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by JS Kim, Founder of SmartKnowledgeU and skwealthacademy, this article was first posted at smartknowledgeu.com/blog on 1 June 2017.
As most of you know, the rise of the cryptocurrency has dominated financial headlines as of late, compelling many to comment on bulletin boards and message boards that they will never buy physical gold or physical silver ever again, and that from now on, it’s cryptocurrencies or bust! Given Bitcoin and Ether’s recent parabolic rise, strictly from a price standpoint, physical gold makes more sense as a a purchase at this current time than Bitcoin or Ether, though certainly given performance and the benefit of hindsight, buying Bitcoin and Ether at the start of the year made more sense than buying gold. But again this statement is only valid given the two entirely different purposes of buying gold and cryptocurrencies. And technically speaking, Ether, or Ethereum is not a cryptocurrency, but rather a token that user receive users for using their computing power to validate transactions and for helping pay for the development of the Ethereum network. As I will explain later in this article, even despite the massive parabolic rise in the price of BTC, if one were seeking to fulfill the very specific purpose that purchasing physical gold achieves in a wealth preservation plan, then purchasing gold over cryptocurrencies at the start of the year still would have made sense for a lot of people.
Those that have truly followed me this year, and not just read the occasional article I write about precious metals that is posted on ZeroHedge every several months, know that I have warned of big dips in spot gold and spot silver prices and advocated shorting paper gold and paper silver several times already this year, right before significant price dips materialized, as a means to protect oneself against banker price manipulations of spot PM prices. However, the current time is not one of them, as I believe the prices for both physical gold ($1258) and physical silver ($17.28) are solid long-term buys right now. However, this doesn't mean there won't be interim volatility in price, as in today's Central Banker asset price-distorted world, volatility has become the norm, not the exception. For those that want to follow my opinion about PMs, you can do so on my Snapchat skwealthacademy channel, where I post snaps nearly every day, and very often discuss the state of PMs and to a lesser extent, cryptocurrencies.
Although many in the gold community do not like cryptocurrencies because they conveniently fit into the global banking cartel end goal of pushing society into wide acceptance of a 100% digital currencies, at this point, no one knows whether Bitcoin is part of the global banking cartel's plan to take the world into 100% digital currency, including yours truly. Way back in 2012, I wrote that the banking cartel's end game was clearly to gain control over every citizen's financial life by eradicating the world of all paper currency and pushing wide acceptance of a 100% digital currency . It is of my opinion, that there is a possibility that bankers are behind either the development and/or marketing of Bitcoin, as acceptance of Bitcoin will help drive acceptance of the bankers' end game of 100% eradication of paper money and 100% acceptance of digital currency across the world. I believe that my opinion is firmly in the minority, and many cryptocurrency supporters contend that there is zero possibility that Bitcoin was part of a banking project (by the way, if you keep reading, you will see that I discovered a new cryptocurrency I am backing for the long-term). However, in this debate, the only definitive conclusion that can be drawn is the following: without knowing the identity of the group of people known as Satoshi Nakamoto, no one can end this debate, so both sides of the debate at this point are based not on evidence, but pure speculation. The key to knowing which opinion is correct is unveiling the identity of Satoshi Nakaomoto beyond a shadow of a doubt, and is this is still an unknown today. Thus, one side cannot say "my lack of evidence supports my opinion more so than your lack of evidence", which unfortunately, has evolved (or more appropriately "devolved") into an argument that many people today utilize, and strongly believe, is perfectly valid, when in reality, such an argument is based entirely on emotion, irrationality and a lack of critical thought.
When one of my friends noticed that I was working on a piece about the cryptocurrency versus gold debate, he asked me, "Are you sure you want to publish that article and take on the crytpocurrency advocates, as they will heap scorn on you for doubting the anti-banking cartel nature of cryptocurrencies? That's like trying to convince a hardcore vegan that eating meat is not evil. That takes a lot of courage." To that, I replied, "First of all, I'm not belittling cryptocurrency advocates, because if you read the article after I publish it, you will see that I recently became aware of a brand-new crytprocurrency that I support. Secondly, it doesn't take courage to express logical views, as that is all I am doing. Thirdly, I am not stating that Bitcoin advocates that believe BTC is independent of the global banking cartel are wrong. I am merely expressing reservations because no one has any evidence that is conclusive on either side of the debate. The flip side of that statement is that they may be right as well. To me it seems harmless to point out an indisputable fact, which is that hard conclusions should never be drawn from a lack of evidence, but this is routinely done." I continued, "I know that people hate to deal with uncertainties, and will do anything to rid themselves of that uncertainty, which leads to many wrong conclusions. This is a fact propelled by many psychology studies, so when I point this out, I am again, just pointing out a fact. Just look at how financial markets deal with uncertainty. They don't like it all. But that does not mean, because uncertainty exists, that one should make conclusions out of thin air to explain that uncertainty to get rid of it. To me, that is totally irrational. Yet the mainstream financial media does this on a daily basis with their headlines, To make my point, just go to YouTube and search for a topic called "demon magicians", in which people claim that amazing magicians have sold their souls to the devil for powers to manipulate solid objects instantly into different states of matter, simply because they don't know the tricks executed by these magicians to pull off their amazing illusions. I mean, there is a whole segment of people on YouTube that actually believe magicians are given powers by the devil, simply because of their desire to provide a certain explanation to a topic about which they are uncertain and can find zero evidence to explain the uncertainty. As mad as this sounds, this kind of irrationality persists in the financial world to, in mainstream financial media, to explain uncertain things whereby correlation for financial events are wrongly announced to the world as causation on a daily basis."
