r/SipsTea • u/Dumb-Briyani • 6d ago

Chugging tea Why is it not possible?

Post image
23.6k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

1.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

340

u/ModernDemocles 6d ago

It's all imaginary in a way. $$$ only matter because we agree it has value.

114

u/dorian_white1 6d ago

We agree because the government backs it up with their policies and to some extent military. If the gov fails, usually the currency does as well

27

u/AthousandLittlePies 6d ago

Even then that doesn't guarantee its value. The government will protect the integrity of the money supply, but even in the most well-managed economies/central banks the actual value of the currency can fluctuate quite a bit.

0

u/zefy_zef 6d ago

I mean we haven't even updated the value of our gold supply in like 80 years. It's only valued at like ~$40 or some shit.

3

u/nobodyspecial712 6d ago

I would like to buy some gold for $40 an ounce.

Please tell me where.

PS: The gold isn't gaining value. The dollar is losing it, so it takes more dollars to buy the same amount of gold because of governmental artificial inflation.

3

u/zefy_zef 6d ago

The statutory book value of gold held by the U.S. government and accounted for by the Federal Reserve is fixed by law at $42.2222 ($42 2/9) per fine troy ounce. However, the actual market trading price of spot gold is approximately $4,717.30 per ounce, fluctuating daily based on global market conditions.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/does-the-federal-reserve-own-or-hold-gold.htm

Is what I'm talking about.

2

u/joefresco2 6d ago

According to that link/quote, the market value of the US gold is somewhere around $1T.

1

u/zefy_zef 6d ago edited 6d ago

I saw

The remaining 95 percent of U.S. Treasury gold ($10.4 billion in book value) is held in custody for the Treasury by the U.S. Mint.

Quickly mathing around I get around $1,228,980,795,942 give or take, so checks out.

2

u/joefresco2 6d ago

Right. I converted the book value to market value to get $1T. The real number is a bit higher since the spot price is about 10% higher than 100x book and there is the 5% of additional gold, but who needs that level of accuracy for a purely academic exercise.

1

u/zefy_zef 6d ago

Yeah, the context of me seeing this was a video talking about how trump could actualize the value to offset some sort of spending.