Linux Flourishes In 200-Year-Old Gold Markets

tbarkerload writes "H-Online [a spin off of a major German daily] reports on a gold trader managing over 15 tonnes of gold, worth $660m, with a platform built on open source tech. BullionVault operates a 24-7 electronic market in gold bullion open to both retail and professional traders. Their systems handle thousands of daily transactions from both human traders and bots operating through their API. If Linux has reached the world of hundred year old assaying firms, and Swiss vaults buried in mountains, can final world domination be too far away?"

Comments

Re:how much?

[superwiz]

But the whole point of the post was that Linux reached something so archaic -- not something at the forefront.

Re:Anyone else hoarding gold?

[lawpoop]

Why not hoard a commodity whose price is more stable?

Which commodity are you recommending here? What's more portable, has better liquidity, or has better value density? What doesn't corrode or rot? You can take a piece of gold to any pawn shop or jeweler and get money for it -- try doing that with wheat or oil.

I'm amazed that in this day and age there are still people who think gold has inherent value and will suddenly be the default currency when everything goes Max Max Real Soon Now.

I'm surprised you didn't know that gold has been the most valuable commodity to any society that could get their hands on it. Why has gold been a universal currency for the past 5,000 years? Gold was valuable to the Incas, who had no connection to the east or west, until they were conquered by the Spanish.

What commodity is more easily transportable and has a better value density? Why is the word for 'money' or 'coin' or 'value' in many languages literally 'gold'? What do people take with them when they have to flee a country? What do people put in their safe deposit box? Why were ancient treasures filled with gold? Why does Fort Knox hold a bunch of gold? Why did kingdoms and governments use gold to back their paper currency -- which really does have no inherent value -- with gold, until very recently? If it truly has no inherent value, how come it's never completely lost its value, unlike paper currency, or tulip bulbs?

The answer is, gold is probably the closet thing we'll have to a perfect currency. It's malleable, divisible, and meltable -- unlike precious stones -- which means you can pay in exact change, and take your small denominations of gold, melt it down, and create a single unit out of it. It can't be arbitrarily multiplied, as a currency can -- no hyper inflation, unless we perfect the art of alchemy. Human beings are genuinely tickled by it's color -- it's used in jewelry and decoration, literal representations of value. It's pretty, unlike, say, lead. It doesn't corrode, like copper or iron. It won't rot, and can't be eaten, like wheat or rice. It can't be 'used up', like paper, especially printed paper ( currency) or toilet paper. It's not toxic and it won't spill, like oil. It's got a good value density -- Would you rather trade a 1 ounce gold coin ( value ~$1,000 ) or 1 ton of rice ( value ~$1,000) for something? And, it actually does have industrial applications, in electronics.It has inherent value as a medium of exchange.

What commodity would you recommend?