Marx mentioned in "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy"
Gold and silver are not by nature money, but money consists by its nature of gold and silver.
1. "Gold and silver are not by nature money" means that gold and silver are not inherently currency. Because gold and silver first appeared in the market as a general commodity, only when the commodity exchange developed to a certain historical stage, a fixed commodity of equivalent value was needed as a medium of exchange, called general equivalent, when the general equivalent was concentrated on gold and silver. When gold and silver are fixedly used as general equivalents, it is currency. Because gold and silver do not become currency as soon as they come to the world.
2. "money consists by its nature of gold and silver", which means that money should be born of gold and silver, or that gold and silver are born with the excellent characteristics of being currency, which is determined by the natural properties of gold and silver.
So can we deduce the process of Bitcoin becoming a general equivalent from the process of gold and silver becoming a general equivalent?
1.gold was very valuable in ancient times.
The ancient smelting technology is relatively poor, and it is impossible to make copper, iron and other metals into exquisite utensils. You can only choose metals with a relatively low melting point and corrosion resistance as smelting materials. Since silver will become black after air oxidation, it is desirable to preserve the utensils for a long time. Must choose gold as the material. Since the output of ancient gold and silver was very low, the value of gold and silver was guaranteed to be high.
2.Gold and silver, especially gold, were not suitable as a standard currency in ancient times. As a currency, precious metals have the following disadvantages:
- The output is too small to support social and economic development
Almost all the large gold and silver mines discovered by humans are in Africa and America, not within the scope of the ancient civilized world.
- The value is too high to be used in daily transactions, and the loss of segmentation is too large
The gold cakes of the Han Dynasty,China, weighed 250 grams each and were valued at 13,000 dollar, which were not used in most transactions. However, if you divide a large piece of gold and silver, there will be loss in the process of dividing and recasting.
- The quality is mixed, ordinary people can hardly identify
Not to mention the ancients, even the current experts and scholars can hardly judge the specific content of gold and silver in gold and silverware without the help of professional instruments.
These three difficulties have become important factors preventing the large-scale use of gold and silver as currency in ancient societies. In ancient, cattle, salt, and tobacco were generally used as trading intermediaries.
When a large number of gold and silver mines were discovered later, gold and silver were generally used as currency. Later, the gold standard as we know it originated in the United Kingdom. Due to the discovery of a series of large gold mines in Africa and America, the price of gold began to fall. This currency system was first proposed by Newton and fixed the price of gold per ounce at 3 pounds, 17 shillings and 10.5 pence.
In 1797, the United Kingdom announced the coinage regulations, issued gold coins and stipulated the gold content.
In 1816, Britain passed the "Gold Standard System Act" and began to issue paper money with gold as collateral, and the British gold standard was formally established. This situation continued until the World War I.
The fundamental reason for the establishment of the gold standard is not the rarity of gold, but the skyrocketing production of gold, which happened to be controlled by the world's most powerful Britain at that time;If Spain is the world's largest country, I guess it will implement the silver standard.
According to the formation trajectory of the above gold standard.Can we deduce what it takes for Bitcoin to become a currency?
1. Segmentation, this does not need to be resolved for now. Bitcoin can be split to 8 decimal places
2. The total amount is small, the same reason as above. The reason why Satoshi Nakamoto set the total amount of Bitcoin at 21 million seems to be based on the global economic aggregate at that time
3. No major economy promotes Bitcoin. This economy needs to hold a lot of Bitcoin. And it has a lot of voice in the world. Similar to Britain at that time
4. To use Bitcoin, you need to learn some knowledge, while gold and silver don’t need to learn complex knowledge.
5.Does Bitcoin have its intrinsic value? Except for the energy and equipment required for mining to give it a certain value, there is no value that ordinary people understand. Such as: a vase made of gold can be stored for a long time, so gold is very valuable.
opinion source:
https://www.gold.org/cn/page/9372