in town partnering with Cedar Falls Utilities. I urge you to talk to both CFU and the miner about their agreement.
Finally, the US military paid for Jason Lowery to attend MIT for 2 years to learn about bitcoin and its national security implications. He released his thesis on this and I have read it and you can too.
Of note, I voted for Joe Biden in 2020 as we could not have another Trump. I have already decided I will not be voting for Biden again as he has proposed a 30% tax on bitcoin mining. This shows me he has no understanding of bitcoin. Or he knows it’s threatening to the USD and the government is fighting tooth and nail to ban it. Either way, I prefer freedom. I do not like the government devaluing my money every day with the $1T +deficit. I didn’t like it under, George Bush, under Obama, under Trump or under bBiden.
I hope others will consider writing to their local politicians to inform them of the good that Bitcoin does. They also need to know that they will not be getting votes if they are against something we are for. This applies to everything. It would be good for more people to write their politicians on all topics. Let this be an inspiration to you. If you want you could even copy this one and send it to your local politician.
“I think if everyone was to hold a little gold and silver (say 1%) it would send a message to the government that we are tired of inflation. Part of the goal of the FED raising interest rates is to get people to stop spending money and to invest it in bonds. I propose that instead of putting all your cash in bonds, what if many people considered buying just a $100 or $1,000 or $5,000 of physical gold or silver?”
The USA has ever increasing national debt. You’ve probably heard about it recently due to the silliness around raising the debt ceiling. Republicans always make a huge stink about it when they are in control of either the House or the Senate and there is a Democratic president but make no mention of deficits when a Republican is president. Anyway.
Regardless of which side of the aisle you sit on, every increasing debt is an issue because it is related to inflation. The government continually funding operations with printed money leads to inflation which reduces your purchasing power. In extreme cases this can lead to currency collapse as we have seen in Argentina, Sri Lanka and Lebanon recently.
When this happens, locals basically lose all savings they have in cash.
There are a few things to do to maintain purchasing power. One is to invest in the stock market. This has historically been a good place to hold money to maintain purchasing power over the long term. Holding German stocks after WWII, in Germany, even kept you mostly ahead of inflation!
Historically, gold and silver have been money. But in the Roman empire silver coins were subject to debasement as emperors melted down existing coins and made 2 coins with the silver previously used for 1 coin and continued for 200 years until they completely destroyed the value of their currency.
The United States did this in 3 steps. In 1930 there was Executive Order 6102 which essentially forced Americans and “gold hoarders” to turn in their gold to the US government for a set price, $20.67 (equivalent to $433 in 2021) per troy ounce. The order also permitted any person to hold up to $100 in gold coins, a face value equivalent to 5 troy ounces (160 g) of gold valued at approximately $10,000 in 2020. The 1934 Gold Reserve Act subsequently changed the statutory gold content of the U.S. Dollar from $20.67 to $35 an ounce.
So, the Government basically paid people $20.67 for their gold, then said, you can’t buy it back, but if you could it would cost you $35/oz. Seems pretty crazy!
Step 2 of United States Currency debasement happened in 1964. Up to this time half dollars, quarters and dimes were made of 90% silver. After 1964 they were made mostly of cheaper copper.
The final straw that broke the dollar’s link with gold was in August 1971 Nixon ended the convertibility of US dollars to gold on the international market. Up until this time, while much of international trade was done in US dollars, technically, anytime any nation holding US dollars could ask the USA for the equivalent value of gold. Because the USA had been printing money for years it would have been impossible to redeem all the US dollars that existed for gold, so we basically said, “you can’t”. It was technically a type of default on the US dollar!
All the above context is just for historic purposes to get around to the point below and to mention why gold and silver are not used as money today. Governments always print more money than they can pay back. It happened in Rome, it happened in America, and it will likely happen again hundreds of years in the future (unless Bitcoin takes over as hard money, but that is a topic for a different post!)
