Bullion Dealer Amagi Metals to Stop Accepting Fiat Currency

[muh_roads]

http://www.coindesk.com/bullion-dealer-amagi-metals-stop-accepting-fiat-currency/

Precious metals and coin dealer Amagi Metals announced today it would stop accepting US dollars as a payment method at the end of 2016, saying it had “lost confidence” in the future value of the world’s most popular fiat currency.

While several prominent retailers and dealers have joined the bitcoin ecosystem in 2014, and some businesses have always been exclusively bitcoin, Amagi is one of the first to halt fiat acceptance.

The company said in a statement:

“Since the dollar was decoupled from gold in 1971, it has lost 97% of its value compared to the yellow metal and 83% of its domestic purchasing power, and the trend shows no signs of stopping.
Both investors and foreign governments have begun to lose confidence in the dollar’s future… and so has Amagi Metals. Thus, Amagi has planned that, by the end of 2016, the company will no longer accept US dollars or other ‘fiat’ currencies. Instead, Amagi plans to be trading exclusively in cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.”


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After 2016, Amagi will serve customers holding fiat only through an exchange on its website. Those customers will need to convert their money into digital currency before purchasing.

Amagi CEO Stephen Macaskill offered a grim future vision for paper currencies, suggesting his decision was not as radical as it sounded:

“With the adoption of cryptocurrencies increasing every day, their viability is virtually assured. History shows that paper currency, backed by nothing of value, will ultimately fail. It’s only a matter of time until no one will be accepting the dollar. By trading exclusively in cryptocurrencies, we’ll still be in business when that time comes.”


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Nearly two years of bitcoin

Denver, Colorado-based Amagi Metals has been a pioneer in the bitcoin and cryptocurrency space, accepting bitcoin in November 2012 when the currency had made little impact on mainstream attention.

Bitcoin now accounts for over 40% of all customer payments, the company said, and was responsible for a total $10.4m in sales up to March this year.
It began accepting litecoin and dogecoin payments that same month, but dropped dogecoin in July.

Along the way, Amagi has had to battle for its principles, having bank accounts unilaterally shuttered by Bank of the West, BBVA Compass and Colorado’s First Bank for accepting bitcoin. It keeps a minimum two banking partners to ensure service is never lost completely.

Bitcoin and money ideals

Exchanging newer digital currencies into more ‘traditional money’ like gold and silver added to the digital currencies’ stability and air of legitimacy for new investors, Amagi added.

Though the two do not always walk hand in hand, there is a lot of overlap between the cryptocurrency and precious metal-holding communities thanks to a shared interest in sound money, certain Austrian economic principles and a mistrust of central bank-controlled fiat currencies.

This has produced several businesses that trade digital currencies for precious metals and vice versa, including Agora Commodities, BullionStar, and Bullion Bitcoin. Others trade precious metals via the Ripple Network, like Gold Bullion International andRipple Singapore, while GoldMoney Group’s Netagio cold-stores bitcoins alongside bullion in its vault.

 

[kpitcher]

I like Amagi and have been happy with their products and service. However is something a year and a half away really news?

 

[PaulConventionWV]

I like Amagi and have been happy with their products and service. However is something a year and a half away really news?

You didn't know about it before, did you?

 

[mad cow]

Earlier Thread:
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showth...etals-to-Stop-Accepting-Fiat-Currency-in-2016

 

[amagimetals]

About a year and a half ago, Anthem Vault took over Amagi Metals. The Anthem Vault legacy in the precious metals industry harks back to the mid-1970s, and trust and integrity have always been paramount. Since we have been under new management, while we are big fans of cryptocurrencies, we are still going to accept fiat currencies for the foreseeable future. We are one of the original precious metals companies to accept Bitcoin and offer very competitive prices. In honor of Bitcoin reaching $1,000 per BTC in 2017 (again), we are extending our offer of a 0.5% discount on all metal purchased using Bitcoin through the end of February 2017. We ask you to check out our website (www.amagimetals.com) and see what we offer. What can we at Amagi Metals do to win back your confidence? What else would you like to see? Please let us have your insights. We would like your help, so throw some ideas our way, and we will see what we can work with.

Thanks,

Shannon
Amagi Metals Customer Service

 

[Dr.3D]

I have to ask, what are cryptocurrencies backed by?

 

[oyarde]

I still take FRN's and checks as well as precious metals .

 

[kfarnan]

I have to ask, what are cryptocurrencies backed by?

Math, energy, early adopters who believe.

 

[amagimetals]

That is actually a really good question. Currently cryptocurrencies are not backed by anything tangible. We here at Amagi metals are big fans of cryptocurrencies so much so that our parent company (Anthem Vault) has spun off and created a new company that is working on creating a gold backed cryptocurrency.

 

[dannno]

I have to ask, what are cryptocurrencies backed by?

Not only the cheapest electronic transaction network in the world, but also in a currency that cannot be inflated by governments.

 

[wizardwatson]

I have to ask, what are cryptocurrencies backed by?

Math, energy, early adopters who believe.

Math? No.
Early adopters who believe? Well, that isn't any different than fiat.

Energy?

Sort of. Ignoring the "finding" of bitcoins, bitcoin transactions get processed in blocks using an algorithm. It takes a lot of processing power simply for the purpose of making "faking" this process hard. You could think of it as etching the transactions in stone or "freezing" them in a block, which is appended to the giant pyramid of frozen blocks which is basically a public ledger called the "block chain".

By running a node you are bound-on the average-to eventually, via law of averages, to the be the lucky one who's work of creating a permanent block is included in the master rather than simply thrown away. Bitcoin has a built-in mechanism to award the block processing node a small transaction fee.

