For those of us on the journey to building our personal wealth there are many fundamental lessons that are extremely important to learn early on so that you can avoid pitfalls and scams along the way.
One of those lessons we're going to discuss here today is
the difference between currency and money.
Throughout your life thus far you've no doubt heard people interchange those terms without hesitation, but they are two very different things in the world of the financially educated.
You see, currency is something that mankind has been using for over two thousand years to exchange goods and services. It's created by a central government or reserve bank and distributed through the different branches of government and to the banks and people. That currency whether it's in paper, coin or digital form has six certain traits that characterize it as currency. It must be....
- A medium of exchange
- A unit of account
- portable
- durable
- divisible
- fungible (each piece is the same as the next; interchangeable)
Money, however, is characterized by all six of those traits plus one additional; the most important trait of all. Money must be....
- A medium of exchange
- A unit of account
- portable
- durable
- divisible
- fungible
-
a store of value
You see the thing that makes money a store of value is that it cannot be minted, printed, or pulled from thin air by a government or bank at whim. There is a finite amount so it's value is secure.
Every major civilization since the ancient Greeks and Romans that has implemented a currency has seen that currency over time devalued to such an extent that it either became worthless or needed to be replaced in a frenzy. Not just currencies, but entire empires, have fallen consistently, in metered spans of time, and in similar fashions due to government overspending, over extending, and over indulging. It plays out the same each time. The birth of a currency gives rise to an empire, the costs of the empire become too burdensome upon itself and ultimately the empire is forced to create more currency in an attempt to cover their debts. But as you know the more of something you create the less value each piece holds. So, inevitably the currency becomes less and less valuable over time until it's totally worthless. The currency devaluation tends to begin slowly and increase without causing more than the casual complaints among the citizens of the nation. Then it hits a point of no return where it turns parabolic in nature and, by that time, those left holding their savings in the form of that currency watch as it dwindles away. During that same period of panic the stampede toward things of real value like commodities, namely gold and silver, tend to drive the prices of those assets up exponentially. Those people who position themselves early on will watch as the wealth of the nation is transferred away from those holding the currency and toward those holding real money and other commodities.
Note, that by that time the wealthy have normally positioned themselves to benefit from the calamity they themselves had created.
Here's an example.....
In the Weimar Republic hyperinflation in Germany in the 1920's you can see the rate of devaluation of the currency on the chart below. It took only five years to drop 1 trillion times in value.
Here you can see that the currency had become so worthless people were burning it to keep warm in their homes.
Understanding the difference between currency and money is arguably the most important lesson on the road to personal wealth. It will, at some point, mean the different between profiting greatly and losing everything.
A one ounce piece of gold in 1920 was worth about $238 and bought a man a nice tailored suit.
Today, that same one ounce piece of gold can still buy you a nice tailored suit, but not for $238. It would cost more like $1000-$1500. So you can see that the price of the suit did not actually increase, the value of the dollar bills decreased dramatically. That illustrates the difference between the money (gold & silver) and the currency ($).
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