Back to government debt, “Since 1800, 51 out of 52 countries with gross government debt greater than 130% have defaulted, either through restructuring, devaluation, high inflation or outright default. The IMF expects US government (USG) debt to GDP to be a record
This was partially due to the reduced GDP from Covid but also due to increased gov spending. In 2023 you can see Debt to GDP is “down” to only 120%.
So, what is the average person to do? As mentioned above, holding stocks is a good option. I personally do hold most of my wealth in stocks. Real Estate is another option that many people use. Bitcoin is also something I personally hold. I think Bitcoin has many long term benefits for wealth preservation. You can also hold bonds. But if you are holding a bond paying 5% and inflation continues up to 10% or 100%, like Argeintia, that won’t preserve your wealth. But this post is about physical Gold and Silver. I think holding physical gold and silver probably provides a little of a long term hedge against long term inflation. In the short term it certainly can be very volatile. But holding cash is always destined to go down over time. While over time, gold and silver are destined to go up, especially gold.
If you want to learn about buying physical gold and silver there are plenty of great youtube videos. Here is a video about buying silver I listened to recently.
I am only allocating a small percentage of my net worth towards physical gold and silver about 1% of total net worth, for now. In the grand scheme of things, I think this might not be very impactful. Some data says that “12% Of All Americans Own Gold, 14.7% Own Silver” .
I think if everyone was to hold a little gold and silver (say 1%) it would send a message to the government that we are tired of inflation. Part of the goal of the FED raising interest rates is to get people to stop spending money and to invest it in bonds. I propose that instead of putting all your cash in bonds, what if many people considered buying just $100 or $1,000 or $5,000 of physical gold or silver? Buying gold and silver would achieve the same end goal the government wants of removing money from the system, but then people would end up holding something of value, physical gold and silver, instead of bonds, which are currently returning 5% while inflation is at 7% or more yet. You are losing money holding bonds.
To be absolutely clear, I don’t think everyone should go sell all their stocks and put 100% into physical gold. But I think allocating 1% smartly for the reasons above is a pretty good idea.
I don’t have time here to review why I have been specifically saying “physical gold and silver” so many times. But this has been reviewed in many places.
Here is a good video and here is a good article about why physical gold or silver over paper gold and silver.
Personally I have used https://sdbullion.com/ to buy gold and silver online and always check their deals page. https://sdbullion.com/deals I get no commission off this, just sharing my experience. This guy also made a ranking of many of the online bullion dealers.
I have tried bringing up bitcoin to quite a few people over the last year (2022) and haven’t had much interest. I have finally realized that 99.9% of people won’t have any interest in Bitcoin until the price starts going up dramatically, perhaps around $100k people will start being interested again. I have decided that is fine. I am going to write this for people whenever they start becoming interested and wonder “How do I buy bitcoin?”
If you have recently seen Bitcoins price rise from $30,000 to $100,000 or more and are now having FOMO (fear of missing out) and you need to buy bitcoin NOW! Here is what you should do.
Go to the google play store (or apple store) on your phone and download “Cash App”.
Link your bank account.
Click “Buy bitcoin”.
Boom, you now own some bitcoin!
I recommend Cash App because they are a Bitcoin only company. There are many copies of Bitcoin like Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) and many others. Don’t be fooled. Only buy Bitcoin (BTC ticker symbol). Since Cash App only sells Bitcoin (BTC) this is not a problem. That is why I recommend Cash App for starting.
Now you can start learning about bitcoin. Luckily Cashapp also has news articles about bitcoin linked in it’s app so you can read there.
You can also follow Michael Saylor on Twitter. He has a lot of great information about bitcoin.
Now, owning bitcoin and holding it on the Cash App app isn’t the safest way to hold bitcoin. While Cashapp is relatively safe, there is still risk that Cashapp goes under.