It may be true that the global banking cartel's iteration of their 100% digital currency will differ substantially from the cryptocurrencies of today, and that they were never involved in the development of BTC and other early-stage cryptocurrencies on the horizon, as even JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon publicly derided cryptocurrencies as fads that will not survive. In this article, Dimon stated, "No government will ever support a virtual currency that goes around borders and doesn't have the same controls [as fiat currency]. It's not going to happen", convincing many that this was proof that the global banking cartel had no hand in the development of early crytpocurrencies like BTC, and that a definitive fork exists between early stage cryptocurrencies, outside-the-control of the global banking cartel, and other later-stage, ongoing developments of cryptocurrencies, under the auspices of the global banking cartel. However, one must be aware that bankers rarely ever tell the truth, and the same people that often deride 99% of Jamie Dimon's statements will point to this particular Dimon statement as "proof" that early cryptocurrencies are independent of the global banking cartel.
For sure, there is a massive difference between "speculation" and "proof" and any statement uttered by Jamie Dimon lands squarely on the side of speculation and not fact, because as we well know, Alan Blinder, former Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and Princeton University economist, infamously stated on a 1994 PBS television program, "The last duty of a Central Banker is to tell the public the truth." For example, eight-months prior to Dimon's issuance of that statement, Dimon already was building close connections to blockchain technology when JP Morgan executive Blythe Masters left his firm to head up Digital Assets Holdings, LLC, a blockchain development company that is currently working on blockchain technology for use in the Australian stock exchange. Furthermore, earlier this year, Dimon revealed that JP Morgan had built an Ethereum Alliance with other global banks and corporations to wield more influence over blockchain implementation and acceptance, an alliance that obviously was years in the planning. Understanding that JP Morgan was privately deeply involved in blockchain development at the same time their CEO was publicly deriding cryptocurrencies like BTC obviously exposes the disingenuous nature of Dimon's comments, and furthermore, still does not discredit the possibility that a member of the global banking cartel had a hand in the development of BTC.
Dimon's statement, once we know the dishonesty of it, could lead to an infinite number of interpretations. It could mean that BTC is a virtual currency outside the global banking system and that's why Dimon derided it, because JP Morgan will only support a virtual currency that he controls. It could be controlled opposition, whereby JP Morgan bankers have secretly had a hand in the development and acceptance of BTC despite their publicly stated opposition, a ploy meant to throw people off the trail of their plan to financially subjugate humanity further as they push through acceptance of 100% digital currencies. Recall that when the Morgans, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, the Warburgs, etc. tried to establish another Central Bank in the United States after the charter of the First Bank (1791-1811) and Second Bank (1861-1836) of the United States was revoked, they initially failed, because 100 years ago, Americans were properly educated to understand that the establishment of a Central Bank was meant to enslave them. So what did the banking cartel do in response? By the Congressional record documented of US Congressman and Chairman of the Banking and Currency Committee Louis McFadden's speeches, delivered on the floor of Congress in the 1930s, we know that, at first, bankers tried to fool Congress into voting for a bill to establish a Central Bank by lying to Congress about overwhelming public support that existed for a Central Bank, that was in fact, generally mild and tepid at best. McFadden stated, "It has been said that the draughts man who was employed to write the text of the Aldrich bill because that had been drawn up by lawyers, by acceptance bankers of European origin in New York. It was a copy, in general a translation of the statues of the Reichsbank and other European central banks. One-half million dollars was spent on the part of the propaganda organized by these bankers for the purpose of misleading public opinion and giving Congress the impression that there was an overwhelming popular demand for it and the kind of currency that goes with it."
Paul M. Warburg, who represented the Rothschild bankers, and whom many claim as the key figure in bringing the US Federal Reserve into existence, shed additional light into the banking cartel's propaganda campaign in his deliverance of a speech to the New York YMCA on 23 March, 1910, in which he insisted that a national reserve bank would not be "controlled by Wall Street or any monopolistic interest", explaining that the words "Central Bank" should be avoided, as he was not proposing a monopolistic Central Bank, but rather a decentralized national bank with 4 regional reserve banks, even though this was a complete lie and power was centralized in the New York Federal Reserve branch, after the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913, as it still is today. Bankers presented the exact same, monopolistic centralized bank a second time to US Congress, this time posing as a decentralized "federal" bank on the side of the people as opposed to a Central Bank that would work against the people's best interests, and with this fake narrative, US Congress voted it into existence. This was the use of controlled opposition at its best, publicly pretending to be on the side of the people while privately working against the people's best interests. Since bankers have a history of such deviant acts of convincing the public to support financial instruments that they would then later us to control humanity, to dismiss the possibility that they could be using cryptocurrencies in the same manner would be reckless. Thirdly, there is a possibility that global banks other than JP Morgan had a hand in developing BTC, thus compelling Dimon to denigrate BTC in favor of the digital currency that JP Morgan will eventually back. Again, all the above are possibilities, the validity of all unknown, none provable, no one possibility stronger than any other, and none ably dismissed.
