What Will The Coming Gold Standard Look Like
I gave a talk at FreedomFest last month. Unfortunately, the video was not recorded (not even the projector worked). However, the topic is so important that I recorded the talk back in my office, to put a video to put on the Internet. My talk covers the following areas:
- First pseudo gold standard | 0:50
- Second pseudo gold standard | 7:27
- What do people need from a monetary system? | 16:21
- What is the role of the banker? | 21:54
- Why does gold circulate or not circulate? | 23:28
- A working definition of the gold standard | 27:35
- How do we get from here to there? | 28:25
The video can be found on YouTube here or watch it below. For those interested in additional reading material, see my articles on why the world needs an Unadulterated Gold Standard, how interest rates are set in a gold standard and the need to remove capital gains tax on gold (and why that isn’t cronyism).
© 2017 Monetary Metals
Hey Keith,
You’re a breath of fresh air in the gold world. I’ve read most of your works and watched as many of your videos as I can find! I also thoroughly enjoy Mr Fekete’s work, as a former quant econ major who switched from physics and moonlighted with math, it’s the most internally consistent, precise, and intellectually honest work on price/money dynamics I’ve ever been exposed to. Are there any of his books or works that you would recommend I really spend some time on? Does he have any contemporaries or mentors himself, or is it really just you guys leading the good fight?
Also, while I appreciate that your mission and business relies on gold; however many of the arguments you make against bitcoin could be said of gold. The issue of ‘earning interest’ exists in both systems: you’ve been able to create gold loans to end users of gold: yet you poopah people who have made loans in Bitcoin to miners. Yes, they were financially poor choices by the lender; but the same could happen to any of your loans were the ‘price’ in dollars to rise. The issues facing the circulation and adoption of gold and bitcoin are very similar in regards to ‘earning interest.’
I can loan my bitcoin to margin traders for roughly 1%/day – does that not count as a ‘return on bitcoin in bitcoin?’
Honestly, that’s the only way I know of currently but it does exist.
I really do appreciate the issues you have with bitcoin, I just think that the same could be said of the current gold market. The benefit of bitcoin is that you have no worries of capital controls or storage costs. It is just a ledger, but it’s the first instance of ‘digital scarcity’ ever created. The main chain is finite in supply and immutable – at worst it seems a far superior currency than fed credits. If i try to leave the country with any appreciable amount of money, TSA is going to give me a free enema and probably confiscate it in the process. With bitcoin, my ‘money’ is everywhere. No need for fees to change FX, and no issues with protecting myself from the ponzi of modern banking.
Ultimately, I think we’re headed back to the era of ‘competing currencies’ that we saw in the early days of American history, wherein banks would issue their own notes against their accounts (of course denoted in gold). I think there is room for both gold and bitcoin to complement one another: and they are both far superior to renting our money at interest from a private cartel!
Hope to hear from you, I’m out here preaching your gospel. Getting my friends and family to hold gold/silver, and I’m also telling them bitcoin. I’d love to hear your thoughts!