Even Gold-Obsessed Indians Are Pouring Billions Into Crypto (bloomberg.com) 85
The cryptocurrency aficionados' mantra that Bitcoin is equivalent to digital gold is winning converts among the world's biggest holders of the precious metal. From a report: In India, where households own more than 25,000 tonnes of gold, investments in crypto grew from about $200 million to nearly $40 billion in the past year, according to Chainalysis. That's despite outright hostility toward the asset class from the central bank and a proposed trading ban. Richi Sood, a 32-year-old entrepreneur is one of those who swerved from gold to crypto. Since December, she's put in just over 1 million rupees ($13,400) -- some of it borrowed from her father -- into Bitcoin, Dogecoin and Ether.
[...] She's part of a growing number of Indians -- now totalling more than 15 million -- buying and selling digital coins. That's catching up with the 23 million traders of these assets in the U.S. and compares with just 2.3 million in the U.K. The growth in India is coming from the 18-35 year old cohort, says the co-founder of India's first cryptocurrency exchange. Latest World Gold Council data indicated Indian adults under age 34 have less appetite for gold than older consumers.
[...] She's part of a growing number of Indians -- now totalling more than 15 million -- buying and selling digital coins. That's catching up with the 23 million traders of these assets in the U.S. and compares with just 2.3 million in the U.K. The growth in India is coming from the 18-35 year old cohort, says the co-founder of India's first cryptocurrency exchange. Latest World Gold Council data indicated Indian adults under age 34 have less appetite for gold than older consumers.
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probably safer than drinking the water in Michigan though
hoax article (Score:5, Interesting)
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Well, you are probably right!
The other thing that crossed my mind when I read "Even Gold-Obsessed Indians Are Pouring Billions Into Crypto" is that they were smart and understood diversification of investments. If that's the case, I am sure they didn't give up all their gold for crypto assets.
Re:hoax article (Score:5, Insightful)
My thoughts reading this: If the Bitcoin bubble has reached India, there is nowhere left for it to grow.
Hoax = Fiat money / Breakthrough = Gold 2.0 (Score:2, Insightful)
Gold was money for 5000+ years; This ended with the 20th century, Gold was successfully attacked by our governments and replaced by the scammy fiat currencies.
F.A. Hayek in 1984: "I don't believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, that is, we can't take it violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something that they can't stop."
Bitcoin is the real and only breakthrough. Bitcoin is designed to
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If you can't define the concept of money, you will end with a nonsensical definition. Gold was not money because a 5000 years old state said "Gold is money"...
Money is the technology to move wealth across space and time. Gold was the historical best. Since the 20th century, the money is defective. We are using the legal tender to move wealth across space, and real estates, stocks ,arts... to move wealth across time. This is the reason the price of real estate or stocks are so "inflated".
Cantillon Effect: we
Re: Hoax = Fiat money / Breakthrough = Gold 2.0 (Score:2)
If we have another Carrington event (likely much worse in scale both in infrastructure damage as well as the CME itself) , bottled water, food, and survival gear will be far more valuable, at least in the short term. Foget runing water, forget just about everything you took for granted. I can't even begin to imagine just how truly bad it will be, other than being close to apocalyptic. And I'm only talking about physical damage. People will truly lose their shit and then it will be utter bedlam.
Society will
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What makes Gold an real currency? It is just a made up currency as well, its value is just because people want it, and it is rare. But for most people Gold isn't necessarily the goal. Money exists because of a way to normalize trade.
In the Barter days, If I had a bag of wheat, I could trade with your for a cord of Firewood. However the problem with barter was if you didn't want or didn't need any more wheat, but I still wanted your firewood, there will be an issue. So we settled on creating coins from
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Re: Hoax = Fiat money / Breakthrough = Gold 2.0 (Score:2)
Fiat money replaced gold because it has become almost as impossible to forge, plus government can control supply of it easy.
So what you are really saying is that the banking system holds the monopoly on forging it. I say banking system intead of government because we have a central bank that is effecively controlled by its private members.
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There were many ways of making fake gold. Alloys, lead plated in gold, shaving a bit off a coin, whatever.
In most countries of the world you can walk into any store, give them a bill or coin in the local currency, and have it accepted at face value. That was not the case with gold.
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What makes Gold an real currency?
The fact it has an intrinsic value because it has alternate uses. What alternate uses does bitcoin have?
It is just a made up currency as well, its value is just because people want it, and it is rare.
See, this is why you are stupid. People want it because it has alternate uses.
