Basic Reports

Part II of Ukraine and Inflation, Can Russia Enact a Gold Standard?

Gold Exchange Report

To listen to the audio version of this article click here. In Part I we discussed how the fallout from the Russian invasion of Ukraine will lead to inflation, but not in the way most people think.  In Part II we discuss the possibility of Russia repudiating the dollar and going on a gold standard. […]

Bitcoin Myths, Report 27 Oct

Keith gave a keynote address—the only speaker with an hour to cover his topic—at the Gold and Alternative Investments Conference in Sydney on Saturday. Said topic was the nature of money. “Money is a matter of functions four: a medium, a measure, a standard, a store.” Most of the talk was structured around discussing these […]

Monetary Innovation in the Ancient World

We think we are the only generation to be smart. In the 19th century, they did not have the internal combustion engine. In the 18th century, they did not have the railroad. In the 17th century, they did not have the piano. So, most people assume, they were dumb. They did not know about smart […]

The Ultimate Stablecoin, Report 18 Nov 2018

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away we wrote a series of articles arguing that bitcoin is not money and is not sound. Bitcoin was skyrocketing at the time, as we wrote most of them between July 30 and Oct 1 last year. Back in those halcyon days, volatility was deemed to […]

The Skyrocket Phase, Report 3 Apr 2018

Let’s tie two topics we have treated, one in exhaustive depth and the other in an ongoing series. They are bitcoin and capital consumption. By now, everyone knows that the price of bitcoin crashed. Barrels of electrons are being spilled discussing and debating why, and if/when the price will go back to what it ought […]

The Bitcoin Effect, Gold and Silver Report 24 Dec 2017

Merry Christmas to our American friends. Happy Christmas to the rest of the Anglosphere. Felicem natalem Christi to our Latin-speaking audience, and góðr jól to those who are reviving Old Norse as a great language! Let’s address two themes about the gold price trend that are increasingly in popularity the past few months—as the price […]

Cheering for Bitcoin, Gold and Silver Report 17 Dec 2017

We have published many articles, arguing that bitcoin is unsound. Yet for all those arguments, there is a bright side to bitcoin. It is exciting to see that there is an audience of millions of people—mainstream people, not wild-eyed End-The-Fed gold bug preppers who keep their gold hoards with their stockpiles of ammo—who are looking […]

Bitcoin Hyper-Deflation, Gold and Silver Report 10 Dec 2017

A meme we have seen in the bitcoin community seems to be gaining traction. Bitcoin is deflationary. That is prices of things, measured in bitcoin, are falling. For example, in spring 2011, gasoline was Ƀ1.00. This week, that same gallon had fallen to Ƀ0.0001875. Gas has gone down by 99.98 percent! We don’t think that […]

Is That a Feature or a Bug? Gold & Silver Report 1 Oct 2017

We have covered many reasons why bitcoin is unsound and not money. It’s a ledger of unbacked liabilities. It is designed to have finite quantity but therefore indeterminate and hence volatile value. This makes it unusable for borrowing or lending and hence savings, but a great a vehicle for conversion of one person’s wealth into […]

Is Bitcoin a Commodity, Gold & Silver Report 24 Sep 2017

Carl Menger, father of the Austrian School of Economics, showed the world that money is not the product of the state. He did not mean that government is intrinsically incapable of decreeing something to be money while other groups, organized for different purposes, could do it. He described how money emerges as the commodity which […]