The Brave web browser [LWN.net]

The Brave web browser

Posted Jun 19, 2017 7:11 UTC (Mon) by niner (guest, #26151)
In reply to: The Brave web browser by neilbrown
Parent article: The Brave web browser

I've always found it curious that people accept the value of gold but not the value of fiat money.

Why is gold valuable?

People think it's sorta pretty, but certainly not _that_ pretty. It's a reasonably good conductor, but there are better. As metals go it's relatively soft. A cool property is that gold leaf can be beaten extremely thin, but that's hardly enough to give it the value it has. Gold is one of the few noble metals and that is certainly worth something. But frankly, silver beats it in most applications.

No, really the factor that contributes most to gold's value is its limited availability. And that is something that is e.g. much more true for Bitcoin.

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The Brave web browser

Posted Jun 19, 2017 9:13 UTC (Mon) by Sesse (subscriber, #53779) [Link] (1 responses)

You may have noticed that the world has moved away from the gold standard.

The Brave web browser

Posted Jun 19, 2017 10:53 UTC (Mon) by niner (guest, #26151) [Link]

You may have noticed that I even mentioned that fact by talking about fiat money.

FWIW I responded to this: "I have wondered where the value of money comes from... once it was gold", which assumes that gold has some inherent value.

The Brave web browser

Posted Jun 19, 2017 17:15 UTC (Mon) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (1 responses)

All money is is a commodity that becomes very widely accepted.

Lots of stuff has been money in the past... cows, goats, wheat, tobacco leaves, various stones, feathers, etc etc. Some of them, like tobacco, ended up being the basis of paper money will some fairly sophisticated schemes to allow trade and movement of tobacco and savings in tobacco without it going bad while in storage.

Metals, as you can imagine, has some advantages over those things. It's divisible... you can take a gold coin, cut it in half, and it's still worth the same as it was before. You can't do that with a cow.

It also doesn't rot, doesn't really tarnish. Gold and other precious metals don't tend to rust. Gold is extremely chemically stable. It's also convenient to store and move. You can have a lot of wealth in gold and still be able to lock it up or carry it around with you. Can't do that with, say, granite.

Prior to regulation typically you had multiple competing currencies, though. Silver was far more popular then Gold ever was for most the history of the USA.

Crypto currency and The Brave web browser

Posted Jun 20, 2017 1:30 UTC (Tue) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link]

> All money is is a commodity that becomes very widely accepted.

True, but that doesn't tell the full story of why it is considered to be valuable.
Begin easy to divide, easy to transport, easy to store, short in supply and hard to forge are necessary conditions, but they aren't sufficient.

I think that understanding the dynamics of value is important for understanding stability, and hence long term value. Some of the things you listed only worked as money in localised settings (local in both time and space). Others work more broadly.

I'm particularly interested in value from the perspective of stability - probably because I'm hoping for a comfortable retirement in a few years. I can see that while bitcoin clearly has value (to some people), it is no where near as stable as, e.g. the US or AU dollar.
I imagine that if a crypto currency was backed by a more solid currency, then the low transaction cost could be expected to raise its value a little above the underlying currency (2% discount if you pay in bitcoin), but as bitcoin is backed by nothing and the *only* value is in the low transaction cost .... I won't be using it for my retirement savings.

The Brave web browser

Posted Jun 21, 2017 15:59 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

And that is something that is e.g. much more true for Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is too scarce. Gold is hard to produce (by mining) but also very hard to destroy. It's high per-volume value pretty much guarantees that if it's stolen and/or lost it could be returned with some effort. Bitcoins... not so much.