White House Says Gold Reserves May Be ~~Used~~ Stolen to Purchase Bitcoin
Not the Onion
For true stories that are so ridiculous, that you could have sworn it was an !theonion worthy story.
This is genuinely the Dumbest idea Trump's white house has come up with yet. Trading actual money for made up internet points.
I get your point, but normal money is just as fake a value as bitcrap..
I mean gold has actual value in jewelry, decorative, in electronics and probably other things that I can’t remember off of the top of my head. But it is actually valuable by itself so it’s stupid to swap it for something that fluctuates as heavy as bitshit
What gold and Bitcoin have in common is the fact that they both have very low inflation rates. If it wasn't for that, Bitcoin would be worthless
Gold's industrial value is a tiny percentage of it's market value. Like fiat currency and Bitcoin, the value is that other people think it's valuable.
Gold's price is more stable because it has more money invested in it so larger percentage swings are way less likely. Just like how penny stocks can see trading says where the value swings 40-50%, while Apple only moves 1-2%.
I don't think trading gold for Bitcoin is a good idea, but gold's value is just as artificial as Bitcoin's and the value of both stems from the same source: speculation.
The price of gold in USD was until recently fairly stable because of price manipulation.
The politics of gold: Economist Michael Hudson explains why gold’s price is rising so much
Even though more and more people may be buying gold, the United States and England are making money by essentially engaging in this market manipulation as a source of revenue.
That is one of the factors that was holding down [the price of gold].
Well, central banks also have, in fact, been selling gold short for many decades now. And they’ve been making money by it.
As I said, to buy this option, to buy gold at a fairly low price when you think, “Well, certainly the market is going to go up for gold; the price must be going up for gold, because everybody is buying it. I’m going to buy this option”.
And it just didn’t work. A lot of people, pessimists, tried to do this, and they were overwhelmed by the central banks’ selling.
Most options are not exercised, because central banks keep selling forward again, and again, and again. That is what held down the price of gold for many decades. It kept the price from rising, because future buyers can always buy the other end of a short sale, at a lower price.
The supply and demand wasn’t just in the private market; it wasn’t just among central banks; it was a manipulated market.
The problem is that cryptocurrencies are created on the fly specifically for the purpose of stealing, you create a new coin, promise there will only ever be 1000 coins minted, wait for everyone to put their money in the coin and then revil you secretly had a million coins under your name and you instantly own the value of all the coins minus the rounding error of the thousand coins everyone else has, it's true fiat currency is an illusion but at least it's a shared illusion governed by consensus instead of one millionaires scam, this is just one basic problem with crypto currency but all of them have the same issue of an individual probably trying to get rich creates the rules that govern them.
Oh definitely, memecoins and even more credible coins like Solana, the creators of them always own some vast fraction of the value.
More established stuff like Bitcoin or (maybe) Etherium have more reasonable wealth distributions, but most of the newer coins arent like that.
Fiat money yeah, but gold and silver have inherent value.
This is just corrupt pillaging with extra steps.
Remember when minting the $1 trillion coin was considered the craziest idea?
thestupidesttimeline.jpg
These actual mouth breathing morons have no idea what they are even attempting to describe.
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https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/does-the-federal-reserve-own-or-hold-gold.htm
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_certificate_(United_States)
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The Federal Reserve doesn't actually own, nor physically possess, any physical gold, that they could just sell off or speculate with.
When FDR outlawed gold private ownership in 1934, all physical gold was handed over to the US Treasury, and the Federal Reserve (and other banks) were given gold certificates, valued at $42.22... per ounce... a set value that hasn't changed, and is used for the Fed's modest valuation of its previously held gold reserves... which are utterly insignificant and dwarfed by the other assets it holds.
(This isn't super current, but it gives you an idea. Light blue is gold certificates. Its a one pixel thin line at the bottom. The overall balance is even more huge than this now after Covid, and Gold Certs, even if they were revalued from $42.2222 to the current market rate, would basically be small, it would go from about 10 billion to 750 billion, when the Fed's current total assets are about 7 trillion)
About 5% of the US Treasury's gold is held at the New York Fed, but the Fed doesn't own it, it's just there because there is a vault there. The rest of the US's gold is physically held at Treasury operated locations.
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What the Fed does own are Gold Certificates, back from 1934, which are still valued at the old $42.2222 price, in terms of the Fed calculating its own balance sheet.
To... have the US gov... order the Fed to sell off its gold certificates... that's not a thing the US gov can actually legally do, not without asserting total direct control over the Fed, and thus basically instantly making its existence pointless...
Again, to repeat, the US government cannot legally command the Fed to sell off its gold certificates, the Fed cannot legally sell its gold certificates, nor could said certificates be legally exchanged for actual physical gold from the US Treasury.
This would be approximately analagous to the US government ordering a corporation to sell off its own capital assets and then just sending the money from that sale to a government account.
It is expropriation.
For this to be any kind of legal, they'd have to repeal or greatly amend ... at least the laws that established the Federal Reserve, and the Gold Reserve Act, likely many more... or basically do a whole bunch of rat fuckery to get their own people in positions on various Fed Reserve boards, and possibly prevent other people on Fed Reserve boards from actually voting on motions.
