Discussion for article #227316
Bitcoin isn’t an investment so much as a scam.
Like gold, except when the value of gold plummets you’ll at least have some practically useless, soft, pretty metal.
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Lee will be using the sale proceeds to invest in unicorn futures.
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“So I apologize. I just got this one wrong.”
I’m sure in Lee’s eyes, that will make it ALLLLLL better.
“Scam” could apply to any currency, since nothing is backed by anything anymore. The dollar has value because people believe that it does. So does Bitcoin.
Faith is all that keeps either of them functioning.
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True, and I’ll still take a nationally backed currency over something backed by literally nothing any day of the week.
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It was a big mistake but his apology is what a real apology looks like.
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Twaddle. Money will have value as long as the government that issues it insists that you pay your taxes in it. Good luck paying your taxes in Bitcoins.
Uncle Sam will be glad to take your gold coins, but only the ones minted by the US government and only at face value.
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Who cares?
What do you mean, nothing is backed by anything anymore? When was gold ever backed with something? Like everything else, it only has value that people assign to it, and doesn’t have magical properties making it safe or valuable. Money has NEVER been backed with anything, besides the belief that it has value.
The US Dollar is backed by trillions of dollars in assets, an almost limitless revenue stream, and the most powerful military in the world. I’ll take that any day over a shiny rock.
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Gold is incredibly useful. Look inside a computer sometime if you doubt it. It’s not the best at any one thing, but the combination of things it’s good at make it irreplaceable. It’s not the most electrically conductive and not the most non-reactive element on the periodic table, but its the best conductor that is virtually non-reactive. That’s why they use gold rather than copper or silver to plate the pins on a processor.
And unfortunately, while it’s not the heaviest stable element, not the shiniest and, arguably not the most prettily colored (bromine, iodine and, if you pass a current through them in a tube, the noble gasses, are contenders in my book), the combination of the color, the weight and the shine have the power to drive people crazy, to the point you’d suspect it was neurotoxic or radioactive or something if you didn’t know better.
There are a lot of things we’d be using gold for if it wasn’t so rare and if it didn’t make people crazy.
But, but gold is backed by . . . uh . . . goooooold! It’s shiny and yellow and heavy! You know you want some! How can you resist it’s power? It’s goooooooolllld! Shiny! Yellow! Heavy! Untarnishable and oh that color!
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The gold bugs are hilarious, particulary the ones who keep insisting that “gold has real value.” It is very useful for plating electrical contacts, but the industry has gotten very good at doing that with a layer of gold that’s no more than a couple of atoms thick. Based on its industrial uses, gold is probably not worth much more than copper. Anything above that is based on the “greater fool” theory.
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I stick with the theory that aliens crashlanded here thousands of years ago and needed gold to repair their ship, so they used their power ray to brainwash us into desiring gold until they had enough to get home. Then they forgot to change us back. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
BTW, if you ever stumble across the core of an old mainframe, grab it. There can actually be a substantial amount of gold in one of those dinosaurs, well worth the cost of recovering it at today’s inflated price.
My best friend majored in economics. A private joke of ours (and for the life of me, I can’t remember which of us came up with it) is if we see an ad on TV or hear someone talk about “gold,” one of says, in a low, covetous tone of voice “gooooooold!” to which the other immediately responds, in a similar low, fruity voice “It has intrinsic value, you know!” At which point we both laugh, and laugh and laugh.
What passes for humor between a poll sci major and a philosophy major with a major in econ (and a minor in chemistry) doesn’t bear close scrutiny, of course . . .
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Thereby ensuring that someday the cores of old mainframes will be so rare that their value as artifacts will exceed their salvage value.
Yeah, I used to work for an electronic manufacturer and I’ve re-plated countless contacts on circuit boards. I guess my point was, if things ever get so bad the US currency fails, gold will be the last thing I’ll be thinking about. Can’t eat it.
Paving the streets of DC?
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You could turn it into bullets, I guess.