437
As Gold Hits New Record, Some See Warning Signs of Civilizational Collapse
(www.newsweek.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2025
437 points (100.0% liked)
World News
50591 readers
1063 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
- Blogsites are treated in the same manner as social media sites. Medium, Blogger, Substack, etc. are not valid news links regardless of who is posting them. Yes, legitimate news sites use Blogging platforms, they also use Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube and we don't allow those links either.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF OCTOBER 19 2025
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
So it's made of fairy dust, got it
What a wild thing to say about gold when you're arguing in favor of cryptocurrency.
It would be wild, if that's what actually happened
Edit: Do you have a charity picked out? Or shall I just go ahead and buy more Bitcoin?
Fairy dust, don't be ridiculous. It's Pixie dust.
Let me ask you this. If the hard drive that contains the private keys for your wallet is melted down to a liquid and allowed to cool, what is the value of that hard drive?
What would be the value of a gold coin given the same treatment?
I answered your question so maybe you'll do me the honour of answering mine.
If someone breaks into your house and steals your gold coins, what value do they have to you?
If it burns down, how much will it cost to recoup all your gold back into a manageable, tradeable form?
If you burn down a library do the books still have any value?
The thing is, if I have a pile of gold coins, and a bunch of crypto in a private wallet on a hard drive and the house those things are in burns down, I'll still have the gold. It just won't be in coins.
All of that is kind of pointless because again, both of these things are terrible investments. You're quite astute to point out the flaws in gold but what's incredible is that you fail to see those same flaws, using the same logic, apply to crypto only in a more exaggerated form.
If you're worried about the dollar collapsing, crypto will not save you from that, any more than a pile of gold will. Do you think the banks will just lock their doors one day and everyone will still go to work in the morning? Do you expect that trade will still function in a normal, civilized way?
Crypto is built on so many dependant layers of technology that if the dollar collapses, crypto will be as valuable as a library on fire.
Ah, but if you can find the book in thousands upon thousands of libraries spread all around the world, has anything been lost?
Bitcoin is crypto. Crypto is not Bitcoin. I strongly encourage you to look into the history of money. What has been used as money in the past, why it was used as money....rai stones are my favorite example.
Bitcoin, if you are able to understand the mechanics of it, is the "hardest" form of money that has ever existed. History shows money always flows into the hardest asset available. It also shows what happens when that asset loses its hardness. This is why gold has been king for a long, long time.
Then along came Bitcoin (NOT crypto, there was crypto before and crypto after), and it used game theory, the internet, math, cryptography and programming to become the most elegant store of value ever invented, which is also the hardest form of money ever created.
I actually loathe Bitcoin, even if I admire it and buy it. It's an energy nightmare. No one will ever convince me that it's "green" in any meaningful way. And I'm a huge environmentalist. But I'm not an idiot. It's inevitable. It's already started. Fiat currencies are going to start inflating uncontrollably and the money is going to go somewhere. If Bitcoin is superior as a store of value to gold, and more importantly is harder than gold, it's got a long, long way to go.
Maybe you should look in to the history of money. Gold has not been king for a long time. It never really was.
Silver has always been more common as a standard. Gold and silver were frequently used in conjunction with each other, and neither of them have served as a standard intentionally since 1971. Well before any crypto. Using gold and gold alone as the standard is actually quite rare, and one time happened by accident.
Fun fact, at one point the Spanish thought they'd found an incredible amount of silver only to discover halfway across the Atlantic that it was some other shiney silver metal. They proceeded to dump tons of worthless plantinum overboard so as to not pollute the silver supply.
On Yap Island, giant circular stones were used as a form of currency. Everyone kind of just agreed on who owned what stones. At one point one fell off a boat and sunk, but because everyone knew that stone was still there, they could still assign value to it, and so it still stood in as currency. This single example is the closest real world example to crypto you're going to find. And even obscure rocks on a remote island are a better investment because pretending a giant rock has value doesn't depend on the Internet continuing to exist.
Salt, in various forms, has been used as currency and a standard of value. This is literally the origin of the word Salary. Roman soldiers were paid in salt. In Ethiopia they used bars of it as recently as the 1900s. In West Africa they even used bottle caps when coinage was scarce.
As it happens, bottle caps are a pretty good currency. They're scarce, labeled, not super common, light and easy to carry, and easy to count. Notably, they also do not require the infrastructure that created them to continue to exist to retain value. None of the currencies I've mentioned, and to be clear these were currencies not commodities, require any of the technology that created them to exist to retain value. Bracelets, bricks of tea, tally sticks, seashells, even fucking Parmesan cheese all have functioned as a form of standard currency and all of them were better currencies than any crypto ever has been.
Crypto is a commodity. Except it only has value within is existing infrastructure. It will be like never getting able to check a book out of the library. Quite honestly if you're going to trade commodities, it's one of the least monstrous commodities to trade. The exorbitant energy costs notwithstanding.
Yes, you're correct. A melted hard drive would not have the same value as a gold coin melted down.
What is your point?