An option now is to download Muun Wallet, also from the google play store. You can then transfer your bitcoin from Cashapp to Muun, if you want. You don’t have to do this. You can keep your money on Cash App. It’s like keeping money at a bank. Using Muun wallet is like keeping cash in a safe at your home.
Continue to learn more about Bitcoin through various articles. Don’t panic sell your Bitcoin if the price goes down from $100k to $50k or even $30k again! This is the nature of bitcoin, it is volatile.
Don’t FOMO into thousands and thousands of dollars of Bitcoin unless you are ready to temporarily lose 50% or more.
Don’t invest any more into Bitcoin than you are willing to lose. While I think it will be fine, it’s always possible something wild could happen and it could go to $0 (I doubt this but keeping all possibilities open).
Welcome to Bitcoin!
Oh, and you can always contact me with Bitcoin questions!
Through 1964 American quarters and dimes were made of 90% silver. Starting in 1965 the inner core is pure copper and the outer covering is copper mixed with nickel. I was discussing this with some friends so I decided to look up some history I recalled about Rome’s debasement of their currency. The first link I found was the below comment and this link to a FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF ST. LOUIS work book for kids grade 8-12.
“Commodus (AD 177–AD 192) debased the Roman denarius to about 70 percent silver. Septimius Severus (AD 193–AD 211) debased the Roman denarius to about 50 percent silver. With the added currency, the government could pay for more soldiers and pay existing soldiers more.”
What is incredible is that the Romans “slowly” debased their currency by recalling the money, melting it down and reissuing with a lower percentage of silver. The US government did it quickly by going from 90% to 0% in 1 year! Subsequent dollars were created by adding numbers in the Fed ledger with nothing backing the new money!
Fort Knox holds about 4,580 metric tons of gold which is worth about $250 billion dollars. The US government budget was $6.27 trillion in 2022.
The Government budget deficit in 2022 was $1.38 trillion in 2022.
“A Cantillon effect is a change in relative prices resulting from a change in money supply.” –SWFI
Be Close to the President and Congress
Cantillon also had a theory in which the beneficiaries of the state creating the currency is based on the institutional setup of that state. This essentially means, “he who was close to the king and the wealthy”, likely benefited from the distributional choices of currency through the system. –SWFI
Realizing that the government is constantly creating new money and decreasing the purchasing power of the money you hold in your bank account, what is the average person to do?
I’ve had more conversations in 2022 and 2023 about “maintaining purchasing power” or “keeping my money from losing value” than ever before in my life, from people who’ve never asked questions like that before. I have to assume it’s because inflation has been between 5%-9% for the past 18 months in the USA, much much higher than the 0%-2% we’ve seen for the previous 10 years and longer.
The answers people are coming up with are the typical ones. I-bonds, which pay interest linked to inflation. A problem with them is you can only put $10,000/year per person into I-bonds.
The next likely targets are either treasury bills or high yield savings accounts. As of today a 180 day treasury bill is paying 4.5%. My personal high yield savings account is paying 4.1%. It’s not worth the extra hassle of buying treasury bills for me personally to get an extra 0.4% yield, but for some people it is. The problem is, with a 6.4% inflation rate over the last 6 months, you are still losing 2% of your purchasing power to inflation, which admittedly is the historic amount people have decided they are “OK” with losing, since the FED inflation target is 2%.
Many people buy real estate and get income from renters each month. Obviously not everyone wants to buy real estate or be a landlord. I have tried it. I am in the process of getting out of it. It wasn’t for me either!
Many people buy stocks as the classic inflation hedge. As we saw last year, stocks can also go down 20% or more in a year. But over long time frames they seem to be the best we have.
Gold is one of the best inflation hedges, over time. I have actually personally considered gold (and to a lesser extent silver) an interesting inflation hedge lately. Like all investing and savings, you need to evaluate the risks and rewards and determine what the right percentage is for each investment relative to your net worth and goals. For me 1% of net worth in gold and silver seems like a safe investment. I wouldn’t say anyone should be 50% or 100% into gold!
