Bitcoin: Can cash have value if it isn't real?

It's likely that early man had no widely accepted currency. They dealt in the food they hunted or gathered, and the clothes they fashioned from whatever materials were available. Perhaps some individuals offered services, such as labor, transportation or healing. But without currency, they weren't buying and selling these things. Instead, each transaction was a gift or a trade.

Trading is good, but it is difficult for a trade to involve more than 2 parties. Also, It's difficult to save for a rainy day. Food spoils quickly when there is no refrigeration.

Economies built on private trades

• Limited to private transactions.


• No exchange/settlement: An Inefficient market


• Difficult to accumulate wealth


• Doesn't facilitate governments or public works projects

Eventually various forms of cash began to emerge. According to the comic strip, B.C., caveman traded clams for goods and services. That's not far from what historians tell us. Beginning at around 1200 BCE, the Chinese exchanged the shiny shells from a Pacific sea snail for goods and services. For centuries Cowry shells were accepted as a portable “coin” because they were both rare and impossible to counterfeit. Historians think that it may have been the first medium of exchange.

"Medium" is a good word for money, because it is an intermediate layer between things of value — the thing that you sold today and the thing that you will buy tomorrow.

Was the Cowry shell really the first form of currency? It’s difficult to look further into the past, especially into events that may have occurred before written language. But we can be certain that with the rise of central governments, currencies were coined by banks and by nations. But this gives rise to two classes of currency. Things of inherent value, like gold, and things that are valuable because someone says that it is valuable (dollars).

Cowry shells are like gold. They are portable and honored everywhere, just like a coin. And yet they are not minted by a central authority. Instead, they have value, as long as the new supply is limited by natural law, and as long as individual traders believe that their suppliers will continue to desire them. With all monies – clams, gold or government-issued cash – when a majority of productive individuals agree that coins have value, it becomes possible to save and to time shift assets. For example, if you produce clothes – but you aren’t immediately hungry – you can sell your clothes and accumulate wealth. Unlike asparagus or shoes, currency is fungible and it doesn’t spoil. Of course, it is also easier to tax.

Let’s jump forward several millennia. Today, people buy and sell with dollars, euros, pounds, shekels, Zlotys and Yuan. Each currency is minted by a government and backed by either a precious asset (typically Gold) or by the promise of a central bank or government. But wait! Few currencies in circulation today are backed by anything more than the promise of a transient government. And most of these governments are saddled in debt. They have no ability to make good on their promise. The only reason that money in your pocket or bank has value today, is because you feel reasonably certain that vendors will treat it with value tomorrow. Given the dearth of underlying assets, the value of money is about as far from "real" as one can imagine.

Putting your faith in money is terribly risky especially in the 21st century. It is rapidly eroded by inflation and debt. It is easily taxed. It is manipulated by day traders and emerging nations, and it's value is dramatically influenced by energy, and political/social policy.

Before we move on to virtual currency, let me point out that the "virtual" part is nothing new. We already trust computers to keep track of our savings and we prefer bank statements over folded paper in our wallet or mattress. Very little of the money you spend is traded in the form of paper or coins handed from one individual to another. Credit cards, checks and automatic debits bypass the cash stage. Few people use cash to pay taxes, purchase a home or car, or even to buy groceries. Instead, credit cards and mobile payments are accepted everywhere, even at McDonald's and at the post office.

And investing has become even more virtual than buying. When you purchase stocks or bonds, the entire transaction is virtual. You digital cash (computer bits) is converted into a new row on a spreadsheet. This row of characters and numbers reassures you that you own a tiny sliver of a mutual fund in Omaha. This fund, in turn, owns a fraction of 1400 companies or is the beneficiary of municipal debt (more computer bits). It can’t get more virtual than that. Can it? Well, yes. In fact, it can!

Even though money you spend today is virtual, it is still minted by a government (or in the case of Hong Kong, by a bank). You have no idea how much of the stuff they print and how it is distributed from the printer. The value you perceive in your pockets and all of your accounts is based on trust. So who are you trusting? Is it your own banker or business partner. Not on your life. You are placing your trust in the same entity that taxes you and the entity that can't balance its own checkbook.

Bitcoin is different. First, it is totally decentralized. No bank or government is required to validate the coin, record a transfer, or to determine if a virtual coin was spent twice by the same party. And get this: New coins can be "minted" by any user, but the process is inherently limited and trustworthy. Moreover the more that is minted, the more difficult it becomes to mint additional currency. Eventually, the total amount in circulation will level off to a known and verifiable number of coins.

Confused? Of course, you are confused. But, believe it or not, there are already currency exchanges for Bitcoins. They are even bought and sold on eBay. Why? Because Bitcoin circumvents government manipulation. It also deters taxation, tracking, inflation and... Well, you get it. Bitcoin comes pretty close to a perfect currency.