No matter which of the above possibilities are true, the rise of cryptocurrencies are rapidly spreading acceptance of the global banking cartel's push to create a world without any paper money and with only 100% digital money. There is, by no means, a clean a divide between the PM and cryptocurrency communities as agitators try to delineate, as there are also many in the PM community that hold both PMs and cryptocurrencies. Up to this point in this article, I have merely relayed my opinion and relayed the possibilities behind the origins of BTC, but I will explain later in this article, why my belief and the numerous possibilities I presented above may very well be irrelevant in the debate about the future of cryptocurrencies. In today's world, we allow others to manipulate us like a herd of cattle into taking divisive, opposition sides, both sides often based on zero evidence, as we live in a world where the financiers of every nation have made it unacceptable for us not to take a side and to simply admit facts, that some things remain unknown. Today, a lot of anger is fomented seemingly on every topic, whether religion, politics or finance, often successfully conjured up even amidst a complete absence of evidence and facts. In any event, I thought it would be an illuminating exercise to sift through the comment section of a recent ZeroHedge bitcoin article, simply because it may be a useful discourse to provide a little bit of clarity to some misunderstandings and anger (that should not exist) about the ongoing raging PM versus Bitcoin debate. I am going to paraphrase the most popular comments below.
FIVE FALSE DIVISIONS BETWEEN GOLD AND CRYPTOCURRENCY COMMUNITIES
(1) One Has to Choose Between Gold and Cryptopcurrencies
This opinion is definitely not true, as I know plenty of people that own both cryptocurrencies and gold and this divide should not exist. As long as one recognizes that the purchase of gold and the purchase of cryptocurrencies serve very different purposes, one can buy both to fill these two very different goals. Despite the belief of many that prices of cryptocurrencies are out of the control of the bankers, but the price of gold is not, and this is a critical factor that separates cryptocurrencies from gold, this belief is only partially true. Paper gold trading is in control of the bankers. Physical gold trading is not. This is why, in parts of the world plagued by financial instability, premiums for physical gold will soar enormously higher than the artificially banker-set paper/digital price of gold. For example, the price of BTC, due to a recent feeding frenzy in Korea recently soared above USD$3,000. However, even though speculators foolish enough to chase BTC and pay $3,000 per BTC in South Korea existed, I snapchatted screenshots of BTC dealers in South Korea during this buying frenzy on my Snapchat channel that illustrated decent supply of BTCs in South Korea at just a slight premium over Western market prices, so the $3,000 BTC purchases that hit the market in South Korea were executed by people that did not shop around on various exchanges for a much better price that was clearly available.
An analogous situation was recently observed in the physical gold market as well. When PM Narendra Modi initially banned the 500 and 1000 rupee note in India, the price of physical gold soared well over $2,000 an ounce in India, with some unconfirmed reports of gold hitting prices of more than $3,000 an ounce in Indian black markets. Did people that payed $2,500 or $3,000 an ounce for physical gold have to spend this amount? Certainly not, and these prices only hit because people panic bought during a buying frenzy instigated by rupee uncertainty and the Indian Prime Minister's attempt to demonetize gold. At the time of the physical gold buying frenzy, the spot price of gold was roughly $1,220. However, this incident illustrated that during a fiat currency crisis, bankers can continue to control and suppress paper/digital gold prices, but they have no control over suppressing soaring physical gold prices caused by high physical demand and tight supply during a financial crisis. In any event, if one wants to purchase both, one should understand, from the hugely different levels of volatility in gold prices versus cryptocurrency prices, that gold should be purchased to preserve purchasing power over time, while cryptocurrencies should be purchased for highly speculative returns Again, two different currencies serve two entirely different purposes.
(2) I Made a Ton of Money on Cryptocurrencies, But Have Lost a Ton on Gold, So I'm Never Buying Gold Again!
This statement is all about timing, as if anyone buys at a short-term buying frenzy during a long bull market, then one has a much greater chance of sitting on losses a few years later. However, timing on buying gold was not particularly difficult during this current bull run of 17 years now and here are indisputable facts to back up this statement. If one purchased gold at the start of 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2016, one would have ended the year in the black every single one of those years. Furthermore, during the past 17 years, including this one, if one purchased gold at the very beginning of the year in 14 of the past 17 years, one would still be profitable at today’s price, and extremely profitable if one had purchased physical gold in the early portion of this timeline. The reasons that made gold a strong purchase during 2001 are the exact same reasons that make gold a strong purchase today, so for someone that understood the real reasons to buy gold versus chasing a speculative rise, one was much more likely to have bought and hold physical gold during the early years of this cycle and added more on every severe dip, thus still maintaining a nice average buy-in price over this time frame.
Even though gold is volatile, it hasn’t been difficult, despite contrary belief, to manage the volatility when buying physical gold for the past 17 years, and the timing of when to buy physical gold has not been particularly difficult to ensure a profit over this time period as well, as only buying at the start of 3 of the past 17 years would have resulted in losses by the end of the year, and only buying at the start of 3 of the past 17 years are still yielding losses at the present time. And unless you purchased gold during the worst 28-months out of a nearly 200-month timeline, most likely you are heavily in the black right now or about to be back in the black again. Likewise, if anyone chased Bitcoin in South Korea and bought it at an absolute short-term peak at USD$3,000, as some have, then there is no one to blame but themselves when they were sitting on an almost immediate 36% loss just a couple of days later. While certainly, in hindsight, it may have been easier to buy Bitcoin at nearly any point on its bullish timeline, versus gold, and still be profitable today, no one should expect parabolic price rises to be the norm for Bitcoin, and prices will likely remain very volatile until they stabilize in the future.
