Since the beginning of 2016 I have been very bullish on gold, and it’s been a pretty good investment. Gold is up 24 percent according to the gold exchange traded fund SPDR Gold Trust (GLD). The price of the metal is up 20 percent in the past six months.
The good times will keep rolling on as central bank policy suffocates the global economy and the banks continue to opt to make money out of nothing — derivatives, high velocity trading, credit — rather than allowing a building economy to make money.
My guess is that we’re about to the midpoint in the recovery from the catastrophic global collapse that started in 2008 and is still felling buildings with aftershocks. Small and mid-sized businesses are declaring bankruptcy at a much faster rate than new businesses are opening. This is becoming a difficult long-term trend that will never be resolved if banks are happy to be spoon fed by the central banks and don’t feel like risking capital on new businesses.
Gold will continue to rise in this slow-to-no-growth environment… but so will something many consider to be digital gold — bitcoin.
Bitcoin is a unique combination of a currency and a commodity with the added advantage of virtual anonymity while bitcoin is held as bitcoin. Once it’s converted to other currencies, that’s another matter, but we’re starting to see some interesting aspects of the valuation of bitcoin as a currency itself. Increasingly, when volatility strikes a major economy, whether it’s China, England or Germany, bitcoin prices rise.
Heavy trading happened around the Brexit vote, when prices were over $750 per bitcoin. They fell to close to $550 in late June, and now continue an uptrend to $665 per bitcoin.
Obviously, this is a lot more volatile than gold and the U.S. dollar, but that isn’t the point. The fact is, bitcoin is a growing alternative to the traditional markets. And given its advantage as a crypto-currency, larger sums are being moved over in good and bad times.
You might have concerns about bitcoin’s security given the fact that holding dollars or gold are physical things. But the dollar is a fiat currency, and a continuing descent into this central banking nightmare for the free markets may well set the stage for hyperinflation. Then the paper would be worthless… but not bitcoin.
And worst-case scenario, no one can ‘get’ your bitcoin since the blockchain — the security that protects the transactions — has become so robust that it is becoming a tool that numerous major industries are investing in.
So while you’re investing, don’t exclude options that you may not be familiar with. Learn about how bitcoin works, follow the price movements. Read some stories on it. The Wild West days are over and the currency is really coming into its own. Just in time for the traditional banking system to go belly up once again.
— GS Early
The post Time to think about ‘digital gold’ appeared first on Personal Liberty®.
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/07/28/time-to-think-about-digital-gold/
from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2016/07/27/time-to-think-about-digital-gold/
No comments:
Post a Comment