You don't know the history of money either.
In the Barter days, If I had a bag of wheat, I could trade with your for a cord of Firewood.
And, in the barter days, if you had a gold necklace, you could trade with your neighbor for a cord of wood because gold is an attractive, lustrous metal that doesn't tarnish and makes desirable ornaments such as jewelry. So, what is the alternate use of a bitcoin?
So we settled on creating coins from precious and semi-precious metals, where it was easier to trade for services, and use the coins to trade across non-mutual demand requirements.
And the reason prec
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You pick a random criteria: "alternate uses" which is irrelevant . Silver has more "alternate uses" than Gold and Silver is a bad money compared to Gold.
This subject is covered in the following article - paragraph "Path Dependence": https://vijayboyapati.medium.c... [medium.com]
Re:Hoax = Fiat money / Breakthrough = Gold 2.0 (Score:4, Insightful)
Fiat replaced gold for one simple reason, that a commodity with limited supply could only function as a medium of exchange in pre-technological zero sum economies. As soon as technology began making the sum of all things that are fungible - that can be traded - increase year over year, we needed currencies whose supply could be adjusted to keep up with the total value of the market. When this happened, gold became a storehouse of value rather than a currency.
Bitcoin, with its limited money supply, is not working as a medium of exchange for the same reason, so its fans are now treating it as a storehouse of value. Which storehouse of value would you prefer: one that has been trusted in every human culture for thousands of years, or an imaginary one that has been around since a week ago Wednesday?
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You are wrong, an abundant money doesn't create a modern society, or prosperity. An abundant money creates shortages because people prefer to hoard the scarce items rather than the abundant money. This situation is already visible with lumber...
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The value of any fiat depends on the accuracy with which its central bank manages the money supply. When the central bank consistently overestimates the value of the economy and creates too much currency, its price in terms of what it trades for goes down. We call that inflation.
Re: Hoax = Fiat money / Breakthrough = Gold 2.0 (Score:2)
Unfortunately, banks can be and often are crooked. By what you said, itheoretically inflation should have stopped in the age of the supercomputer, but it hasn't.
Technology can't fix greedy, selfish people.
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My thoughts reading this: If the Bitcoin bubble has reached India, there is nowhere left for it to grow.
Probably. The sooner this stupidity collapses, the better.
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Like corporatism itself, bitcoin is negative-sum in that it is predicated upon destruction of natural capital.
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Like corporatism itself, bitcoin is negative-sum in that it is predicated upon destruction of natural capital.
Indeed. Much, much worse than fiat currency.
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My thoughts reading this: If the Bitcoin bubble has reached India, there is nowhere left for it to grow.
Yep. What happens when there's no more money to "pour"?
(I think we all know the answer to that)
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Didn't the Tulip Bubble burst because there were too many places you could grow them?
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Nicely spotted. As any Ponzi-Scheme (even if this one is heavily modified) those profiting and those that hope to profit constantly need to draw in more idiots.
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Yep. Why would I invest in a coin that is literally a politician's brain-fart away from being banned and useless?
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BTC not replacing gold (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't really see BTC (or other crypto) replacing gold, gold still has an inherent worth that BitCoin does not...
Really, both Gold and BTC work together for the same purpose - to have some wealth that exists outside government control. Yes BTC is sort of traceable, but is still semi-anonymous to those that do not have the resources of a government to figure out who owns a particular wallet.
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Gold's "inherent" worth is nowhere near it's current price.
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It is exactly where it should be, but it has nothing to do with what its "inherent" value is, as gold. Merely its value to speculators, which has little to do with gold's practical, physical properties.
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Yet we still use gold in industry. Either the price doesn't matter enough in the small quantities used or the market bears the current price and the speculators are mostly right on its value.
Re:BTC not replacing gold (Score:4, Informative)
It is actually pretty good, as Gold has a lot of industrial applications. The usual estimate is around half of its market price.
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Unless it gets made into a Monster Cable, in which case it sells for over 9000 times it's market price.
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We all know Monster Cable only uses the best Fool's Gold, none of this actual gold garbage :)
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Hehehehe, indeed. Those fuckers are quite the kings of separating fools and their money!
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Gold's "inherent" worth is nowhere near it's current price.
Neither is Bitcoin's.
Or Apple/Google/Microsoft/Amazon/etc.
All this is fueled by already-rich people at the top making it easy for idiots to speculate. It will end.