(3) I Don't Want to Carry Gold Around. There's No Digital Gold, and Digital Currencies Are a Ton More Convenient to Use than Gold.
Most forms of paper gold, including gold futures contracts, ARE digital gold, so digital gold definitely exists right now, but the only problem is that no one wants the current form of digital gold (except for the most recently introduced form of 100% physical backed digital gold recently introduced last week that I discuss at the end of this article). When bankers trade gold futures contracts using HFT algorithms, their entered trades are being executed through high-speed fiber optic cable that minimize latency times to less than one millisecond. Certainly, real physical gold is never trading hands during these times, and in fact, outside of Shanghai and Hong Kong markets, gold derivative produces almost never settle in real physical gold. So bankers that trade the paper gold futures markets in London and New York are constantly trading 100% digital gold. It they were not, there would be no infrastructure that would allow them to dump $1 billion, $2 billion, or more, of notional gold in the form of gold futures contracts in a matter of minutes to suppress price. They are dumping, in essence, digital gold backed by air. As I stated above, there are some instances when gold futures contracts are asked to settle in physical, but outside of Shanghai and Hong Kong, the percentages of gold futures contracts that settle in physical are miniscule compared to the percentages that settle in fiat. However, no one that truly understands the reasons for buying physical gold would ever buy digital gold that wasn't backed 100% by physical gold, as is the case in New York and London gold futures markets. Thus unlike with digital currencies, the reverse alchemy, physical into computer digits, demonetization-of-gold scheme executed by bankers in London and New York is a massive problem, and not a benefit. However, there is a way to fix this, as I will explain in the solution below. Lastly, if you purchase physical gold today, there is no need to carry it around as you can easily store it in vaults that have been vetted and are outside of the global banking system.
(4) No One Hates Bitcoins More than Goldbugs!
In the short-term, cryptocurrencies may or may not have peaked. No one knows for certain, so any guess to its peak price is pure speculation. Bitcoin may have peaked for the short-term at $3,000 in Asia in South Korea recently. My guess is that in the west, BTC prices have not yet peaked. Despite the opinion of some (notice I said some, not all, as "some" is a fact, and "all" is not) cryptocurrency owners that believe gold owners are jealous of their profits and hate cryptocurrency owners solely due to the profits reaped, this voiced antagonism should not only not exist, but it doesn't even make sense, if indeed, the claim that Bitcoin is out of the control of the banking cartel is true. If cryptocurrencies like BTC are actually helping to free humanity from the control of bankers, and will stop the massive transference of wealth from the 99.9% to the 0.1% that has been happening over the past several decades, then people that own physical gold, and people that own cryptocurrencies, are clearly on the same side of this battle. Thus, even though I have voiced skepticism about the origins of Bitcoin being completely independent of the global banking cartel, if I am proven to be wrong in the future, and the continued existence of Bitcoin 10 years from now will prove me wrong, then I will gladly become the biggest advocate for BTC on planet Earth as any currency that is outside of the global banking cartel's control should be unilaterally supported by anyone that values freedom. However, because I have some questions at this point that I think are tangible and valid, such a cautious approach shouldn't make me the enemy of Bitcoin owners and it definitely doesn't mean that I am not happy for those that made a ton of money on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to date.
In fact, to the contrary, I am extremely happy for people that have made a lot of money on cryptocurrencies up to this point if they are on the side of humanity that wants to establish a sound monetary system and eradicate our current unsound debt-based monetary system. If this faction of cryptocurrency owners is authentic as I believe them to be, then this only means that gold owners have a strong coalition of people, now with significantly more resources to fight the global banking system and to fight to establish a new monetary system. The doubt or belief of BTC as being independent of the global banking system is entirely irrelevant to this point. Any gold owner that hates cryptocurrency owners solely for the large profits that they have potentially made at this point or any cryptocurrency owner that hated on gold owners when gold soared from $250 to near $2,000 an ounce is simply wasting a whole lot of energy on hate, and the expression of such hate is more a reflection on the hater's insecurity issues, as such expressed hatred and jealousy impedes the monetary freedom movement. If we truly want to achieve the same goal, and I think most cryptocurrency and gold owners do (again, most, but not all), then anyone that engages in deliberate divisiveness is executing the bankers' divide and conquer strategy for them, and should be completely expelled from the monetary freedom coalition, as they are part of the problem and not part of the solution. And as far as a solution that can tie the existing differences of gold and cryptocurrency owners together and solve the concerns I have with cryptocurrencies at the current time, I propose one below, so please keep reading. In any event, owners of gold and cryptocurrencies should be on the same side, and if we allow the financiers of nations to manipulate us into divisiveness, we are merely falling victim to a learned helplessness role of willing captor to our captives.
