Friday Crypto's virtue is that they have a degree of anonymity and can be used to shift funds to less unfriendly jurisdictions. A lot of 'money' was got out of China and into Australian real estate using cryptos. Apparently anonymity is no longer certain, though I don’t know that personally. My quibble with the Bitcoin aficionados is the claim that Bitcoin’s … [Read more...]
Bitcoin or Goats
Tuesday I listened to a speaker a few days ago explain that Gold was money because it was ‘the most marketable good’ (the preferred trading good in the marketplace). He then explained that silver was what was actually used as most people didn’t own Gold and it was too valuable for marketplace trades. If Menger’s theory that money is so by virtue of the fact that it is … [Read more...]
The Duality of Money
Tuesday Keith Weiner makes the distinction here between the two roles of money. Most people see money purely from the income/spend perspective, but that is not money’s only role, in fact, it is not even money’s primary role. Many things can successfully be used as a medium of exchange; only surplus money (capital) can be used to build more wealth and also convey wealth … [Read more...]
The Primary Function
Friday The emergence of Gold from the temples of Egypt, c.1500BC, marked the beginning of the first Golden Age. Not only was the marketplace introduced to a precise measure of value, but, and more importantly, it gained a secure storage for that value. Where is the incentive to create surplus value if there is no means to store that value? Why would anyone … [Read more...]
Defining Money Correctly
Friday Here is an article purporting to explain what money is. It proceeds to define money by describing one of the actions that it does. Money can be used for many different things – exchanging for goods, investing, gambling, tipping, hoarding etc. But defining something by what it does can be misleading, because it reverses cause and effect. Something is what it is … [Read more...]