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Comment by paulie_a | Hacker News Reader

Silver is just as valuable as that piece of paper. It really has very little inherit value. Just because it's shiny doesn't make it truly valuable. gold is the same thing. Both have some limited manufacturering usages but at the end of the day they are shiny, similar to that very pretty piece of paper.

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> Silver is just as valuable as that piece of paper.

Honestly how can you say that? A piece of crude that comes from Earth (not government printer) that is in somewhat limited quantity, always kept its value, whether governments raised or fell.

Here is a good read for you:

http://www.mining.com/web/the-forgotten-history-and-potentia...

Actually outside of manufacturering purposes it is less valuable than that piece of paper. It's shiny, big deal.

It's a big deal to other people. That is all that matters.

The absolute value is not what is important. These goods have a very useful property: their value remains stable. Even if silver or gold's real value is 1 cent per kilogram and therefore the price premium is something mind boggling like 1000:1 it still doesn't matter as long as this ratio remains the same over time.

The reason why bitcoin and other crypto currencies are not usable as a substitute is because they have massive volatility.

sounds like the answer is bitcoin :)

whatever we put our faith in has value, and I envision our future generation putting their faith behind BTC. Of course, the normies will prob use something else - prob another crypto backed by BTC.

Please no. I am talking about the times in which we go back to basics. You can't be able to freely travel, not to mention communicate, etc (this is the scenario OP draws as when the currency collapse); how can you think there will be sustainable high speed internet connecting miners to sustain a bitcoin blockchain.

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