Crypto

[itsybitsy]

My bitcoin has gone through the roof

Hello friend

what do you want, peasant?!

[grenfell]

A story that doesn't seem to have had much mention on mainstream media ( or at least the msm I've seen) is a recent very large crypto heist. I don't suppose there are many crypto millionaires on here so perhaps we haven't been affected directly but if nothing else it's interesting.
Just over a week ago a hack stole $6.3 billion from the crypto trading company Binance at a rate that was roughly $5 million a second. Some has been retrieved but $2.4 billion has gone and it is assumed that has gone to North Korea.
A couple of short articles,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0033pfc
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w1730c6pl79n4ys

[Peter]

MONEY.....cash, crypto, even precious metals in a vault

If you can’t hold it in your hand.......ITS NOT YOURS.

FIAT MONEY is just based on a promise to pay.

Even my OA pension or your wages do not physically exist.

Government sends my pension digitally to my bank.

Bank digitally pays my Supermarket bills.

Supermarket pays tax digitally to government.

And so the cycle continues.

Same with your wages...digitally sent to your bank....etc.

[Bijela]

Depending on the situation I don't think I'd trade for anything like gold, silver or crypto. Reson being that there's enough cash floating around. If there was an event nuclear/mass EMP the resulting world population would drop and demand would dimish. A lot of people don't have crypto or want it. You don't see end of the world films with gold dealers.

[Peter]

Most of us with any gold bought it as a hedge to inflation.

My small stock has trebled in value.

[grenfell]

Crypto as far as I can see is pretty much in the same league as gold , of little practical value in that actually being able to use it as money to buy stuff is really quite limited but using it as an asset seems to work quite well. There is also the advantage that governments can't just print more although to a degree pm's are assess of via the paper market where no physical metal is held..
Gold does have the advantage of several thousand years of use behind it as well , it's use and desirability has remained throughout the fall of empires , wars and plagues and I don't see it being abandoned any time soon. My daughter dabbeled in the gold and silver markets , all of it the paper pm market. She invested and later sold her holdings giving her enough for a decent deposit on her house. I may have mentioned this before but on another forum one poster said he wasn't investing in gold his precious metal of choice is green , that being the colour of the John Deere tractor he had just brought.
In many respects I don't really know enough about crypto to fully understand the details of the heist or for that matter just how North Korea would use those stolen assets...

[GeraldTheBonzai]

Difference between crypto and gold is that gold is an actual tangible asset - you can take possession of it. Crypto on the other hand is totally virtual - it doesn't exist anywhere except in a computer somewhere. Thats even worse than fiat currency - at leat a bank note exists, even if it is just promissory.

For those interested, The Theory of Money and Credit by Mises is a classic discussion of what money actually is and why it works. His regression theory of money removed the need for trust - he argues that money has value today not because we "trust" that it has value tomorrow, underwritten by some authority (Gov). Instead he argues that money works because we know that it had value yesterday, and going backwards in time to some tangible asset like gold. So things like fiat currency work because they have history, rather than based on trust. In essence, people don't use money because they trust it; they trust it because it already has a demonstrated, objective history of purchasing power.

[Frnc]

Re inflation in recent years. A major factor was Covid. People were locked down and couldn't spend money as easily. They had more money in the bank. And Covid created supply shortages. Both factors are obviously inflationary.

Governments printing money is a more complicated topic. For example, during Covid the government issued bonds, which the BoE bought (Quantitative Easing). This is supposed to stimulate investment and spending. But in those circumstances (unlike after the 2008 crash) it contributed to inflation.

[Peter]

MONEY.....cash, crypto, even precious metals in a vault

If you can’t hold it in your hand.......ITS NOT YOURS.

.
What I mean by “precious metal kept a vault” is "some company’s will take your money from you for
Gold and Silver and offer to keep it safe in their vault for you for a fee.....

.....if you decide to buy PMs you must keep it yourself or its not yours to do what you want with.

I suppose Yorkshire Andy will say send it to him