Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for February 05, 2022

BOY! That’s the truth!!!

It’s properly called “Bitcon”.

Bitcoin is kind of like buying those Double Eagle coins which are coated with 0.9999% (THAT’S FOUR NINES!) of gold paint, and have a $20 value printed on the non-negotiable coin.

(To say nothing of the environmental impact of all the computing power it takes to “mine” the coins.)

Digital; would that be like emailing you money and your printer prints it.

This all reminds me of the saying “It’s only worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it.” The “it” may vary. At different times and different places “it” was anything from cocoa beans to tulip bulbs. Thier values would rise and fall based on the whims of there and then. It all is somewhat scary to me.

I would spell that dodgy.

Invented by Barnum and Bailey I take it?

So do members of (both sides) congress.

They call it digital currency but IMHO considering the volatility of its value it’s a commodity. And what’s weird is that it’s a commodity of nothing. And if anyone suggests that you take some of your salary in digital currency read this.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/justinbirnbaum/2022/01/26/bitcoin-bummer-rodgers-beckham-jr-and-other-sports-stars-hit-hard-by-plummeting-crypto-currencies/?sh=5c16b3177718

As my Mom would say “They have more money than brains.” Or “A fool and his money are soon parted.” Just the newest twist on pyramid schemes.

Never invest more than you can afford to lose. Bitcoins are a scam that will someday fall apart and leave many people hurting financially.

Non-fungible tokens: you sell an idiot nothing, and give them bad art as a receipt.

I have some Bitcoins, but they are .9999 silver and actually worth something.

I understand what real money used to be: gold, silver, or barter.

Today’s fiat digitized currency and especially Modern Monetary Theory – no way that I understand it.

To me, it just looks like a recipe for eventual disaster. Of course, I’m growing older, and I could very easily be completely wrong.

Now, that is Arlo being truly honest!

I remember when my prof. in Intro to Econ. wrote “Greed” and “Fear” on the blackboard (there’s an antique item). He turned to us and said “This is all you need to know to understand this class”.

I’m still betting on my gold Krugerrands I bought in the 70s

There was a guy named Ponzi. He understood.

Money was invented so we don’t have to carry chickens around in our pockets.

There is no such thing as real money. It is all imaginary…and yet very handy.

(Not unlike imaginary numbers in electrical engineering or vector math.)

Could not have said it better myself.

A few years ago I discovered a company in England that still buys those devalued coins. Of course the postage burns up most of the value you get. I saved mine and took them on a trip to the UK and there are machines there that take old foreign currency and pays you for it.

There’s plenty about cryptocurrencies to dislike.

There’s no need to make things up, as Dirty D has. (A proper fisking available upon request. But just Dirty D’s. It takes an order of magnitude or two more words to debunk B.S. than to write it. And even more time to do it properly.) But there are also things to like about them. People shouldn’t lie about those.

And there’s plenty to dislike about the “real money” Arlo mentioned, too.

The Great Depression, for instance. And the various reckless central bankers and dictators who have ruined (and/or still ruin) the currency of their countries, making it difficult or impossible for people to run businesses and their private lives using that money. When allowed by law (and sometimes when not) people use something else as money. Usually it’s the currency of a less badly-managed country.

Lesser despots (such as the people who run the country where you live, most likely) impose taxes and regulations and paperwork to discourage the use of alternatives to their government’s money.

Hyperinflation in a certain European country in the 1930s lead to political instability in that country, with very unfortunate consequences for many people, both inside and outside of that country. You may have heard about it in school.

The fact that some people find alternatives to government money appealing for some purposes is a good thing.

That it is threatening to certain segments of society — governments and their corporate welfare clients, mostly — is an unfortunate reality. They do their best to spread FUD (*) about alternatives. And there are gullible people who are willing to help them with that.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=define:FUD It’s how IBM used to sell computers, in the pre-microprocessor era. It didn’t go away after 1975; it just got used by others.

Arlo is unusually self-aware. Calling it “real” shows that he’s exactly right.

I’m with Arlo

Money is just weird. Really, it is just a way of measuring gains and losses – real or perceived.

What makes government issued currency (so-called “fiat currency”) worth anything is that they are a variable slice of the value of the nation’s production. If the production drops taxes must either increase or the currency faces devaluation. No such forces exist in cryptocurrency; it is all about what people will pay for it.

The greatest hyperinflation in the 21st century probably belongs to Zimbabwe in 2007-2009, when the country’s economy collapsed. Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_ZimbabweWe can buy 2008 Zimbabwe 100 Trillion dollar banknotes online for about $300. They are not and never again will be legal tender, but they are cool novelties.

Ponzi Schemes. When the smucks figure it out, their money goes down the drain.

Money is an illusion, as good faith is the only thing keeping it afloat and that can end very quickly when there is nothing else to back it up…..

“Money and How It Gets That Way” not that it’ll help.

inflation is always caused by the cost of energy, gasoline electricity doesn’t matter

I had an intern tell me, in 2012 or ‘13, to invest in Bitcoin. He was moving to Reno to work with a friend ’mining’ bitcoins. Wish to he!! I’d listened to the kid!

seems to me that most money is simply trading numbers online. Scary when I think about it