The Fall of the US Dollar - Is a return to a gold standard inevitable?

[bluemoon]

i've never heard of Kinesis but I do know it's not the first gold-backed crypto to have launched. Google "gold-backed crypto" and you'll find others already on the market. The concept sounds decent but it's got a long way to go if it is to ever get accepted by the masses. One could argue that acceptance is more valuable than gold. That's why bitcoin is worth what it's worth. As long as you can't print the stuff and dilute it, one of the advantages of gold-backed cryptos is already offset.

This forum is the only place I've ever heard of Kinesis and it sounds like a shameless plug for it. There are nearly 2,000 cryptocurrencies out there and most of them failed, but all of them had beleivers and developers plugging it as the next big thing.

[EdNug]

Gold backed cryptos are all well and good in theory but it is only a tiny minority of people who have the technical aptitude and confidence to trust being able to use them securely.

IMO technological backdoors, criminal hackers and the totally bizarre crypto lexicon will prevent cryptos becoming widely accepted. The world needs honest money that is easy to understand, most people have never even heard of the words used in crypto-speak and for that reason alone it is little more than exclusive geek concept currency. When the geeks learn to speak real languages instead of blabbering away in computer code they might be able to start convincing more people that its a good thing.

[KDave]

Well said, one of the issues with crypto gold is trust, it becomes about confidence any time a person is part of the chain, such as with a bullion vault. The block chain can have ten ounces in the ledger, but the vault could be empty block chain technology does not change that. It might start off well but eventually human nature would prevail. 

Crypto currency based on a ledger once adopted has similar aspects to gold, if you can safely navigate the infrastructure but it is still a brand. People can make another one, brand it differently and your old currency will lose market share and thus perceived value. You are also reliant on the infrastructure to support your choice of brand, which can switch just as easily to a new one. Gold is a brand that has few competitors, certainly none that can be invented overnight, in nature there are a few metals similar but we have already had the brand war over the past thousand years. It needs no energy to keep it in existence and needs only two people to facilitate it's transfer, no technology required. That is why gold works better than any crypto currency in terms of holding value and acting as money. 

But to replace the fiat system for trade, I am not sure it is possible technologically when fiat already does the job.