What is precious ?

_{An image I generated with AI}

what is good folk welcome ya boy back to the digital trenches

Was sittin' here staring at the charts, watching the usual volatility, and it got me thinkin' about how arbitrary "value" actually is. We spend so much time stressing over the spot price of gold or silver, or watching Hive fluctuate, but history is basically just a long list of people getting the price tag wrong.

Like, take aluminum. Yeah, the stuff you wrap your old pizza in or drink cheap beer out of. You probably don't think twice about crushing a can on your forehead if the party gets rowdy enough. But back in the mid-1800s? That stuff was the ultimate flex. It was harder to refine thn gold, so it was actually worth more.

I read somewhere that Napoleon III—fancy French dude—had a dinner party where the top-tier guests, the real heavy hitters, got to eat with aluminum cutlery. The scrubs? The lower-tier nobility? They had to settle for gold forks. Can you imagine that? "Oh sorry dawg, you gotta use the gold plate, we ran out of the good foil." It sounds insane now because technology changed the supply game, and now we treat it like trash.

It ain’t just aluminum though. Platinum has a funny history too. When the Spanish were looting South America back in the day, they’d find platinum mixed in with the gold in riverbeds. They called it "platina," basically "little silver," and they thought it was annoying garbage. They actually tried to separate it out and throw it away so it wouldn't "contaminate" the gold. They were literally tossing one of the most precious metals we have today back into the water because they thought it was unripe gold or some nonsense.

Makes you wonder what we're sleeping on right now, eh?

Even stuff like salt used to be money. Roman soldiers got paid in it—that's where the word "salary" comes from. Now you get it free in little packets at the drive thru.

It just goes to show that market value is basically a hallucination we all agree on for a while. That’s why I’m always harping on tangible assets and utility. Don't just chase the price tag, look at what the thing actually does. Whether you're stacking silver, or working on a project like DUO, or building out a personal server... utility usually survives the hype cycle.

Just funny to think about some Emperor flexing with a soda can while his guests ate off gold. Markets are weird, man.

Stay gritty.

I am a financial advisor ! If you can't take personal responsibility for you investing, I hate to brake it to ya, but you ain't nothing but a sucka, you supposed to lose your shit.

@bitcoinman's bits of wisdom

• Invest only what you can afford to lose and be mindful of the potential risks.
• Unless you can accept delivery stay away from futures and stick to physical.
• Leverage is a great tool for losing money fast.
• Numismatics for the lows stick to smart stacking baby.
• Be cautious of new schemes in crypto, like ICOs, DeFi, and NFTs, do your research before investing.