The gold standard is a profile in power. So LBJ conspired to get rid of it. (Photo by UPI/Bettmann Archive/Getty Images) Getty Images The gold standard did not prevent the hyperinflation of the 1970s, or the slowdown in growth the American economy in the 2000s. The gold standard ended in 1971—what can it mean that…
Redotpay offers prepaid cards for payments in cryptocurrencies. Redotpay Redotpay, a Hong Kong-based crypto payment startup, has hit unicorn status after completing a $47 million funding round from investors including Coinbase Ventures, the venture capital arm of U.S. billionaire Brian Armstrong’s crypto exchange giant Coinbase Global. Other investors who joined the round include Vertex Ventures,…
We should put him on a coin (Photo by Roger Viollet Collection/Getty Images) Roger Viollet via Getty Images A few years ago I wrote a piece, for Public Discourse, called “Montesquieu and the Monetary System.” It discussed our having fiat money, non-gold-standard money, today, from the perspective of the eighteenth century French legal sage, Montesquieu….
The designers of the policy mix, Kennedy and Dillon. Bettmann Archive Why did Bitcoin come to be? The computer science revolution gave us the possibility of a blockchain. All sorts of neat things can be done with the blockchain, including trading unique pieces of online property that keep their nature after the trade—currency, in a…
Artistic coins died here. The gold repository at Fort Knox, (Photo by Underwood Archives/Getty Images) Getty Images In 1936, the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky, opened. Opened—not the mot juste. The federal government piled gold bars upon gold bars into this huge brand-new vault deep in the ground. An army base (Fort…
From Anchorage Digital to BitGo and Morgan Stanley, a growing cast of financial firms are reaping big fees riding the tidal wave of corporate bitcoin buying. A record number of public companies are shoveling crypto onto their balance sheets—ostensibly to diversify their holdings, hedge against inflation and attract new investors. The unstated reason, of course,…
Remember what they took from you. 1960s Aerial Of Suburban Housing Development (Photo by Heilman/Classicstock/Getty Images) Heilman/ClassicStock The Case-Shiller index of home prices is something else. Chip Case, a Wellesley professor, started the thing in the 1980s because he saw Massachusetts home prices zooming up like never before. In 1980, Massachusetts had put a permanent…
Topline Hotter-than-expected inflation data and cooled government interest in bitcoin appeared to rein in the world’s largest cryptocurrency Thursday, after bitcoin’s value peaked at yet another all-time high hours earlier. The world’s largest cryptocurrency appeared to be hit by poor inflation data and cooled government interest. Getty Images Key Facts Bitcoin declined by more than…