Over the centuries, several things have been used to store value; cattle, corals, cowry shells, silver and of course, gold, to name a few. There are two things that are common across the board. The thing must be able to maintain a stable cosmetic state over time (not decay/decompose/rust easily). Secondly, the thing must be rare.
The second point is important. Rarity is almost synonymous to value. In fact in many languages the words are used interchangeably.
It’s understandable why you’d want to use something rare to store value. It’s to control inflation. Imagine someone suddenly coming across a pit full of gold, hence devaluing it in the community.
Actually, this sort of happened in history. There was an emperor in Africa called Mansa Musa of the old Mali Empire. His dominion expanded throughout what is now called West Africa, including the countries of Ghana and the Ivory Coast. In those regions back in the day, gold was so abundant that they didn’t even need to mine it. It was valuable, due to being the most durable metal available, but it wasn’t “rare”. When Mansa Musa took his pilgrimage to Mecca, he took so much gold with him, which he gave away for free in Egypt and Arabia. This act devalued gold across North Africa, Arabia and the Mediterranean.
Some have speculated that this also was what sparked the European interest in locating where all the gold came from. The Portuguese and eventually the British did find Ghana. There was so much gold there that it was called “El Mina“ (The Mine) by the Portuguese and the “Gold Coast” by the British
A massive chunk of the gold backing British and Portuguese money came from there.
Plutus, the Greek god of wealth, is also tasked with the difficult job of distributing wealth to humanity. To make this a more fair process, Zeus blinded him. This way he couldn’t see whom he was distributing wealth to. Literally a blind, hence hopefully fair, process.
In this day and age, “value” and “money” have been decoupled. Simply put, money is no longer necessarily valuable.
That may sound a little oxymoronic at first, but if you give it some thought, and some research, it becomes clear. Governments now just print words and patterns on paper and simply say it has value because, well, they say so. The British Pound today is no longer the equivalent of a pound of sterling silver. It’s just an abstract, arbitrary number with a nice little metallic token to make you feel better about yourself. See, back in the day, that pound coin would be an actual pound of silver or gold. Now it’s some kind of cheap metallic alloy.
This brings us to the whole point of this rambling post. What the governments of the world have done with money has actually created an opportunity that seems too good to be true.
For the first time in history, it is now possible to do what governments do - which is to create your own money right out of thin air. At least that’s the way I see it.
I mentioned in a post that I was day-trading with imaginary money. Well, it is going exceptionally well, I’m excited to report. I did take a little loss a couple of days ago when I became overzealous with my imaginary trades, but a few days of sensible trading has me firmly back in profit.
Now imagine I was trading with real money. I could sit there in my pyjamas and just create money. Depending on how much capital I have, I could spiral towards the millions. If I wanted to solidify some of the money, I could invest in real estate or land. This is a real possibility! I’m not saying its a guarantee, but it’s a possibility especially if you catch a nice ride up a bull run.
This is not financial advice though. Also, remember I’m using Imaginary money.
That’s just the thing though. What is the difference between the so-called “imaginary money” and money in the bank? NOTHING! They’re both imaginary - backed only by my belief in them.
Cryptocurrency is an opportunity that’s just too good to be true in my opinion, and I place Steem right on top of the pile. The gods controlled gold. The governments took power away from the gods by creating money. Is this the people taking power from the governments with crypto?
Peace and Love ✌🏿
Adé
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