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lennier writes "Has Magic the Gathering Online Exchange tapped all its mana? MtGox, the first and best known Bitcoin exchange, has abruptly shut down, and CEO Mark Karpeles has resigned from the Bitcoin Foundation after rumors of ongoing theft related to the transaction malleability issue reported several weeks ago. According to the latest news reports, Bitcoin has hit a three-month low of $465 USD per coin."
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MtGox Shuts Down, CEO Resigns From BTC Foundation
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You are a fluke of the universe; you have no right to be here.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2014, @08:48PM
I just walked in the door from playing with a forge made out of some old candy tins, which will reach temperatures high enough to melt gold, despite being about 3 inches in diameter, 5 inches high, and using a blowpipe instead of a bellows.
Its intrinsic value is based on the properties of the material itself. You can drop someone into the middle of the woods with absolutely no tools, and in a short time, they could mine and process gold. Find a stream. Crack two rocks together to get a sharp edge. There's plenty of flint, chert, quartz, etc. out there that's hard enough to strike sparks with. Use a stick or your hands to dig two holes. You can either use sparks to ignite a tinder bundle, and there's your fire, or you can use the sharp edge as a knife and form a bow drill. I think striking two rocks together is much faster, as opposed to an minimum of an hour to make a bow drill set and get a fire going, with lots of experience. Then, you find yourself a nice piece of wood, take a coal, and burn out the center. Voila, a gold pan. Just like South American gold miners.
Gold can be worked without the need for a sophisticated forge--a fire in a hole with another hole as an tuyere and improvised bellows or blowpipe (a bone, a reed, your lungs with your face in the tuyere hole) is all you need, although you might take the time to find some clay and form a crucible and mold (carve the item you want out of wood, cover it in clay, and burn it out). Tin is king in the easy-to-melt category, with lead a close second. Silver melts at a lower temperature than gold, but you won't be able to pan for silver in a stream because it tends to oxidize. Gold can be mined easily without sophisticated tools, as can platinum metals, tin, thorium, uranium, and titanium. Moreover, you can eat with utensils made of gold, unlike that other metal that causes you to suggest nominating your horse for consul.
If you have the basic tools for survival, you have the basic tools to work a particular set of metals which includes gold. The intrinsic value of something is a function of the physical/chemical properties of a material. Gold will continue to melt at 1945 °F, and it will continue to not corrode, and it will continue to be easily accessible (in terms of needed technology, not necessarily scarcity). A dollar bill also has intrinsic value as a piece of linen (tinder, rag, etc.) but the market value of the dollar is not a property of the material. Of course, you could argue that nothing has intrinsic value, since being dead makes it awful hard to mine for gold, thus intrinsic value is tied to the person it creates options for, by virtue of its physical/chemical properties.