While a lot of these are ways to try to fight inflation there is another new way that might also work. Bitcoin. To me, it seems like a good inflation hedge, in the long term. I can see why many people are hesitant to get into it though. From a high of $69,000 in 2021 it fell all the way down to $15,000 earlier in 2023. It is back up to the low $23,000’s. But for people who just compare to the peak of $69,000 that’s still a long way down. But what people need to remember is, for most any investment, you don’t put every bit of your money in at the peak, usually! I bought some bitcoin for as low as $5,000 in 2018. I bought through the peak and the highest I paid for some bitcoin was $65,000, almost the peak! But that was only maybe $100 worth. I continued buying as it fell all through 2022 and even into the start of 2023. From June-Dec 2022 I bought for less than $20,000 per BTC. So now all that bitcoin is sitting in a profit. While my overall cost basis is about $28,000 and the value is sitting at $23,000, so I am down about 21%. But that is a lot less than the 66% you’d be down if you had bought every coin at the peak of 66%. I think that’s an important lesson for people to learn is that while there are volatile assets, if the asset makes sense, you should still consider allocating a percentage of your net worth towards it. I personally think people should consider 1% of Bitcoin a safe allocation. If you have $50,000 worth of assets that’s only $500. If you lose $500 will you be ruined? Probably not. As with every investment, you should only buy what you plan to keep for 10 years. You also shouldn’t sell when it goes down 50%. In fact you should expect it to go down 50%, whether it’s Bitcoin or stocks.Overall we need to better understand volatility. I believe as more people continue to add their wealth to Bitcoin, $10 at a time, its volatility will reduce and its value will continue to go up. This has already happened over many cycles. As you can see in the bitcoin rainbow chart below. It’s a simple chart tracking the highs and lows of bitcoin.
The best time to get into something is when fewer people are talking about it. A lot of people bought into bitcoin at the peak in 2021 when it was $69,000. That is the exact wrong time to learn about it and buy in because of fear! The best time to buy bitcoin, or anything, is when you have time to buy it and the price isn’t rising dramatically everyday and you get huge FOMO!
In 2017 I bought $100 worth of Bitcoin “just to learn about it”. It took me years to finally get around to learning more about it, as well as the price drastically rising to $40k, to pique my interest. I want to help others learn about it in a calmer state. Learning when it’s at a lower price also gives people a lower cost basis so there is a lot more room to go up! As more people pile into Bitcoin, and adoption is continuing, it will rise. Don’t buy in when the price rises from $40k to $60k in a month. You are already missing out at that point. If you do buy then, don’t be surprised when it falls back to $40k and you are out 50%. You’ve learned the wrong lesson. Start learning now while the price is low. Ask me anything! Start small and slow $50! $10! Good luck!
Abigail Disney (Disney Heiress worth $120 million) thinks that governments should tax the rich more. I guess the assumption is that then the government would do “good” with that money? But would they? Data says that giving money to people directly often is much better than having “someone else” decide what is best for them.
So, instead of deciding what is good for others, why doesn’t she embark on a personal redistribution? I proposed a similar, self funded, basic income idea to Mark Zuckerburg in 2017. He never took me up on that. Here is the basic setup.
$30k/year*500 people =$15 million *5 years = Cost of program $75 million over 5 years.
Since Abigail is worth $120 million and has rising stock, she will likely come out with over $75 million at the end of the project!
I am sure someone in Stockton who did this project would be happy to take some money to fund a larger project.
Or I am sure Andrew Yang would be happy to help facilitate such a project. We are waiting for a large donor to step up and fund such a large scale, long term project.
I had a short conversation with someone about EV’s (electric vehicles) who admitted that they didn’t know much about the current adoption/industry. I took it upon myself to gather a few highlights from 2022 as well as some info about exciting near term developments for 2023. Below are those articles!
A short deviation from all the EV stuff that will follow.
