Tag Archive for: bitcoin

Bad Ideas About Money, Bitcoin, and Gold Report 20 Aug 2017

Most false or irrational ideas about money are not new. For example, take the idea that government can just fix the price of one monetary asset against another. Some people think that we can have a gold standard by such a decree today. This idea goes back at least as far as the Coinage Act […]

Bitcoin Has No Yield, but Gold Does Report 13 August 2017

Last week, we said: It is commonly accepted to say the dollar is “printed”, but we can see from this line of thinking it is really borrowed. There is a real borrower on the other side of the transaction, and that borrower has powerful motivations to keep paying to service the debt. Bitcoin has no […]

Bitcoin Forked, and Gold and Silver Report 6 August 2017

So bitcoin forked. You did not know this. Well, if you’re saving in gold perhaps not. If you’re betting in the crypto coin casino, you knew it, bet on it, and now we assume happily diving into your greater quantity of dollars after the fork. You don’t have a greater quantity of bitcoins; bitcoin has […]

Bitcoin, Gold and Silver Report 30 July 2017

That’s it. It’s the final straw. One of the alternative investing newsletters had a headline that screamed, “Bitcoin Is About to Soar, But You Must Act by August 1 to Get In”. It was missing only the call to action “call 1-800-BIT-COIN now! That number again is 800 B.I.T..C.O.I.N.” Is it about to go up? […]

Bitcoin, Gold, and the Quantity of Money

Bitcoin, Gold, and the Quantity of Money

The popular view today is based on the linear Quantity Theory of Money. It seems to be common sense. If more units of a currency are issued, then the value of each unit should fall. Many people may not think of it in explicit terms, but the idea is that the value of one unit […]

Bitcoin: Oh Why Did You Have to Crash?

During the recent exponential rise in the price of Bitcoin, there were jokes all over the Internet about the fall of the dollar—more than 80% in Bitcoin terms. Why not measure the value of the dollar in terms of tulips? One must measure the more variable unit with the more constant. Dollars are used to […]

Gold, Redeemability, Bitcoin, and Backwardation

I recently released a video about the Internet-based currency, Bitcoin. I asked the question: is Bitcoin money?  In brief, I said no it’s an irredeemable currency.  This generated some controversy in the Bitcoin community.  I took it for granted that everyone would agree that money had to be a tangible good, but it turns out […]

Bitcoin Crashed. Again.

When writing about economics (as opposed to trading), one does not expect to be proven right within days of publishing something. Things can take years to play out. On Monday, February 25, we published What Drives the Price of Gold and Silver? In that article, I wrote: If there is a credible rumor that the […]

Is Bitcoin Money?