Davide Alba

The core idea behind Reserve is almost 100 years old. It failed back then for one reason: you needed a physical warehouse. A digital warehouse is built different. 🗣️ Lawrence H. White at Monetarium 2: “Going back to the late 19th century, people were worried about instability in the purchasing power of gold under a gold standard. Even though the long term trend was good, there were short periods of volatility. An economist named Alfred Marshall said, if the relative price of gold is changing as a result of supply discoveries or demand shocks – and in his day the biggest demand shock was Germany decides to leave the silver standard and join the gold standard – we can diminish the impact of that on the purchasing power of gold by redefining our monetary unit. The pound would not be defined just in terms of gold, but so much gold plus so much silver. (…) So you've got two metals defining your unit of account. That’s a kind of gateway into having a whole bundle of commodities define the unit of account.” “A commodity reserve currency is an idea that became popular in the Great Depression, but was kind of rediscovered when the problem was not collapsing demand, but rather the need for a way to get the money supply to grow. That's what the original idea of the commodity reserve currency was. But the reverse problem of excessive inflation – and so linking the dollar or whatever the unit of account is called to a basket of commodities – would be a way of preventing excessive inflation. Our friend Hayek from 30 years before denationalization of money saw some merits in this kind of proposal. It had the benefits of a gold standard in taking the regulation of the quantity of money out of the hands of a committee of central bankers. It is, in a sense, putting it into the market because anybody could bring commodities to the warehouse and get money. Anybody could bring money to the warehouse and get commodities. But the proposals in the 30s and 40s were for physical warehouses filled with physical commodities.” “We don’t need to do that today. We could accomplish pretty much the same thing with a portfolio of tokenized commodities.”

The core idea behind Reserve is almost 100 years old. It failed back then for one reason: you needed a physical warehouse. A digital warehouse is built different. 🗣️ Lawrence H. White at Monetarium 2: “Going back to the late 19th century, people were worried about instability in the purchasing power of gold under a gold standard. Even though the long term trend was good, there were short periods of volatility. An economist named Alfred Marshall said, if the relative price of gold is changing as a result of supply discoveries or demand shocks – and in his day the biggest demand shock was Germany decides to leave the silver standard and join the gold standard – we can diminish the impact of that on the purchasing power of gold by redefining our monetary unit. The pound would not be defined just in terms of gold, but so much gold plus so much silver. (…) So you've got two metals defining your unit of account. That’s a kind of gateway into having a whole bundle of commodities define the unit of account.” “A commodity reserve currency is an idea that became popular in the Great Depression, but was kind of rediscovered when the problem was not collapsing demand, but rather the need for a way to get the money supply to grow. That's what the original idea of the commodity reserve currency was. But the reverse problem of excessive inflation – and so linking the dollar or whatever the unit of account is called to a basket of commodities – would be a way of preventing excessive inflation. Our friend Hayek from 30 years before denationalization of money saw some merits in this kind of proposal. It had the benefits of a gold standard in taking the regulation of the quantity of money out of the hands of a committee of central bankers. It is, in a sense, putting it into the market because anybody could bring commodities to the warehouse and get money. Anybody could bring money to the warehouse and get commodities. But the proposals in the 30s and 40s were for physical warehouses filled with physical commodities.” “We don’t need to do that today. We could accomplish pretty much the same thing with a portfolio of tokenized commodities.”

The core idea behind Reserve is almost 100 years old. It failed back then for one reason: you needed a physical warehouse. A digital warehouse is built different. 🗣️ Lawrence H. White at Monetarium 2: “Going back to the late 19th century, people were worried about instability in the purchasing power of gold under a gold standard. Even though the long term trend was good, there were short periods of volatility. An economist named Alfred Marshall said, if the relative price of gold is changing as a result of supply discoveries or demand shocks – and in his day the biggest demand shock was Germany decides to leave the silver standard and join the gold standard – we can diminish the impact of that on the purchasing power of gold by redefining our monetary unit. The pound would not be defined just in terms of gold, but so much gold plus so much silver. (…) So you've got two metals defining your unit of account. That’s a kind of gateway into having a whole bundle of commodities define the unit of account.” “A commodity reserve currency is an idea that became popular in the Great Depression, but was kind of rediscovered when the problem was not collapsing demand, but rather the need for a way to get the money supply to grow. That's what the original idea of the commodity reserve currency was. But the reverse problem of excessive inflation – and so linking the dollar or whatever the unit of account is called to a basket of commodities – would be a way of preventing excessive inflation. Our friend Hayek from 30 years before denationalization of money saw some merits in this kind of proposal. It had the benefits of a gold standard in taking the regulation of the quantity of money out of the hands of a committee of central bankers. It is, in a sense, putting it into the market because anybody could bring commodities to the warehouse and get money. Anybody could bring money to the warehouse and get commodities. But the proposals in the 30s and 40s were for physical warehouses filled with physical commodities.” “We don’t need to do that today. We could accomplish pretty much the same thing with a portfolio of tokenized commodities.”

The core idea behind Reserve is almost 100 years old. It failed back then for one reason: you needed a physical warehouse. A digital warehouse is built different. 🗣️ Lawrence H. White at Monetarium 2: “Going back to the late 19th century, people were worried about instability in the purchasing power of gold under a gold standard. Even though the long term trend was good, there were short periods of volatility. An economist named Alfred Marshall said, if the relative price of gold is changing as a result of supply discoveries or demand shocks – and in his day the biggest demand shock was Germany decides to leave the silver standard and join the gold standard – we can diminish the impact of that on the purchasing power of gold by redefining our monetary unit. The pound would not be defined just in terms of gold, but so much gold plus so much silver. (…) So you've got two metals defining your unit of account. That’s a kind of gateway into having a whole bundle of commodities define the unit of account.” “A commodity reserve currency is an idea that became popular in the Great Depression, but was kind of rediscovered when the problem was not collapsing demand, but rather the need for a way to get the money supply to grow. That's what the original idea of the commodity reserve currency was. But the reverse problem of excessive inflation – and so linking the dollar or whatever the unit of account is called to a basket of commodities – would be a way of preventing excessive inflation. Our friend Hayek from 30 years before denationalization of money saw some merits in this kind of proposal. It had the benefits of a gold standard in taking the regulation of the quantity of money out of the hands of a committee of central bankers. It is, in a sense, putting it into the market because anybody could bring commodities to the warehouse and get money. Anybody could bring money to the warehouse and get commodities. But the proposals in the 30s and 40s were for physical warehouses filled with physical commodities.” “We don’t need to do that today. We could accomplish pretty much the same thing with a portfolio of tokenized commodities.”