Gold is slow to transport and that is why after invention of telegraph in 1860, paper money defeated Gold

I learned this by reading excerpts of Lyn Alden's new book Broken Money.

This is the only time in history where, on a global scale, a weaker money won out in terms of adoption over a harder money. And it occurred because telecommunication systems introduced speed as a new variable into the competition. Gold, with its inherently slow speed of transport and authentication, couldn’t compete with the pound, the dollar, and other top fiat currencies with their combination of speed and convenience, despite gold being in scarcer supply. The combination of legal tender laws, taxation authority, and greater speed has allowed fiat currencies to outcompete their slower but scarcer precious metal counterparts all over the world in terms of usage. This mismatch or gap in speed has been a foundational reason for the greater and greater levels of financialization that the world has seen over the past century and a half. Monetary ledgers became increasingly detached from any sort of natural constraint or scarce units of settlement, because the only scarce monetary alternatives such as gold were too slow to present a complete alternative.

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Submitted December 30, 2023 at 07:11AM by ImaginaryRea1ity https://ift.tt/4RF1g9e