{"id":26956,"date":"2017-10-17T19:21:18","date_gmt":"2017-10-18T00:21:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=26956"},"modified":"2017-10-17T19:21:18","modified_gmt":"2017-10-18T00:21:18","slug":"bitcoin-a-tower-of-monetary-babel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=26956","title":{"rendered":"Bitcoin: A Tower of Monetary\u00a0Babel"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bitcoin: A Tower of Monetary\u00a0Babel<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
\n

\"Bitcoin<\/p>\n

The promoters of crypto currencies have gushingly touted them as the mechanism by which the present central banking cabal and the system of nation states which derive much of their power from will be brought down and replaced by digital money.\u00a0 Despite their meteoric rise as speculative \u201cassets,\u201d there are fundamental economic reasons why they will never act as a general medium of exchange despite the wild enthusiasm for them by the crypto-currency cultists.<\/p>\n

Money \u2013 a general medium of exchange \u2013 is the most marketable (exchangeable) commodity in an economy.\u00a0 As a good, money is not sought after for its direct use \u2013 to satisfy individual wants \u2013 but to satisfy wants indirectly through exchange for other goods.\u00a0 Over time, one good becomes money since it possesses qualities superior to all other goods as a money.\u00a0 When gold became demanded not for its \u201cuse value,\u201d but for its \u201cexchange value,\u201d it became a general medium of exchange \u2013 money.<\/p>\n

As a consumer good, gold possessed a value or a \u201cprice\u201d prior to it becoming a money, as the eminent monetary theorist Murray Rothbard explains:<\/p>\n

. . . embedded in the demand for money is knowledge<\/p>\n

of the money-prices of the immediate past; in contrast<\/p>\n

to directly-used consumers\u2019 or producers\u2019 goods, money<\/p>\n

must have pre-existing prices on which to ground a demand.<\/p>\n

But the only way this can happen is by beginning with a useful<\/p>\n

commodity under barter, and then adding demand for a<\/p>\n

medium to the previous demand for direct use (e.g., for<\/p>\n

ornaments in the case of gold.)*<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thus, Bitcoin\u2019s \u201cprice\u201d is not in terms of its original commodity price, but its price is in terms of dollars, Euros, yuan, etc.\u00a0 In the dollar\u2019s case, it was at one time linked to gold, but has since been severed from it while Bitcoin has had no such relationship.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bitcoin: A Tower of Monetary\u00a0Babel The promoters of crypto currencies have gushingly touted them as the mechanism by which the present central banking cabal and the system of nation states which derive much of their power from will be brought down and replaced by digital money.\u00a0 Despite their meteoric rise as speculative \u201cassets,\u201d there are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12284,13925,4174,124,15611,536],"class_list":["post-26956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-antonius-aquinas","tag-babel","tag-bitcoin","tag-central-banks","tag-cryptocurrency","tag-money"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26957,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26956\/revisions\/26957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}