Teeth

Chaaang-Noi I'm getting into silver cuz 100% in crypto is not really smart since i have to support a family.
mircea_popescu Silver is abundant. People have been trying to sell it as worthwhile and "an investment" or "money" since the great debates in the US in the 1800s but on the face of it silver is a sort of tin.

Chaaang-Noi People have been trying to sell silver as money since 6000 years ago... Silver and gold is the oldest form of money we still use. I hold silver in the usa and gold here in thailand as a shtf backup and not a large percent of my assets just 5 to 10%. I think every person should ahve some physical silver and gold just in case.
ThickAsThieves In case we need to melt it down for a spear and arrows? Pew pew.
Chaaang-Noi If you are trapped in a nationstate that prints their money to worthlessness you will need silver and gold. It happens... It's something you hope you never have to use, but if you do need it, you will be glad as fuck you have it.
mircea_popescu Silver never was money. Gold is money. Silver is this thing that poor people keep trying to pass as money.

Chaaang-Noi I have a roman coin that sure looks like money.
mircea_popescu Ya well, romans ran scams too.

Chaaang-Noi Gold is money silver is a scam is like saying btc is money and ltc is a scam :)
mircea_popescu Look. There's more than 100x as much silver available as gold. For every 6 dollars or so that silver goes up in price the production capacity doubles. It's just not scarce. What else is there ? It goes from 5 to 50 and back and again with the folly of the crowds, over the decades and centuries.

Chaaang-Noi Not above ground, its about equal, and under ground its about 1/16 ratio. Where did you get this 100x?
ThickAsThieves Buying metals never made sense to me.
Chaaang-Noi Silver is not perfect but its smart to have 5 to 10 % of wealth in gold silver.
mircea_popescu Listen. In 2011 alone, Mexico alone produced ~4500 tonnes of the stuff. The world like 20k tonnes. In one year. This is like... all the gold that exists.

asciilifeform Chaaang-Noi: the real question of our time is: how much lead one should hold.
Chaaang-Noi We use silver in industry, we just store gold... Holding lead would work as well, however you get into storage issues.
mircea_popescu Industry my foot. What, jewelry for poor but ambitious Indian girls ? That's not industry.

ThickAsThieves Werewolves man. Don't you watch True Blood?
Chaaang-Noi Lol. You guys, I think you are pretty ignorant about this and are not trolling, but if you are trolling you are doing a fine job :)
mircea_popescu ThickAsThieves what amuses me the most is this "silver is valuable cause it can work as currency" nonsense. Tell you what, if I'm the boss of a tribe and I need a currency Ima make teeth the currency. you don't get proper ones till about 12 or so, and the owner always objects to having teeth pulled. So there you go, teeth are the coin. Problem solved. Has this increased the value of teeth any ?

ThickAsThieves On that sense i dont think gold is a currency either.
mircea_popescu Well, much like adult teeth, gold is finite. Silver is pretty much like seasalt, can make as much of the stuff as you can possibly ever want.

Chaaang-Noi things are worth what people pay for them...
mircea_popescu Chaaang-Noi no, not at all.

asciilifeform By this logic, teeth are nothing compared to fresh, still-beating hearts. Meatcoin.
Chaaang-Noi gold bugs cant un derstand crypto, but honestly i thought crypto people would understand gold...
ThickAsThieves But there are limited siamese twins too. No one cares much.
mircea_popescu For that matter, 19th century England was trying to create demand for silver by making 50lb silverware sets a sort of middle class standard. That went nowehre, so... Asciilifeform hearts don't keep fresh. Teeth do.

asciilifeform Why not thighbones, then. Skulls, etc.
ThickAsThieves Lol. Our quest for a better currency. It never ends.
mircea_popescu Would work yes. You don't have to kill someone to take his teeth tho. And they're smaller, easier to carry and 32 of them. I tell you. Teeth.

Chaaang-Noi i find your guys reaction to gold and silver as a store of value very funny :) btc, oh yeah thats money, gold? lol!
ThickAsThieves How about moon rocks?
mircea_popescu The theory is that "civilisation collapsed" and so now silver rounds are finally good for something. (Presumably other than being stolen from you.)

asciilifeform Hearts should please the demurrage weirdos. Use it or lose it.
ThickAsThieves The theory of apocalyptic collapse is absurd imo. If shit hits the fan no one wants your fucking gold. They want food, weapons and women.
mircea_popescu For some reason that concept is hard to grasp. That reason may be historical recourse.

ThickAsThieves How about this : if you wanna cover your ass buy a golden gun. Then you're covered either way. With silver bullets. Just in case werewolves are the cause
benkay 'cept the dang thing's useless.
ThickAsThieves
mircea_popescu ThickAsThieves http://www.google.com/search?q=golden+desert+eagle

ThickAsThieves Perfect!
benkay Plating. Boring.
mircea_popescu Never underestimate the power of bling. Gold plated steel firing silver bullets.

ThickAsThieves Instant payment system
mircea_popescu I suppose I gotta go snort powdered bohemia crystal nao.

Seriously now. Teeth. End of story.