Porsche begins production of ‘e-fuel’ that could provide gas alternative amid EV push. Porsche said Tuesday that a pilot plant in Chile started production of the alternative fuel, as it aims to produce millions of gallons by mid-decade.
Tesla Cybertruck – Many Tesla fans are closely watching as tooling rolls into the Texas production plant, getting ready for Cybertruck production later in 2023!
Tesla takes delivery of army of robots to build Cybertruck
Vingroup Joint Stock Company is the largest conglomerate of Vietnam,focusing on technology, industry, real estate development, retail, and services ranging from healthcare to hospitality. The company was founded by property developer and entrepreneur Phạm Nhật Vượng.
It’s hard to tell how many cars Vinfast has sold in 2022. It sounds like only a few thousand. But hopefully they will start producing more in 2023! More EV companies the better.
The company said it sold 15,617 F150 Lightning EV pickups in 2022. Plans to sell many more in 2023.
Rivian
On a full-year 2022 basis, Rivian produced 24,337 electric vehicles and delivered 20,332 to customers. Rivian is a new EV only car (currently only making Trucks and SUV’s) company.
In 2022, 20,511 Volkswagen ID.4 (small electric sedan) were sold in the US, which is 22.5 percent more than in 2021 (16,742) and 6.8 percent of the brand’s total volume. Cumulatively, more than 37,000 ID.4 were delivered to customers
United states post office – Personally I think this is a great application for EV’s. standard daily route length. Can recharge at night. Should save USPS a lot of money.
o Postal Service anticipates increasing the quantity of purpose-built Next Generation Delivery Vehicles (NGDV) to a minimum of 60,000 of which at least 45,000 will be battery electric by 2028. NGDV acquisitions delivered in 2026 and thereafter expected to be 100% electric.
o Postal Service expects to purchase an additional 21,000 battery electric delivery vehicles through 2028, representing a mix of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) vehicles. Acquisitions delivered in 2026 through 2028 expected to be 100% electric.
Chinese EV companies – NIO, Xpeng, Li auto – are the 3 new big upcoming Chinese EV companies.
NIO – . NIO delivered 122,486 vehicles in 2022 in total, increasing by 34.0% year-over-year. Cumulative deliveries of NIO vehicles reached 289,556 as of December 31, 2022.
Li Auto – They are the 3rd hot Chinese EV car company. Honestly I don’t know much about them but apparently they delivered just slightly more EV’s than Nio or Xpeng in 2022 (Li Auto – 133,000 deliveries in 2022. See above link.
BYD – BYD auto is a legacy car company that has delivered a lot of hybrids in china.They sell more plug in hybrids than pure EV’s. but still a good company/force in EV world.
In 2022, BYD sold more than 1.85 million plug-in electric cars, more than tripling its 2021 result of 593,745. This makes the company the world’s largest manufacturer of rechargeable cars, although, in the case of all-electric cars, Tesla still has a significant edge (over 1.3 million deliveries).
Bitcoin at it’s simplest is a ledger keeping track of transactions. On average every 10 minutes a new “block” of transactions is validated. Using this link you can watch as transactions are added to the next block. I think it’s truly mesmerizing. I think it needs to be made into an easy to watch app or screen saver (hint to someone). It is essentially watching each bitcoin block be organized. Transactions are added to the block and finally confirmed.
There is a lot of interesting data in each bitcoin block.
Bitcoin miners validate a new block on average ever 10 minutes. Each block confirms the transactions that have happened in that time. Money sent from person X to person Y.
You can also learn how much is paid in block rewards (currently 6.25 BTC every block) and in block fees.
It does cost money to send your bitcoin from your wallet to someone else. You might think that’s bad since you can send money via your bank account to people now and “not pay a fee”.
But that is where you are wrong. Banks have tons of fees, from monthly fees to the “fee” of paying you 0% interest.
Every time you swipe a credit card you are paying approximately a 3% fee. The price is just baked into the price of whatever you are buying as sellers assume you will be using a credit card at this point.
