Have you guys heard about "Goldbacks" at all?
I'm asking because I just left a coin convention today, and found some of the venders there selling these things. One of them handed out a "half-back" for free, and I spent $17 getting two different versions of the 1GB denomination. The "sales pitch" for them is that these things are 24 karot strips of gold (
With the different denominations tied to their size, and their increased amount of gold in said strip contributing to said increase in size and hence denominational value ) that are suppose to be used as an alternative method of payment. This entire project comes to us from a company based out of Utah who have allied with other precious metal dealers such as Alpine Gold. Apparently it's already accepted widely in Utah, and Florida just passed a law back in July that eliminates the tax on precious metal transactions altogether and further solidfying this as a possible concept. You can find their website here:
https://archive.today/https://www.goldback.com/
From what I understand of it, the idea "seems" sound. However the reservations I have with the implementation is (1) cash is not as widely used as much as it really should be which hampers the concept of an alternate method of making payments being a physical currency that you have to hold in your hot little fists (
Though still I would back this idea anyday to absolutely anything having to do with cryptocurrencies where the value is nothing except data on a computer ) and (2) there's the monopolistic problem that only one company is making these things (
And thereby meaning that they have the sole control over the market viability and future of the Goldbacks ). Outside of an outright de-dollarization, I don't see anything really addressing my first complaint, which would mostly relegate these to primarily existing as collector's items. However the second complaint I could see being lessened if there was at least another company or two in the market making these (
As it would both back the legitmacy of the concept as more companies are making them, and require them to keep each other in check to prevent the in-the-future market for these from collapsing ), if for no other reason that I can finally have an "official" currency using anime pictures (
The current images they have are nice and pretty, but I feel like there is just little variety ).
But those are my thoughts. What are you're guy's takes on the concept?