Gold has been around – and traded for its value – for thousands of years and has certainly stood the test of time. By comparison, Bitcoin is little more than a decade old.
That’s not to say that cryptocurrency is a bad idea, as Rafi Farber said to me in our following conversation. The point is that most currencies have come and gone throughout history but gold has weathered all the storms of change.
Tom Luongo’s related podcast with me is worth listening to.
Consider that gold held in the hands of Julius Caesar thousands of years ago is still in circulation today, albeit looking a bit different. Meanwhile, the Zimbabwean Dollar lasted about 30 years before it collapsed.
What is money?
According to Hans F Sennholz, who authored Gold Is Money,
[m]oney is not the product of a legislative act, but the inevitable result of man’s division of labor and exchange economy. Wherever enterprising men seek to exchange their goods and services for more marketable goods that facilitate further exchanges for other goods, the precious metals, especially gold, are most suited to serve as money.
Adding to that, Rafi made the excellent point that gold is the foundation and everything else is layered on top of it.
Gold […] is money, pure and simple. Even now, when you use dollars, you are using gold substitutes. The dollar only has any market value right now because it can still buy some amount of gold. The dollar was born as a gold substitute, and it will die when it is no longer a gold substitute.
When the dollar can no longer be substituted back into any amount of physical gold, the dollar becomes worthless.
That day is fast approaching.
Our conversation
Rafi joined me for a great discussion around
- the definition of money and economics,
- life cycles of currencies,
- why Bitcoin is not real money,
- interest rates and inflation,
- good and bad debt, and
- preparing for the collapse of the US Dollar.