So, in theory-as some nodes at this point don't even charge a fee-IF Bitcoin remained popular as a transaction mechanism for value, the value of a bitcoin would never drop below the cost of processing blocks, because then the reward for creating blocks would be less than the cost. So the network transaction processing cost should serve as a backstop for Bitcoin value, again, in theory.

But no, it has no value, other than what it exchanges for via speculation. The Bitcoin "price" is simply the average, at any given time, of what it goes for on various exchanges. And the built-in "transaction fee" mechanism doesn't give it value either, it is simply a theoretical minimum should people continue to transact in Bitcoin.

 

[RonPaulIsGreat]

Math? No.
Early adopters who believe? Well, that isn't any different than fiat.

Energy?

Sort of. Ignoring the "finding" of bitcoins, bitcoin transactions get processed in blocks using an algorithm. It takes a lot of processing power simply for the purpose of making "faking" this process hard. You could think of it as etching the transactions in stone or "freezing" them in a block, which is appended to the giant pyramid of frozen blocks which is basically a public ledger called the "block chain".

By running a node you are bound-on the average-to eventually, via law of averages, to the be the lucky one who's work of creating a permanent block is included in the master rather than simply thrown away. Bitcoin has a built-in mechanism to award the block processing node a small transaction fee.

So, in theory-as some nodes at this point don't even charge a fee-IF Bitcoin remained popular as a transaction mechanism for value, the value of a bitcoin would never drop below the cost of processing blocks, because then the reward for creating blocks would be less than the cost. So the network transaction processing cost should serve as a backstop for Bitcoin value, again, in theory.

But no, it has no value, other than what it exchanges for via speculation. The Bitcoin "price" is simply the average, at any given time, of what it goes for on various exchanges. And the built-in "transaction fee" mechanism doesn't give it value either, it is simply a theoretical minimum should people continue to transact in Bitcoin.

It's now virtually impossible to have a transaction included without a fee attached, the miners can include it if they want, but there is nearly always a backlog of transactions waiting to confirm so there is no incentive for them anymore to sacrifice a transaction slot for free.

Nodes refers to running a bitcoin client that full verifies the blockchain from the genesis block, independently. It used to be a node pretty well meant to be participating in mining for bitcoins as well, but since pools and asics this is not the case, the majority of full nodes are simply verifying the validity of the blocks sent by the network, as to prevent double spends, or malicious behaviour. Mining does require you to run a full node, but the usefulness now for many is the simply independent verification of the blockchain itself.

 

[wizardwatson]

It's now virtually impossible to have a transaction included without a fee attached, the miners can include it if they want, but there is nearly always a backlog of transactions waiting to confirm so there is no incentive for them anymore to sacrifice a transaction slot for free.

Nodes refers to running a bitcoin client that full verifies the blockchain from the genesis block, independently. It used to be a node pretty well meant to be participating in mining for bitcoins as well, but since pools and asics this is not the case, the majority of full nodes are simply verifying the validity of the blocks sent by the network, as to prevent double spends, or malicious behaviour. Mining does require you to run a full node, but the usefulness now for many is the simply independent verification of the blockchain itself.

I guess my main questions, and you may have answered these before for me...

Is "mining for bitcoin" and "solving a transaction block/slot" the same thing? Do you decide which you want to do in setup or something? You say the main point of running a node yourself is for verification and system integrity, but do you stand to make any bitcoin at all by running a home-brewed Bitcoin node, or are regular people pretty much crowded out by the pools and asics?

 

[The Northbreather]

That is actually a really good question. Currently cryptocurrencies are not backed by anything tangible. We here at Amagi metals are big fans of cryptocurrencies so much so that our parent company (Anthem Vault) has spun off and created a new company that is working on creating a gold backed cryptocurrency.

Do you have any details??

 

[RonPaulIsGreat]

I guess my main questions, and you may have answered these before for me...

Is "mining for bitcoin" and "solving a transaction block/slot" the same thing? Do you decide which you want to do in setup or something? You say the main point of running a node yourself is for verification and system integrity, but do you stand to make any bitcoin at all by running a home-brewed Bitcoin node, or are regular people pretty much crowded out by the pools and asics?

Yeah, mining is finding the magic hash, that allows you to issue a block which you can as the finder of the block select to add as many transactions as you wish so long as it fits in a 1 MB block limit, and you as the finder of the magic hash for the block get to keep all the transaction fees for the block as well as get the current 12.5 BTC block reward.

The benefit of running a full node at home is you have independent verification of the state of the blockchain, as in you aren't relying on a third party to tell you what is and isn't correct. There are light wallets that allow you to hold bitcoins without verifying the whole blockchain but those then refer to a "full node" to tell them the state of the blockchain, so you are then trusting the node feeding that data to you. With your own Full Node you are connected to many other full nodes and all those full nodes must come to agreement. Essentially it's safer to rely on a full node, a malicious party could feed a light wallet bad info potentially. If you download bitcoin core, you are running a full node. You don't do anything but download and run it to be a full node, and then you can use it as your wallet to if you wish. Or you can then point a light wallet for like android to your own fullnode running on a home computer and use that to verify again.

To mine bitcoin, you have to use an Asic miner like the antminer s9, you then just specify ports and such in your bitcoin.conf file that your full node will listen on and the asic will send data to, when the Asic miner finds a block it sends that info to your node, and then your node sends the block to all the nodes connected to your node, and so forth. However, most miners don't do that, most join a pool, which is a full node, that also has software that tracks how much work your node has done and then gives you a portion of the block reward based on the percentage work you've done.

 

[amagimetals]

Sorry for the slow response. Our parent company Anthem Vault Inc recently spun out a new company, Anthem Gold, focused on gold cryptocurrency. More information will be made publicly available soon at: http://www.anthemgold.com/.