(5) Gold Will Never Appreciate at the Rate Cryptocurrencies Appreciate, So No Thank You to Any Physical Gold Ownership
Regarding the statement that gold will never match the appreciation rate of some cryptocurrencies, an owner of Monero commented that he has made 120,000% gains thus far, meaning that he must have bought Monero at inception at $0.034762697752, which translates into a 120,000% gain at its current price of $41.75. Kudos to this person! And he is correct in that gold will likely never appreciate 120,000% because this means that from its initial starting price of this current bull market of about $250, gold would have to rise to $30,250 per troy ounce to equal this person's 120,000% gain on Monero. In the absence of a hyperinflationary environment, I don't see gold going to this price. But who knows, I could be wrong, and maybe gold will appreciate this much in price. Again, this is an unknown, and as many of you that have followed me for years already well know, I've always stated to absolutely disregard all "Gold to $10,000" predictions that pop up every year, as devoting any brainpower to analyzing unknowable timing predictions such as these is not only a complete waste of energy, but also a complete waste of time. However, exploration of this concept allows me to reinforce an earlier, very important point between the massively different purposes between buying gold and buying cryptocurrencies. People that own gold and are hardcore gold believers buy gold because of its ability to preserve purchasing power over not just 10 years or 20 years, but also over hundreds of years, over their lifespan and over the lifespan of their children. Cryptocurrencies are way too young and in some sense, still in an embryonic stage, so there is no way that cryptocurrencies are, at the current time, able to make the same claim of purchasing power preservation.
In my opinion, of all the qualities sound money should have, the preservation of purchasing power over lengthy periods of time is the most critical quality to possess, and since cryptocurrencies are too young to prove up this quality, they cannot, in my opinion, be considered sound money at this point in their business cycle, as they are obviously in the rapid growth segment of the cycle. In fact, for those that stay away from gold because its price is too volatile, Bitcoin’s price has been far more volatile than gold’s price since Bitcoin came into existence. In fact, gold's quintupling of price over 17 years is generally considered peanuts to cryptocurrency investors. Consequently, people that buy gold buy it to preserve their wealth over time, and not to make rapid spectacular gains. This is a completely different reason than the reason why people buy cryptocurrencies. There may come a time many years from now, when cryptocurrencies prove themselves to be a store of purchasing power over time, and if that time comes, I will move cryptocurrencies out of the speculative growth category, but not before then. So, while massive gains are much more likely in cryptocurrencies than gold, the opposite is true as well. Massive losses in cryptocurrencies, until they move out of their growth stage and find more price stability, are much more likely to occur than in gold, as well.
THREE CONCLUSIONS
(1) At the Current Time, NEITHER Cryptocurrencies or Gold are Fully Outside the Manipulative Powers of the Global Banking Cartel
Although many cryptocurrency owners claim that cryptocurrencies are "free money" while fiat currencies are the money of "slaves", the very fact that cryptocurrencies are denominated in fiat currency prices means that they are still not independent of the global banking cartel. Bankers have ensured that all cryptocurrencies are denominated in THEIR form of debt-money for the very same reason that bankers have ensured that gold is as well. As long as the price of an asset is denominated in a form of debt-money, the asset can never truly serve the purpose of being the money of a free man or free woman, because this link necessitates the conversion into debt-based slave-money for use, and keeps humanity dependent upon debt-based slave money. Even if we don't convert cryptocurrencies into fiat currencies and pay for merchandise directly in BTCs, as long as the price of BTCs remains denominated in a form of debt-based slave money, it cannot escape the intimate link to the global banking cartel's monetary system.
As an example of why tying the price of an asset to fiat currencies grants bankers the ultimate control over that asset, let me use the stock market in Zimbabwe in 2006 and 2007 to illustrate my point. The Zimbabwe Industrial Index, for a rolling period of time slightly more than a year, in 2006-2007, gained 7,990%, a prolific increase that caused many to proclaim the Zimbabwe stock markets as the "best performing" stock market of that time period, though it was clearly the worst performing stock market for the following reasons. The 7,990% gain was denominated in hyperinflating Zimbabwe dollars, which rendered a 8,000% or even an 80,000% gain worthless during this time period, as monthly inflation peaked in Zimbabwe at 79,600,000,000% a year later. In other words the Zimbabwe dollar was losing valuation and purchasing power at a much faster clip than the stock gains were accumulating, so all of the stock gains were quickly rendered worthless as the gains could not be spent before they were devalued. However, if the 7,990% gains were instead denominated in gold weight, then no amount of Zimbabwe dollar devaluation could have prevented this increase from producing a massive gain in real wealth. Of course, US dollars are not hyperinflating at the current time, so why make such a comparison? I’m not making so much as a comparison as I am making a point. If the currency in which an asset is priced fails, then the asset will fail too, thereby unfortunately still granting bankers ultimate control over the fate of the asset. In response, some will argue that if dollars or Euros fail, and cryptocurrencies subsequently fail, then won't gold ultimately fail as well? On the surface, this seems like a logical argument, but I will reveal below, why in such a situation, gold will be king of the monetary pile.
(2) Price is NOT the Same as Value
Today, many business school graduates still confuse the concepts of value and price in the world of finance. I have uploaded many vlogs on my YouTube channel that explain why the value of gold and silver is its weight and not its price. Does it make sense to claim the value of real money like physical gold is its price, a unit of measurement that is denominated in unsound immoral, fiat currencies like Euros or dollars? Of course not! The real value of gold, as its weight, is always constant. In other words, the value of gold is constant everywhere in the world, as 10g of gold in Libya equals 10g of gold in Canada equals 10g of gold in Brazil equals 10g of gold in Uruguay equals 10g of gold in Romania. The price of gold changes all the time, but the value of gold does not change simply because bankers price gold in their deteriorating and devaluing fiat currencies. Price is an immensely different concept than value when it comes to the world of PMs, though bankers like to fool us and interchangeably use these two terms in the financial media to confuse us into believing they are the same. Now some will counter by stating that they can cash out their Bitcoins and buy gold with it anytime they like, but if so, then are these people valuing cryptocurrencies in terms of how much gold it can buy? For the very same reasons it makes no sense to value gold in an illegitimate, debt-based currency, it also makes no sense to value cryptocurrencies in illegitimate, debt-based currencies. So what is the value of Bitcoin and other cryptos? If we try to apply the above analogy to cryptocurrencies and reject the fact that the value of cryptocurrencies is its unit of measurement, since this unit of measurement is not tangible, it doesn't translate as well as it does for gold. For example, if we say the value of Bitcoins should be measured by its amount of Satoshis, and not its dollar, won, or Euro price, what does this really mean?