Bitcoin: A virtual, decentralized, trustworthy currency

In my dreams, I fancy myself as a futurist. I like to think that I could hold my own with Ray Kurzweil, Esther Dyson, Bill Joy or Alvin Toffler. Putting myself into that mold right now, I would speculate that Bitcoin or something built much the same way will quickly subsume the world's economies—perhaps even in the next 15 years. The fallout will be seismic, because governments will need to base taxes on real estate and transaction fees rather than income, property or savings. After all, it's difficult to hide land or a home, and it's pretty easy to issue a speeding ticket or charge for a marriage license.

After years of buying from China, time to pay the bill

I wrote this in April 2011 as feedback to this article in PC World.
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After decades of buying from China, it’s time we paid the bill.

Step back from rhetoric & ideology. What, exactly, do we expect the Chinese to buy with all the dollars that they’ve amassed? What happens if we try to dictate their options? –Making available just a few items at the bazaar?

Most Americans want balanced trade. Trade is balanced by encouraging foreigners to return dollars to America. That means purchasing goods & services or investing (purchasing equity or debt). But purchasing debt isn’t real balance. It postpones and magnifies a trade imbalance.

The Chinese have built vast quantities of products that we consumed for more than 30 years. For whatever reasons, they have built them cheaper and responded quickly to consumer demand, and with sufficient quality and style that we loved acquiring them.

Now China has pockets stuffed with dollars. There are so few places that want those dollars, the logical recourse it to spend before it depreciates. That’s logical. Getting them to use those dollars is what we want.

The US exports movies, airplanes, weapons & software, and we charge foreigners to attend our Universities. On the international stage, that about sums our brag sheet. But when we consume trillions from foreigners, do the promissory notes that we issue (“dollars”) limit them to these few commodities? What else can the Chinese purchase that isn’t manufactured closer to home, better, and in larger quantities? They export the really big ticket items themselves--like skyscraper contracting, oil drilling, nuclear technology!

When a foreign corporation or government wants to purchase something significant from the US, suddenly we stop yelling “Buy American” and we start yelling “Security Threat!”. Poppycock! If we create such enormous red tape that international telecom players cannot acquire or invest in one another, we reduce liquidity and further weaken our dollar. Face it: Our start up companies are commodities as certainly as a retail copy of Windows, a Boeing jet or a patent portfolio. When we turn up our nose at healthy interest in intellectual trade or infrastructure acquisition, we are not protecting our interests. We are simply informing trading partners that they were fools to trust us, and that the dollars they stockpiled can be redeemed only in Hollywood films.

It’s natural to be skeptical. China is controlled by an authoritarian dictatorship. Citizens lack social & political freedom. But don’t be misguided about their economy – both within and abroad. It is lubricated by capitalism and is more adaptive and free-wheeling than our own. Whatever their shortcomings, we accepted these when they were selling. We must also allow them to buy. Our technology plays are the only thing on our menu.

Conclusions:

• A) If we refuse to allow the Chinese to repatriate dollars or offer them only the local goods of our choosing – typical of a Banana Republic – then they will dump our dollars and also stop buying our debt. It would crush our economy in a heartbeat.


• B) If we allow those with large stockpiles of our dollars to use them as they see fit, the dollars will return to build factories, create jobs, and produce good, old fashioned innovation. But this won’t happen with newly printed dollars. It doesn’t work that way, because that weakens both parties and makes our factories unattractive. It must be the dollars that we willingly handed over for TVs, computers, shoes, toys and even building materials. We must accept that we owe China—big time! For decades, we passed off pictures of George & Ben in exchange for tangible goods. We knew the Chinese crafted high tech goods for less and that the political system was repressive. But we looked the other way. We really wanted those things! Whether you like their government or not, we promised to expend future time and resources supplying their children with commensurate goods.

Why does China say "America works for us"
Click image to learn why (video = 1min)

This video was commissioned in an effort to defeat Obama’s 2010 universal health care bill. It has terrific shock value. It depicts what China believes to be our economic weakness. I won't comment here about health care or stimulus economics. It’s unrelated to my point. But the video also depicts what Chinese believe to be their imminent destiny, perhaps at America’s expense.

They deserve all of the positive things they have earned. Although it’s natural to whine and complain about an uneven playing field, and our past glory (Automobile assembly, television, the moon landing and the Internet), China is winning in the global economy and any trade in which we engage is, by definition, fair. In fact, the only uneveness in the playing field of international trade is just the opposite of popular perception: It has been tipped in our favor for the entire 20th century!

We must get it through our heads that capitalism is not a contest! This simple truth is often overlooked. The emergence of China as an economic superpower is a good thing. Not just for the Chinese, but for every American. If we keep our own ship in order, the result will be an abundance of goods and services from both sides because we will have affluent trading partners, broader access to labor and markets, and eventually, democratic trading partners.

- Ellery Davies|
Ellery clarifies law and public policy. He is a frequent columnist and TV commentator.