Voltaire famouslysaid that “paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value —zero.”
ST LOUIS RESERVE SAYS USD HAS NO INTRINSIC VALUE
St. Louis Federal Reserve says Bitcoin is 'LikeRegular Currency'
Model Bitcoin standing in front ofdollar bills.
Thomas Trutschel—Photothek via GettyImages
11:57 AM EDT
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis has provided some high-profile validation for a core premise of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency. A blog post this week based on an earlier Fed research paper said that “bitcoin units have no intrinsic value” – but added that currencies “such as the U.S. dollar, the euro, and the Swiss france . . . have no intrinsic value either.”
The post, titled “Three Ways Bitcoin is Like Regular Currency,” doesn’t precisely endorse Bitcoin or cryptocurrency. In another recent report, the St. Louis Fed was critical of Bitcoin’s inefficiency. Cryptocurrency has also become rife with scams since its surge in value last year, and may constitute a global risk because it enables clandestine money laundering, capital flight, and tax evasion.
But the St. Louis Fed has provided a credible rebuttal to one of the most widespread and misguided criticisms of cryptocurrency: That, because it isn’t tied to a particular real-world commodity, it should have a monetary value of zero. As Fed researchers point out, since decoupling from the gold standard in the early 1970s, almost all global reserve currencies rely on nothing but trust to function as a media of value exchange.
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In the case of the dollar, that’s mostly trust in the U.S. government and economy. For Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, it’s trust in computer code and, at least to some extent, developers.
Surprisingly, the Fed’s new statement also echoes one of the predominant arguments that cryptocurrency fans use to disparage government-backed currency – though in a rather roundabout way. The post argues in part that “there’s a limited supply” of both cash and Bitcoin. The libertarian boosters at the heart of the crytpocurrency movement have often argued that Bitcoin is better than government currency because central banks can devalue national currencies through inflation, while Bitcoin has a strictly fixed supply. Though the Fed’s post points out that it doesn’t actually print cash – in the sense of physical notes – it acknowledges its ability to expand the money supply.
Bcash is inferiortechnologically compared to Bitcoin, not the other way around.Without the inclusion of Segwit, the malleability bug is stillpresent. Much larger blocks lead to the centralisation of the networkwhile not even coming close to the number of transactions Visa orMastercard can accomplish. These forks are downrightanti-intellectual, simply including a blocksize increase, when thereare about a hundred less contentious features that could be includedin a Hard Fork. This anti-intellectual work is not only observed inthe features included in the hardfork (Or lack thereof), but also inthe lack of basic code review and testing (As observed with therecent B2X bug [1][2]).
Muchthe same for BGold has been observed as well, withpre-mining, replayprotection requested to be coded days before the fork (Shouldhave been 2 years + before the fork), noteven knowing which chain is the right chain.
Part IV of the Banking Act 1959.
TheReserve Bank of Australia have the ability to set the price ofgold at any time.
Which means the RBA could tell the mines what they are going topay for the gold, and set whatever price they like.
notethat prior to 1976 anyone having possession of gold other thanjewellry had one month from it coming into their possession tosurrender it to the government
also note that the law that authorised the government to do this has never beenrepealed just suspended . To bring it back again it onlyrequires the governor generals signature not neccessary to passthrough parliament.