Here’s all the data from a specific completed block.
A total of 12,419.79 BTC ($222,022,574) were sent in the block with the average transaction being 4.4515 BTC ($79,577.28). ViaBTC (the miner who solved the block) earned a total reward of 6.25 BTC $111,728. The reward consisted of a base reward of 6.25 BTC $111,728 with an additional 0.1489 BTC ($2,661.81) reward paid as fees of the 2,790 transactions which were included in the block.
6.3989/12,419.79 = 0.000515 *100 = 0.05% of the value of the money sent was used to pay fees.
As you can see the total of 12419.79 BTC were sent during that 10 minutes worth $222 million dollars. Users were charged 0.1489 BTC which comes out to a 0.0012%! That is insanely low.
If you were paying that percentage to send $100 it would be $0.001 dollars. 1/10 of 1 penny!
If you compare this to a credit card transaction at 3% that would cost you $3 vs $0.001 for a transaction. Imagine if everything we did got 3% cheaper overnight? Why haven’t more sellers adopted BTC?
I saw this tweet by StrictlyBTC the other day and it’s really bothering me! For those who don’t know, there are only 21 million Bitcoins that can ever be created.
About 19 million have been created (mined) already and that leaves 2 million left to mine.
About 4 million have been lost. By my math that leaves (19-4)= 15 million bitcoin up for grabs today. There are an estimated 100 million people who have used Bitcoin thus far. A recent estimate has shown that about 1 million Bitcoin addresses are holding 1 BTC.
Now it is very easy for any person to have more than 1 wallet. So the number of people who actually own 1 Bitcoin might be higher or lower. It’s possible there are many people who have 2 wallets and 0.5 BTC in each so they will own 1 BTC. It’s also possible (and likely) that many of the 1 BTC and over wallets are held by the same person. So 2 of the 1 BTC wallets might be owned by 1 person. To keep it simple I am going to continue to estimate that there are 1 million people who hold 1 BTC.
There are 47 million millionaires in the world. There aren’t enough Bitcoins for each US dollar millionaire to own even 1 BTC!
Many of these millionaires are older people, since on average, you accumulate wealth as you age which probably makes it less likely for them to accumulate bitcoin as they don’t understand it or don’t see value in it.
The current price of bitcoin is $17,000/coin. This is down significantly from its previous peak of $69k. If each millionaire was to purchase 1 bitcoin that would be 1.7% of their wealth, for the people who are “merely” $1 millionaires, and if they were to just hold it, as more people would continue to purchase bitcoin that would drive the price up significantly. Many people would argue that this is possible with any asset, which is partially true. But the main difference between Bitcoin and any other asset is it’s ability to be purchased by anyone in the world at any time, essentially, it’s liquidity.
“They aren’t making any more land” is a commonly heard phrase. Which is not exactly true for many reasons.
Unproductive land is regularly turned into productive land.
Land has another issue, you usually only buy land locally.
Most other assets have similar issues, or unique issues to each asset, that make them difficult to buy. There are only ever 21 million Bitcoin and they are the ultimate liquid asset.
For these reasons it is just blowing my mind that Bitcoin has continued to drop in price.
Historically, Bitcoin has gained interest from people, myself included, as its price runs up. When the price is going down, no one cares. I fell victim to this in 2017 when it ran up to $17k and then lost value from 2018-2020. I didn’t pay attention and missed out buying in the $3,000-$5,000 range.
I started reading a LOT more the next time it ran up in 2021 to $69k. As it’s continued into the current crypto winter I have tried to avoid the mistake I made in the last “crypto winter”. I have continued to accumulate. I have been “Orange Pilled”.
Since I’ve read so much I also fell victim to the thinking that everyone else was learning the same stuff I was. Seeing that there are only ~ 1 million people holding 1 BTC I see I am still very early. Bitcoin is early.
