Closing tabs.

Got an email asking me more about the War of Spanish Succession related to gold.  My point on that panel wasn’t so much that France only used gold, but their finances were directly tied to specie (technically the French livre was in two forms: silver écu and gold Louis d’or; see also Livre tournois).  The reason I brought it up at all is because of the meme today, that Bitcoin would somehow prevent war because it neutralizes the states ability to expand its money supply, etc..  It won’t though.  Probably a better historical example are European countries from mid-19th century which adopted some form of a gold standard, yet then went on to wage a global war eventually dropping the peg altogether.  Be sure to read a new article from The Economist that discusses this, “Not floating, but flailing.”

Thanks to Izabella Kaminska (follow her on Twitter) and Zaki Manian for a couple links.

Also, be sure to check out Izabella’s thread today on Coinbase.  Based on a conversation with one lawyer I had two weeks ago it looks like a big legal challenge for Coinbase (and others in their vertical) is that they’re acting as depository institutions without having gone through the necessary “Safety & Soundness” tests which opens them up to legal action from a variety of state/federal agencies.

• Stock Returns over the FOMC Cycle by Anna Cieslak, Adair Morse and Annette Vissing-Jorgensen
• State-owned enterprises: Fixing China Inc from The Economist (155,000 SOEs, most at local/provincial level, poor performance over past 6 years compared to aggregate private industry)
• Affinity fraud (common in cryptocurrency space right now due to ideological segment, making them easier to identify)
• Crowd sales the easy way with Coinprism (note: not an endorsement); see also their new block explorer
• Mike Hearn on the fragility of bitcoin (a few interesting solutions to these challenges)
• The Lucre e-cash implementation is not secure by Andrew Miller
• Transparency for E2E encrypted messaging at a centralized service from Modern Crypto mailing list (see also KeyDistribution over at Google)
• Negotiability, Property, and Identity by James S. Miller (start reading from page 480)
• The Opportunities of Digitizing Payments — a report by the World Bank Development Research Group, the Better Than Cash Alliance, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to the G20 Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion.
• The Short-Term View on Bitcoin Remittances from CoinDesk
• Crypto Currency Certification Consortium (this was bound to happen, even mentioned it in Chapter 7 of GCON)
• The Eurodollar Market: The Case for Disclosure by Ronald Greenberg