Money

(This essay is from two years ago in December 2021.)

“If all the economists were laid end to end, they’d never reach a conclusion.” --George Bernard Shaw

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The end of each year is traditionally a time for “taking stock,” which is a curious phrase if you think about it. It must have originated around the 1500s, when the most bankable property in an agricultural society was its livestock.

That was then. 

In the next few days, when I hope to reclaim my many decades of old hand-written paper journals from storage, I know I’ll discover that I wrote to myself copious notes each year’s end taking stock — which in my case did not involve cows or sheep but how much money I’d earned that year as opposed how much I’d spent.

I always tried to keep track. The difference in revenue vs. expense, of course, was my annual loss or gain. Since I did not have a stable, predictable income for most of those years, my financial outcomes varied tremendously from very very good to very very bad.

But net net I was quite good at saving money, and I never coveted stuff very much so I didn’t end up bankrupt like some of my colleagues. But I didn’t end up rich either. Few journalists do.

That brings me to what I think of the current craze for crypto-currency.

But even before that, we must deal with the subject of non-crypto cash. 

Good old cold cash almost seems like a relic in the digital age. You can’t pay for your online purchases with cash and pretty much every transaction in the physical world also seems to require one kind of plastic card or another.

As an investment, in recent years cash has been considered a hedge against downturns in a volatile market, but now inflation has returned, at least in the short term, that is no longer the case.

Holding cash reserves is a sure way to lose money right now. 

Of course, the whole idea of money is one of those human fictions that makes our civilization function as well as it does. At the same time, money or the lack of it causes unending misery as well.

It’s one big messy conundrum and crypto only makes it messier.

So what about bitcoin and the other crypto-currencies as investments? In case you’ve ignored it until now, bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency, without a central bank or single administrator. It can be sent from user to user on the peer-to-peer network without the need for intermediaries like banks. Some investors will be getting rich as it gains acceptance.

But not you or me. I’d have to be roughly half of my current age to make investing in bitcoin a potentially wise move. And if you’re within shouting distance of my stage of life, I’d advise letting that train leave the station without you as well. The risk is too high.

Anyway, if you didn’t make money on the original web or Web 2.0, you won’t be making money on web.3 either.

Still, it’s too bad the Beatles are not still recording songs. Then they could release a crypto-version of “Money” sometime early in 2022 that would sound great.

“Bit-coin (that’s what I want.)” 

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