#RealEstate and #stocks were the best investments when the US Dollar had no competitors as the world reserve currency.
When the world was on a #gold standard, the average person didn't buy stocks and houses to store value for the future. They just earned and held gold. People were able to afford the cost of living with a bit of delayed gratification.
In the 1920s, banks started lending money to stock market speculators and home buyers. We saw the Dow Jones rise 4x in less than 10 years.
This led to inflation. Profits from the stock market could be used to buy things in the real world.
But the profits weren't real... they were built on the lie of fractional reserve banking. Banks weren't lending their own money; it was depositor funds. More money was entering the system.
When profits from the stock market were used to buy goods and services in the real world, prices started increasing. More money was chasing the same number of goods.
The US government had to fix this. There were too many people speculating on stocks. Interest rates went up to slow economic activity and bring prices back to reality.
Investors panicked and started selling their stocks because they couldn't afford the interest payments on the loans they had taken to buy the stocks in the first place.
The DOW dropped ~90% in 3 years. Billions of dollars of wealth disappeared.
But whose money disappeared? Like I said: banks weren't lending their own money. They were lending depositor funds. These were regular, everyday people who kept their life savings in the banking system.
Over the next decade, the US experienced the Great Depression. Businesses closed down. People suffered.
The US government had to find a way to stop the misery, so it took the USA off the gold standard in 1933, with Executive Order 6102 making gold ownership illegal. Banks took all this gold and paid citizens $20.67/ounce for it.
In my opinion, this was a big mistake:
Instead of dealing with the problem from the ground up, the problem was solved from the top down. Instead of dealing with the root cause (fractional reserve banking), the problem was dealt with by making fractional reserve banking EVEN EASIER.
Over the next year, so many dollars were printed that gold had to be repriced from $20.67/ounce to $35/ounce. Today, that same ounce of gold costs over $2,000. The US Dollar has lost 99% of its purchasing power in terms of gold since 1933. It will always trend towards 0.
In terms of USD, the cost of living has also increased significantly over the last 90 years. Inflation is said to be 2-3%/year, but is it really?
The truth is that inflation is theft and governments steal a lot more than they tell us they do. Since 1933, the US government could print as much money as it wanted, and nothing has been able to take this power away.
The price of gold increased from $20.67 to almost $2,000 in 90 years, an increase in price of ~5.2%/year. On top of this, money goes towards stocks and real estate, so inflation is MUCH higher than we're told.
In 2008, #Bitcoin was introduced by an anonymous entity named Satoshi Nakamoto.
Bitcoin lets you save and transact without relying on banks. No more fractional reserve banking.
Bitcoin doesn't devalue because it can't be printed at will. A house that cost 100,000 BTC in 2011 now costs 11 BTC. In terms of USD, housing has at least doubled in price in that time.
Bitcoin has all the favorable characteristics of gold (durable, scarce, salable) AND government-issued currencies (portable, divisible, fungible).
The world is slowly waking up to this. Some countries have been accumulating #BTC for years. Some businesses are starting to accept Bitcoin. Bitcoin is being used as "money" instead of US Dollars by more people every day.
Since Bitcoin has all the characteristics we need money to have, it is digital gold.
We are going to see real estate and stock prices drop in terms of Bitcoin until they're priced in Bitcoin.
Rajat Soni, CFA
@rajatsonifnance
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