This would amount to basically performing a coup on the US's central banking system, and putting total control of the monetary system within the Treasury.
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This would upend the century old bedrock of the US's financial system.
Now, I am no full, uncritical advocate of the Federal Reserve system in its current form... but this is what it is, a complete usurpation of the US's existing monetary system, which would then be put in charge of the astoundingly incompetent current administration.
This is how you get hyperinflation.
This is quite literally fucking with the money at its most fundamental level.
This is how you speed run destroying the USD as the world reserve currency.
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tldr;
This isn't only stupid in the sense of 'sell gold to buy bitcoin' is a dubious investment strategy, it is particularly stupid in that if the actual pursued strategy is 'force the Fed to sell its gold certificates'...
(to who? its not legal for any private entity to 'purchase' them at the market rate for gold, nor is it legal for said hypothetical purchaser, not even the Fed, to actually redeem them for physical gold, nor is it even legal for the Fed to sell them even of its own accord!)
... then that method blows up the entire concept of a legally defined, semi-independent Federal Reserve, and that then blows up the entire basis of the US monetary system.
If USD has to deal with massive inflation that would probably cause the price of Bitcoin to increase because its inflation is effectively set in stone
... As would every other currency.
Most of which are backed by more sane, stable, underlying governments and economies than the US...
... and they are much, much more connected to actual tangible factors than a completely speculative asset that has utterly failed to function as an actual generally accepted currency everywhere and time that has been attempted.
Same with gold or silver or fine art... etc.
If a hyperinflation scenario actually happens, all that means is the dollar weakens. It does not mean bitcoin strengthens generally... it would only strengthen in comparison to the dollar.
... But, because the vast majority of real money flowing into funding bitcoin investments is dollars, I would be willing to bet that bitcoin would basically also drop against basically all other currencies.
Bitcoin is largely a proxy currency for gambling with USD. Not entirely of course, not perfectly...but uh... there are way less stablecoins pegged to Not USD, and way less volume in them.
I am fairly confident that... yeah, if the USD hyperinflates, bitcoin exchange rates would pretty much track with USD:EUR and USD:Lira rates... though hey, if you have roughly 10 million USD right now, and think you can run a currency arbitrage when/if the USD goes tits up, maybe you can actually make some money.
Or lose it all due to massively inefficient bitcoin trading markets and exorbitant trading fees as compared to what all the real, giant, big boy financial firms have access to.
Bitcoin doesn't have fundamentals. Bitcoin being 'deflationary by design' doesn't matter at all, because it isn't a currency. It isn't used as a currency in any general economy (that isn't already inna disaster), it isn't regulated like a currency is.
It is basically emtirely a barely regulated speculative proxy for mostly USD investments... if you take money out of USD, in a hyperinflation scenario, you may or may not do a bit better than keeping that money in USD, but you will almost certainly still lose money if you want to convert your bitcoin into a non hyperinflating currency.
This is how you get hyperinflation.
"In 1923, the collapse of the Weimar Republic’s economy impoverished millions and gave Adolf Hitler his first chance at seizing power" -- How Hyperinflation Heralded the Fall of German Democracy
or we could all just switch away from usd
Well so far we've managed to do the equivalent of the Enabling Act in... was it 33 or 34? before the hyperinflation, but yeah, I get what you're going for with the very apt Nazi historical comparison.
We are headed for 'idiot American Real Estate Mob Boss Hitler rises to power during moderate economic decline for all but the top 5ish %, proceeds to immediately blow up entire economy with tariffs and hyperinflation.'
or basically do a whole bunch of rat fuckery
trump and musk: "you called?"
You gotta love it when the government is running a pump and dump scheme.
Jesus fucking Christ
It's not as bad as it sounds imo, but its still not the best. Theoretically, if done correctly, this could work really well. Problem is the sheer amount of speculation the creation of the crypto reserve is gunna cause until its made, because Trump is gunna keep tweeting about it to mess with the price, like he did in early March. Ngl if a different president who didnt make such drastic changes in policy did this over the course of many years, it would probably be fine.
Pump that shit for my buddies...
I sincerely hope that when the nazis are voted out, the US society will give them all a fair trial and a swift execution
Wasn't the trial thing already tried?
Yes, in Nuremberg but that was a while ago.
I should have been keeping a tally of pump and dumps for this admin.
Great what are they distracting from now. Y'all need to look up the dead cat strategy
People gonna find out who Satoshi is the wrong way
oh that was me
Dew it!
This is a good idea as Bitcoin is a better gold than gold, with lower market cap today, because it is relatively underowned by national reserves. Gold's value is central bank driven. 17% of all historical mining held there. $3.7T. Nations that lead the trend in adopting bitcoin as a national reserve will not only gain huge profits from ldeadership, and a bitcoin price that grows another 10x, it will also impoverish nations who are slower, as value of gold drops.
There is a massive insider trading possibility for those who know it will be policy, through.
Yeah this could actually work really well ngl. But if the government Bitcoin wallets get hacked...