Of course, some claim that the value of cryptocurrencies is its store of wealth. However, as I explained above, perhaps after 50 more years, this claim can be made, but this claim cannot seriously be considered at the current time given the infancy of cryptocurrencies. Therefore, I would state, that at the current time, the only way to measure a cryptocurrencies value is by its price, as we can't measure it by their digital bytes, and in the case of hyperinflation, the value of cryptocurrencies will be severely debased, no matter the gain in underlying fiat currencies (see the Zimbabwe Industrial Index explanation above). However, since the value of gold is its weight, the weight of 10 ounces of gold will still remain 10 ounces of gold even if the price collapses through hyperinflation. Hyperinflation and currency collapse will always give rise to a new currency, so owners of gold, in such an event, would just hold gold until a new currency was born, and the price of their ounces would be re-established. I argue that the case for the valuation of cryptocurrencies during and after a hyperinflationary event would not be so clear. Of course, we are speaking of a worst-case scenario here, but a case study of fiat currencies have demonstrated that they always revert to their intrinsic value of zero over time, so who's to say that event won't happen in our lifetime?
(3) All Comparisons of the Price of 1 BTC to 1 Troy Ounce of Gold are Completely Baseless and Without Merit
I never understood why financial journalists ran numerous articles that always compared the price of 1 BTC to 1 troy ounce of gold, yielding headlines like “Bitcoin now exceeds gold in price” when the price of 1 BTC overtook the price of 1 troy ounce of gold. One troy ounce, or 31.1035 grams, the unit of measurement of gold, is a unit of weight. Unless one Bitcoin, the unit of measurement for BTC, is also a unit of weight, then comparing the price of one unit of weight of gold to the price of one unit of Bitcoin is an impossible comparison that makes zero sense, no matter how much the mainstream financial media wants to sell us this comparison as a valid one. Making such a comparison is totally random, and is literally as absurd as comparing the price of 1 barrel of oil to the price of a 1/2 carat ruby and saying that rubies are a much better investment that oil because 1/2 carat of rubies exceeds the price of one barrel of oil. It's absurd as comparing the price of a 212kg Japanese bluefin tuna that sold for more than $3,100 per kg in Tokyo at the start of this year and stating that the tuna was more valuable than an untitled Basquiat painting whose last auctioned price was $19,000 at the start of this year, simply because the Basquiat painting was worth less than $3,000 per kg (by the way, that painting just sold last month for $110M). You can’t compare the price of one Bitcoin to ounce of gold as people always do anymore than you can compare the Basquiat painting to a bluefin tuna because fine art is not measured by its weight. Even if there was a way to weigh 100M Satoshis, the unit of measurement for one Bitcoin, because the unit of measurement for BTC is not a weight, this still would not be a valid comparison. Therefore, comparing 500M Satoshis to 1,000 ounces of gold, 1B Satoshis to 1M troy ounces of gold, 100,000 Satoshis to 50,000 pineapples, or 1M Satoshis to 50,000 cubic metres of air has as much validity as comparing the price of 100M Satoshis, or 1 BTC, to 1 troy ounce of gold.
ONE SOLUTION
Tie Cryptocurrencies to a Finite Amount of Gold Backing, and We Have the Best of Both Worlds
Bankers have pursued control of the blockchain as their identified most valuable part of the cryptocurrency market. This is precisely why JP Morgan executive Blythe Masters left JP Morgan to work for Digital Asset Holdings, a distributed ledger, or blockchain, development firm. In fact, control of the blockhain, the distributed ledger technology invented by Satoshi Nakaomoto, makes all my speculation about BTC perhaps not being completely independent from the global banking system completely irrelevant. JP Morgan, Citibank and Goldman Sachs, and every large global bank all realize this as well as all have heavily invested in blockchain development companies. It's like the war that developed between HD DVD optical disks and blurays when higher resolution movies entered the market. Both formats delivered crystal clear clarity using similar technology but in the end, blurays survived and HD DVD optical disks went the way of the dinosaur. Control of the blockchain technology will have the same relevance to survival or extinction in the cryptocurrency market. I believe that whoever controls the blockchain technology that is universally implemented worldwide will control which cryptocurrencies survive and which ones die. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, and Blythe Masters, have already made it clear that they 100% believe that control of the blockchain technology that is implemented worldwide by the global banking cartel is the key to controlling the fate of all cryptocurrencies.