I am very curious to see how Bitcoin adoption continues over the next years! If you want to learn more about Bitcoin you can contact me via email or comment below!
I have been looking for a great video/podcast to share with people who are newer to bitcoin. I believe I have found one that, while long, is very good!
I don’t have much to comment about for the start of the video. It is just a very informative video and I recommend you listen.
There are 2 time stamps I wanted to highlight towards the end of the video where Robert Breedlove is discussing challenges, risks or arguments against bitcoin.
The first one starts at ~1:39:01. Here he is discussing a common argument against bitcoin that it has “no intrinsic value”. An article from Bitcoin Magazine – DOES BITCOIN HAVE INTRINSIC VALUE -( discusses the thought of if anything has intrinsic value, it doesn’t. Value is only defined when some outside entity is able to use any resource. For example, an ocean world would not have intrinsic value to humans as we are land dwelling, but it would have more value to fish.
Robert Breedlove makes a distinction between intrinsic value vs. industrial value. When many people make the argument that Bitcoin has no intrinsic value they are comparing it against gold, which has an industrial value in that it can be used in many production processes or to make many useful things. It also has value as art or jewelry. Gold actually has no intrinsic value since as noted before, nothing has intrinsic value. Approximately half of new yearly gold mined is used for jewelry and industrial use and half is used for store of value or “monetary premium” by individuals or central banks. This is in comparison to bitcoin which as people have noted, has no industrial use, it ONLY has monetary premium. The benefit of bitcoin’s preservation of value vs say US dollars is that bitcoin has a capped supply of 21 million coins. Once you buy some bitcoin, you are sure of how much you own relative to the total pie. With USD or any other fiat currency (government issued currency) you don’t know how much more will be issued and will erode your value via inflation.
The other good discussion comes at 2:00. The free market of history had chosen Gold as the benchmark for measuring value. This is because it was the “hardest” money. It had the least inflation. Gold’s inflation was relative to how much gold was mined each year, which is ~2%/year relative to the current total world gold supply. When you take the inverse of that and compare the “stock” total existing gold (in tons) divided by the new production each year (flow) you get a number, for example 100 tons existing/2 tons new production = 50 stock to flow number (S2F).
The “flow” of new material creation compared to the existing “stock”. Commodities like oil and corn have very high flows relative to the current stock which produces a small stock to flow number. Learn more about Stock to flow here.
There is not a lot of existing corn or oil carryover each year, relative to the new production. Because of this these things usually have relatively cheap prices since there is so much new creation. Things that have low flows relative to the existing stock have higher values as it’s harder to get the new stuff. In the past gold and silver have both been used as money. But gold eventually won out as the “harder” money to produce. There is more silver produced relative to the current stock of world wide silver, compared to gold.
Silver has a stock to flow number of 22.
Gold and bitcoin both have stock to flow numbers of approximately 50-60. But in 2024 (during the next bitcoin halving) bitcoin’s stock to flow number will increase to 120. This is because the issuance of new bitcoin will decrease in half. This stock to flow of 120 will be the highest Stock to flow number of any asset ever, and it’s only going higher as the issuance of new bitcoin continues to be cut in half every 4 years, due to the technical nature of bitcoin. To learn more about the halving read here.
Coming back to the conversation, in the past the world wide free market had selected gold as the preferred store of value due to its “hard” nature and high stock to flow number. With bitcoin having a higher stock to flow going forward, along with all the other benefits it has over gold doesn’t it make sense for bitcoin to be the preferred store of value?
I leave you with a final very short 2 minute video related to discussing what is money and value? Money is best thought of as a tool to compare the value of different things or services. You can measure the value of a house, and apple and a massage in the same currency and compare their value. If the money is inflating then the price becomes confusing for measuring things. It’d be like if a ruler was changing as you were trying to measure a table. Inflation is not good or needed for an economy to work.
If you want to talk about bitcoin you know where to find me!
MyWheelLife.com 