Texas bill to create a gold-backed digital currency

No battle here. I'm in agreement with most that you say. Where we differ is the credit card. I use my CC for every transaction I possibly can. This includes paying monthly bills like insurances, cell phones, internet, food, etc.The rewards add up real quick. And, not only do I NEVER carry a monthly balance, I don't even carry a daily balance. I pay off every single transaction/purchase I make every day. Some days I make two payments to the CC. My balance MOST days is actually negative. Believe me, or not, I keep a credit balance on my CC. And many people will say, but what if you have an issue with a purchase and want to return it for a credit? You've already paid for it with your payment to your CC company. You have no recourse. My response is an emphatic hogwash! My advance payment to the CC company doesn't absolve them from representing me in a return or chargeback. I've done it, more times than any one of you can imagine. I've actually exercised a return a year after a charge was paid. Anyone can.

My point in this long winded diatribe is this. The rewards points have added up to many, many thousands of dollars, every single year. And I've paid zero fees in interest or finance charges to the CC company. I actually have zero debt. No mortgage, no car loans, no credit card balances, no student loans, no home equity loans, no personal loans, nothing. So you do you. I'll do me. And please be undoubtedly sure that I sleep incredibly well at night, other than waking up a couple of times to 'shake hands with the governor', knowing I'm totally 100% debt free. Point is, I don't buy on credit. If I want it, and I can afford it in cash, I use my CC today, and I pay the bill tonight. Not at the end of the month.

And if the grid were to go down, for a relatively short time, ie: a week or two, I'd be very capable of transacting commerce. I'm not solely dependent on CC's. It's just my preferred means of payment. I like the rewards.

 

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Sorry for the late jump in but I agree with this approach whole-heartedly. As long as someone can pay off the card in cash (i.e. never purchase anything unless the cash is available to pay for it at the time) then the rewards are great. I even have two separate cards that I use, one gives me 6% back on grocery purchases and one gives me 2% back on everything else. I even have the 2% back card automatically deposit the cashback into my Roth IRA for me. Every little bit helps. They even have a term for people like us - we're 'freeloaders'. I personally like to think of it as 'frugal shoppers'.

In terms of everyone's concern about disliking Crypto, that in my opinion is neither here nor there. Everybody has their risk level that they like, and crypto is certainly up there in risk level. However, I'd like to make a point of separating that part out as the 'currency' part of Cryptocurrency and note that (if Texas does follow this path) then the blockchain part of the crypto here would simply be a 'ledger sheet' that ties directly back to real gold that they would hold (and which I would hope would be redeemable). So it's not digital fluff. Just like silver backed dollars were in the past, this would be gold backed crypto. No Ponzi scheme there - you're not being paid any interest with the money that others are investing - it's simply tracking how much gold that you've purchased that is sitting in the vault.

Now... the fact that it tracks what you do with your gold is a whole nother 1984 ballgame.

my gold 2 bits.