If the global banking cartel does not control BTC, then I have no doubt they will try to crush BTC as they only will allow their digital currencies to survive. If they however also control BTC, then BTC will not only survive, but it will flourish. All it would take for the global banking cartel to eradicate any cryptocurrency they don't like is to make that cryptocurrency illegal. This may not be able to prevent declared "illegal" cryptocurrencies from trading, just as bankers' declaration that physical gold and physical silver are "illegal" currencies have not halted gold and silver trading, but certainly such declarations will kill the utility of that currency. Though people may wonder why I say bankers have declared gold and silver illegal currencies while national mints in many nations continue to print and circulate gold and silver coins, have you ever tried to spend a gold or silver coin at its relevant price in a store? Since physical gold and silver are not as widely accepted worldwide as are fiat currencies, for all intents and purposes, bankers have rendered them illegal currencies.
Once the global banking cartel gains control and is able to implement their preferred blockchain, then they can set the rules for all digital currencies, and it's game over, but for one joker card. I know the inherent decentralization nature of blockchains ensures that no one can really gain direct control of them. However, leave it up to lawyers to invent and impose regulations that apply to blockchains, and regulations will be invented in the futre that effectively will give bankers control over blockchains through indirect control (regulations). Furthermore, last year, problems with the DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation) for venture capital funding revealed how problems can arise with decentralized systems even when blockchains are secure. Shortly after the launch of the DAO in April 2016, someone was able to exploit a vulnerability in the DAO's code and steal $50 million of cryptocurrency, a full third of the $150M raised through crowdfunding, though apparently he, or she, was only able to eventually withdraw a miniscule amount of the stolen cryptocurrency. But certainly, the incident with the DAO raises issue about other aspects of the distribution chain outside of the blockchain that may remain exploitable.
That said, what is the joker card? To me, the joker card is the marriage of sound money with intrinsic value, like gold, to blockchain technology to form a completely new and different class of cryptocurrency. I want to end this discussion by asking all of you to consider this solution. I’ve heard many owners of both cryptocurrencies and gold admit that cryptocurrencies are a speculation at this point, and that in order to preserve their gains and turn cryptocurrencies into a store of wealth, they will sell cryptocurrencies for fiat currencies during their parabolic rises and consequently use fiat currencies to buy physical gold and hold it when price pullbacks and uncertainty plague cryptocurrencies. Then, when they believe these cryptocurrency pullbacks are ending, they will convert their physical gold back into fiat currencies and use fiat currencies to repurchase cryptocurrencies in hopes of capitalizing on another parabolic rise. And if the cryptocurrencies rise rapidly again, they repeat this process. In the end, however, this process always requires reverting back to holding debt-based fiat currencies at some point, even if for just brief periods of time, which ultimately makes holders of PMs and cryptocurrencies still beholden to the power of global bankers. However, as I stated above, what if there were a cryptocurrency backed by a finite weight of gold instead of a finite amount of digital bytes or satoshis, and the value of this cryptocurrency was not denominated by a fiat currency price whose purchasing power is perpetually destroyed by bankers, but by a weight of gold? Then there would be no need to constantly exchange cryptocurrencies into gold and vice versa!
If such a gold-backed cryptocurrency became popular and was widely accepted, then this would obviate the need to ever convert the cryptocurrency into any debt-based fiat currency, solving two problems at once. The only reason to convert gold or cryptocurrencies into debt-based fiat currencies is to buy goods and services that don't accept cryptocurrencies for payment, or due to worry of the volatility quickly debasing the price of the cryptocurrency after a volatile rise (i.e, its purchasing power). Combining the two solves all problems simultaneously. Such a physical gold-backed cryptocurrency that relies on blockchain technology could also be used to eradicate the current artificial banking valuation of gold to a fiat currency price and help to re-establish the true value of gold back to weight only, as spending of the cryptocurrency would result in units of gold weight being deducted from an account and purchase of the cryptocurrency would result in units of gold weight being added to the account. And though this cryptocurrency would have to be developed on a blockchain outside the control of the global banking cartel and its existence may have to survive on some type of black market, as the global banking cartel would almost definitively try to regulate the blockchain technology used by a gold-backed cryptocurrency to invalidate the use of this cryptocurrency anywhere in the eventual global digital currency system they construct, they could never invalidate this cryptocurrency's value as its value would be in units of gold weight, while their cryptocurrency's value would still be a fiat currency price.
So here are the questions I pose, which I would love to hear responses to these questions posed below. Regardless of any opinion I expressed above that you may believe to be wrong, please strip away all emotional responses to this article to focus on this proposed solution, as even if you believe some of my opinions above to be wrong, one belief that should unite all gold and cryptocurrency owners is that we are all seeking a monetary solution outside the control of the global banking system that enhances, instead of destroys it, and this may be it.
In other words, could a cryptocurrency backed by a finite weight of gold truly be the first currency completely independent and outside the control of the global banking cartel?
What if all goods and services purchased by this gold-backed cryptocurrency allowed for gentle inflation up and down over the years, but at a fraction of the massive real inflation experienced by prices denominated in fiat currencies? Could worldwide adoption of such a currency be accomplished simply because people would want to own this gold-backed cryptocurrency knowing that they would receive the best possible price for all goods and services year after year after year by using this currency, as it would strip away the destructive effects of Central Banker-created inflation? And could we foster wide acceptance worldwide of cryptocurrency developed with a unit of weight, the true value of gold as its unit of measurement, and convince people to stop accepting the artificial debt-based fiat currency price bankers assign to gold as its value? This question may be the most important of all, because bankers will continue to assign a debt-based fiat currency price or 100% digital currency price to gold as its "value" en perpetuity, until they die, so this may be the biggest obstacle to overcome - to convince people to stop basing the value of gold on a perception of fake value created by bankers called price.