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Actually, the inherent value of Gold (for industrial application) is about half its market price. The inherent value of BTC is zero.
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Re:BTC not replacing gold (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm by no means an expert on Indian culture and heritage, but my understanding of their "love" of gold is that it's a status symbol. Since a lot of India is very poor, those people obviously have little use of gold - if they had any spare money, they'd buy food or put a roof on their house or whatever.
Elsewhere though, if you've got a little bit of money, you get a gold ring or a necklace or whatever so you can show everyone you're not just doing okay, but you're doing so well that you can wear your wealth. Gold's longevity also means you get to pass it on to your children - so you're (ostensibly) building generational wealth.
Anecdotally, there are quite a few dramatically overweight Indians (men, mostly, I think) - same sort of thing - in a country where food is scarce for many, you get to show everyone that you're so rich that you can eat to excess (and quite probably in a culture with defined gender roles, that you get to show off that your wife is so great and makes such amazing food that you do indeed eat it to excess).
You can't "wear" your bitcoin - as such, it serves a different purpose. That is, it (possibly) generates actual wealth, rather than perceived wealth. I should imagine the younger generations are taking it up because they were born into wealth, and all their friends are wealthy, so showing off your gold has far less effect. Secondly, they're likely more tech-savvy and so more likely to believe they can "game the system" in ways their parents cannot. In that sense, bitcoin wealth does come with the benefit of being able to say "I'm young, and better at making money and independent of my parents". As for government independence, being able to "stick it to the man" is, I should imagine, a bonus, but not the main motivator.
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I know even less about the various Indian cultures, but I imagine that part of the "love" of gold is rooted in self-reservation.
In the past there was no centralized, regulated banking system - families kept gold because it could be stored, guarded, transported, and hidden easily. And it was the medium of last resort when the family was in deep trouble - always valuable, never deteriorates.
In centuries past (and probably as little as decades past) there were no "safety nets" as we think of social programs.
So is it fair to say (Score:3)
They're not so much obsessed by gold as they're obsessed by things that can be hoarded and gain value just by sitting on them?
In which case, gold, precious industrial metals, bitcoin... same thing.
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"Gold-obsessed Indians" eh.. Not "racist" at all. (Score:1)
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Re:"Gold-obsessed Indians" eh.. Not "racist" at al (Score:4, Informative)
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per capita the US has India beat on buying gold. We have lots of the stuff, probably more than any other country. And the UK, last I checked, is the largest importer of gold.
The wearing of gold jewelry, no matter how significant in your culture, is not significant in terms of economics.
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Is the amount of gold bought used in the per capital calculation restricted to personal purchases or does it include that which is purchased for industrial uses?
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It's common knowledge the US holds the largest gold reserve by far. Feel free to look it up, there are hundreds of places that explain this and I don't feel like playing a game where I have to defend my sources when you can easily find your own.
For imports of gold, you may look at Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook Field Listing: Imports – Commodities. This does not have a break down between investment, jewelry, or industrial use. But I don't consider that to be relevant to the original a
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there are a lot of Indians 1.4 billion in fact 25000 tones comes to about 18 grams each hardly huge
How are cultural norms racist? (Score:1)
Gold-obsessed Indians" eh.. Not "racist" at all.
No more so than saying "Car-Obscessed Americans". The people of a country have norms and customs that are totally unrelated to race.
What a great idea! (Score:2)
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a ponzi that the government could and should outright ban with an edict closing the exchanges down
You mean the dollar?
Reaction to bank notes cancellation? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe this interest in cryptocurrencies has been fuelled by the sudden cancellation of bank notes a few years prior?
This tends to leave a strong mark on victims.
https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
Re: Reaction to bank notes cancellation? (Score:2)
That was my first thought as well. A lot of transactions that can occur without a bank asset
Statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate it when people compare country statistics by absolute number. India is huge, about 20x the UK and 4x the USA. As a percentage of the population, the number of Bitcoin traders in India, UK and USA are:
1.07% in India
3.3% in UK
6.9% in USA
So, the story is reversed with "just" 1% Bitcoiners in India. (It is a lot more than I expected though. How reliable are these numbers?)
Scam (Score:2)
The scam continues (Score:1)
Amway went to India as well. Bitcoin is basically electric Amway, but you don't even get the soap.
Oh, and for the benef
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What about muslims treatment of women, gays... and pretty much anyone else that isn't muslim? Guess you hate women, gays, christians...?
Tucker Carlson? ... is that you?
I'm doing a face palm right now (Score:1)