> a gold standard won out over silver mostly by **accident**. rereading @Lyn Alden book, i’m starting to think future descriptions of bitcoin and fiat could follow a similar path… “a bitcoin standard won out over the dollar mostly by accident.” history shifts overnight, with small things growing big, and the once significant becoming irrelevant. there are only two parameters we must watch: time and motion, as probability is simply the outcome of accumulated time and repeated exposure. 🧡

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W2S's avatar
W2S 1 year ago
I don't have the full context of Lyn's quote, but isn't it true that, while other things may be equal, i) gold is much more scarce than silver, and ii) scarcity is a key requirement for money to function as a long term store of value?
yes, and yes. the competition between the two was driven, among a few things, by silver’s higher utility for daily transactions. the “accident” refers to a single decision by britain, where the fixed gold-silver ratio made gold overvalued - worth reading how this snowballed into a butterfly effect.
W2S's avatar
W2S 1 year ago
Interesting - will look into this