For example, what if the price of filet mignon rose one year from USD$23 a pound to USD$30 a pound, but in the gold backed cryptocurrency called GCC (Gold CryptoCurrency), filet mignon only rose from 20 GCC (gold cryptocurrency) to 20.1 GCC, where one GCC is a unit of gold weight? Would not everyone want to pay for everything in GCC instead of USD? AT first, many retailers might shun acceptance of the gold backed cryptocurrency if they compare banker established gold prices and calculate that they could receive a higher price by accepting fiat currencies. However, if the marketplace that accepted GCCs was large enough, shunning would eventually turn into hoarding for the following reason. By accepting GCCs for their merchandise, they would then be able to buy other goods and services at more stable and lower prices, and therefore be able to manage their savings over the long-term in a much better capacity as the greatest price stability of all goods and services worldwide, year after year after year, would be witnessed in those markets that priced their goods and services in GCCs. On the contrary, if merchants accepted more fiat currencies for their goods and services, they then would be required to spend higher amounts of fiat currencies in the marketplace as well, not knowing if their food costs were going to be double or triple the costs of the prior year. History tells us that people prefer certainty over uncertainty, especially in financial markets. Thus, if a stable gold-backed cryptocurrency really allowed people to budget and plan more efficiently, as is not allowed by the current state of highly devaluing fiat currencies, would not people widely adopt a gold-backed cryptocurrency that served this purpose?
I haven’t really spent an enormous amount of time fleshing out the detailed complexities of the above topic, and consider the above as more the written manifestation of a brainstorming session, so forgive me if parts are not so well thought-out at this current time. Of course a gold-backed crytpocurrency will never provide wild, speculative gains of 100,000% to the owner, as this would defeat the very mission of this cryptocurrency, which would be to provide owners with strong price stability in their purchase of goods and services over decades of tie. However, I strongly believe that those that think pure digital currencies are in competition with the global banking cartel's monetary system and is a global banker "killer" are completely missing the point, as fiat currencies in use today are already very close to pure digital currencies. Just remember, in the world of banking, nothing, and I do mean, nothing is ever as it first sees to be. Still, I would love to hear what advocates of gold, advocates of cryptocurrencies, and advocates of both think about a gold-backed, blockchain-enabled crytpocurrency a as a potential solution that could free humanity from the ball and chain of the wealth destructive powers of our current global debt-based monetary system. And if you'd like to hear more musings about this topic, please follow me on my Snapchat channel, SKWealthAcademy.
ONEGRAMCOIN
Amazingly, as I've been writing this article for about a week now, during my writing of this article, the UAE announced the launch of my exact proposal above just a few days ago, the OGC (OneGramCoin), a physical gold0-backed cryptocurrency. Here are just a few facts about the one gram gold-backed cryptocurrency via their website:
Is the OneGram blockchain public? The blockchain is public and all codebase is open source.
What is the block size? What is the approximate transaction confirmation time? The max block size is 1MB, however, the average block time is only 1 minute, so there is effectively 10x more capacity than Bitcoin.
If the ICO (Initial Coin Offering) distributes 100% of the total issuance, then will there be mining?
100% of total coin supply is pre-mined and is distributed during the ICO. There is a block reward following the genesis block. OGC holders that indicate they wish to stake their OGC will be rewarded with the fees produced from the transactions in the present block.
How will new versions find consensus for adoption? How will the blockchain address soft and hard forking?
We will employ automatic checkpointing with the seed nodes to guarantee consensus.
Can I trade OGC (OneGramCoin)?
Yes. Following the ICO and the issuance of OGC, cryptocurrency exchanges may choose to list OGC for trade.
How are you addressing privacy?
We are exploring confidential transaction and various other privacy technologies at the moment. Once the technology matures, we will adopt the one that best addresses privacy without sacrificing security and other critical concerns.
As full disclosure, I have zero business affiliations with any physical gold/silver dealers and with OneGramCoin, and you can read more about it by clicking the link in this sentence. I may contact them in the future, however, to correct some small errors I found in their white paper upon reading it. You may also participate in its ICO right now by signing up here. One interesting point I thought made in the OGC whitepaper is the following: "Most Muslims today have no idea that the money they use is arguably not Sharia-compliant. Most of the world uses fiat currency, which is money backed only by legal tender laws. Historically, money was either created from or backed by precious metals." I've known that fiat currency was an is non Sharia-compliant for decades, and there is an Islamic bank in my neighborhood which I frequently pass by that I know breaks Sharia law every day. I've often thought about walking into this bank, and asking the loan officers if they know they are violating Sharia law, as charging interest on loans is against Sharia law as well. In addition, most Christians don't understand that working in a bank is against Christian law as well, as the Bible states, in the book of Deuteronomy, "You shall not charge interest on loans to your brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that is lent for interest. You may charge a foreigner interest, but you may not charge your brother interest, that the Lord your God may bless you in all that you undertake in the land that you are entering to take possession of it." But walk into any bank and ask for a Christian bank officer and try to get an interest-free mortgage or business loan, and see what happens!
In any event, let me know if you think, as I do, that the marriage of physical gold to cryptocurrencies that utilize the blockchain, is the solution to the creation of truly free money that all of us desire.
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