Quote from: minor-transgression on July 08, 2017, 09:02:03 PM

...
cue laughter.

The point I make here is that the economics of monopoly pricing is often ignored.
It applies to the price of money just as much as tomatoes. The reason Central
Banks have their knickers in a twist over bitcoin is that they could potentially
lose monopoly pricing of fiat money.
What they can do to gold, they can also do to bitcoin. So, bitcoin is unlikely
to go much higher, and more probably will fall in price ... until Central Banks
have monopoly pricing power over bitcoin.

Think it can't happen ...?

That's good. Comes a little slowly to me, but it's good.

WRT central bank suppression of non-state monies, I agree with your thinking over the short to medium term, but here is what I think.

In the long term, what they've 'done to gold' is that they lost control. They smacked it down from $800 to $300 per ounce over 1980 to 2000, and from $1900 to $1200 over 2011 through 2017, yes, (probably for public relations,) but over the last century, gold has risen pretty much in sync with the inflation Western labor costs. (A tailored suit in New York, or a night at the Waldorf, costs about the same in gold as a century ago.)

Indeed, over the previous few centuries, gold never went up against the current chief imperial currency, and it earned no interest. Things are actually looking up in our time!

My theory in my link that the financial elite are justifiably afraid of a total collapse in confidence is based on that 99 of 100 state-issued monies of this world, fiat or otherwise, have failed, and the rest (being supported by imperial power in one way or another) have steadily lost purchasing power in a controlled manner.

Imperial machinations are detailed first-hand by 'Confessions of An Economic Hit Man.' The idea is to get unproductive countries to borrow money from the US (and productive countries to lend money to the US.) Circulation supports demand for the dollar. In the previous empire, Britain ended up with only 3% of the gold required to redeem its paper money, under an official gold standard, on the eve of World War I. How? It was remarkably successful at getting colonial governments to 'want to' hold paper sterling as reserves.

Once a poor country borrows dollars, it signs itself into slavery, no matter which way its body struggles on the meat hook after that. (The loan amounts are always based on an inflated projection of your growth. You can never repay. If you default in dollars, your economy implodes from loss of foreign investment; if you beg the IMF or Fed to 'bail you out,' you must toe the imperial line.)

The book may be popular, but most people who read it can't really connect it with the monetary and financial systems. Only the combination of the two sides provides a powerful tool for seeing the world as it is.

I have some thoughts about Bitcoin (how it may be an even better investment than gold,) that I hope to have time to go into.