God’s Money

Physical gold and silver are money; everything else is credit.

Where any asset ceases to present a use case independent of its price, where any asset ceases to present any use case whatever without a quoted price, and where a secular price decline eliminates every case for owning the ‘asset’, it is not just a form of illusory credit (seeking more stable forms of wealth in still other terms, denominated outside of the given asset class — i.e., US dollars) but a highly speculative risk asset incapable of functioning not only as collateral, an investment, or a store of value, but ultimately as money.

Much of the development in the financial sector has been in the interest of steering asset holders away from value investments and real, physical assets (with limited premiums) to more synthetic, volatile alternatives structured to benefit sellers and brokers, where a distinct lack of downside insurance puts ‘holders’ at the risk of losing not merely on speculative bets (where they understand that they are placing their principal at risk) but on speculative bets disguised as ‘investments’ or ‘money’ — where, in such cases, the so-called ‘investments’ generate no dividends, and the so-called ‘money’ offers no downside insurance, and in such cases even introduces counterparty risk and fails to function as money in its common usage.

Like so many of the synthetic products in the financial sector, the simulated properties of money present in digital ‘assets’ have appealed to buyers and brokers in an age of cheap money and easy credit, where ‘investors’ and ‘speculators’ alike have come to assume progressively more risk as a matter of custom, often without their knowledge, in their abandonment of those asset classes failing to appreciate as quickly or to offset the real losses suffered through inflation; in which cases of speculation, disguised as ‘investment’ or ‘money’, secular or longterm price appreciation has managed to maintain illusions of ‘intrinsic value’ or safe ‘stores of value’.

Yet, in the event that the price of any digital ‘asset’ stabilizes or declines, it is not merely a reflection of its changing market value but an existential threat to the primary justification for holding the ‘asset’.

On such a basis, an asset can serve neither as an ‘investment’ nor as ‘money’, and so far as it manages to convince people otherwise, it is through a misunderstanding of the immutable properties of ‘investments’ and ‘money’ or through the illusions and emotions maintained through price appreciation; the latter of which, too often erroneously projected indefinitely into the future, presents the illusion of safety and security — and, so far as the market remains irrational, particularly on the basis of such artifice as cheap money and easy credit, it maintains the illusion of ‘smart money’. As the adage goes, never confuse brains with a bull market.

Just as the Prodigal Son chased his heedless adventures and eventually returned home, so too will people eventually come to realize their folly in abandoning ‘God’s money’ and the principles which truly bring safety, security, and happiness.

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