Ampleforth: The Fastest 'My Precious' There Ever Was
As you read this, gold is being mined and minted. It’s the classic proof-of-work asset. It’s a scarce commodity, but the supply is not fixed. The chart, on any long-term time frame, is up only for the last 110 years, but your Krugerand doesn't hold the same percentage of gold supply through time.
AMPL fixes this perennial money problem. This isn't the standard lost wallet or going out to eat 3 times a week on the credit card at a YOLO 19% APY problem. This is graduate-level money problems: Money Probs 501. Professor Ampleforth presiding.
The US dollar, in contrast to the yellow metal, is down only, as far as purchasing power is concerned. No surprise there, really, as this is how every fiat currency runs; like a grey water tube from your washing machine to the sewer. The workflow is: hodl USD-> debased USD -> rekt. Gold vs. USD purchasing power chart is a big X, one scratchy line up, one smooth line down. Uh oh.
“I used to print a little, but a little wouldn’t do it so the little got more and moe-wah.” - Feded Sereve Chair, Axel Rose
Maybe there will be a gold-filled space rock that we lasso. The 'happy ending' for 'Don't Look Up'? When New World gold flooded Spain, it hit their economy like an asteroid. Wildly, they went bankrupt a handful of times in the wake of this massive sun-shiny influx. Maybe they had too much too fast. They partied hard and pissed their murdered-for riches away. Pretty standard behavior from all angles throughout history, really. Disappointing? Yes. Surprising? No.
Control, Open AMPL, Reset
Ampleforth has no such supply concerns. No galactic mountain tumbling through the void has subterranean AMPL hurtling through cold darkness. No whisky-drunk banker crew pushing fiat buttons. Ampleforth is sitting right on top of the flowing river of DeFi, like gold nuggets in the waterways of olden times Southeastern Europe.
Fiat has no rules, is opaque, and has always an abusive relationship with its holders. "This time, it's different!" Nope; don't hurt me again.
Ampleforth is the world’s first truly rules-based elastic money- expanding and contracting as the market dictates. There's a few historical instances peppered through time of money supplies being tightened by some guys deciding it was a good idea. These instances are much less common than some guys deciding the money supply should be loosened like yer belt at a bacchanal.
Raw AMPL holders are never diluted. Said another way, if someone owns 1% of the AMPL supply at $30M, they will own the same percentage of the supply at $3B.
Heavy Metal
Precious metals as money are not ‘elastic’, but inflationary; more are mined yearly. Physical, metal money expanded in a few ways. The first round for Europe, pre-3000 BC, was the easiest; the gold was just sitting in the Balkan rivers waiting to be panned. Well, easy save for the fact that some cats were scratching away at the riverbed with deer antlers to get it done. A general 'community effort', this was great for a few hundred years. Gold was used as a ceremonial adornment, a religious symbol, a status indicator, and a measure of wealth at this time; it was not yet used as ‘money’.
The Greeks were among the first Euro-slavers to make captives dig. Before that, the Anatolians ‘drafted' peasants ( less celebrated than being picked in the NBA second round) or used tribute-owing communities for the dirty work. Protection rackets ain’t gonna run without input; private property isn’t going to defend itself. Dig baby, dig. None of this mining sounds terribly volitional, but history isn’t calling these guys slaves. But it ain’t calling them free birds, either.
Where the conquest dudes were holed up, if they had mines, they had slaves digging. If they didn’t have mines, they went out kicking ass until they could take some over, and multitasked by grabbing up a few slaves for the diggin’. Best for the head rollers was taking over some guys who had already dug out the gold and straight chopping and robbin’ ‘em. See: conquest of the Western hemisphere.
Low Viscosity Finance
On a happier note, AMPL is the lowest friction reserve asset there ever was; it moves inexpensively in seconds. Yay! No fretting, sweating, secret meetings, or getting the populace on board (‘Give us all your gold!’); just transparent, verifiable code doing what it says it's going to do every night: adapt. AMPL has been live for 5-plus years with no exploits, bugs, negative environmental/ humanitarian effects, or dilutive emissions. Yum.
The market, like life itself, is constantly adaptating to changing conditions. The Ampleforth ecosystem affords many options for expressing a financial outlook; change is the only constant.
The three main tokens are: AMPL, the original rebase machine, WAMPL, the easily composable and understandable non-rebasing wrapper that accrues value directly into its price, and SPOT, the innovative low volatility store of value.
Fast actors ( did someone say 'rebase trading bot'?) have a chance to make slick moves every night at 10 PM EST ( rebase hour!) trading AMPL. Positive rebase? Buy at 9:45 PM and sell seconds after the expanded supply hits wallets, before the market does its thing. Negative rebase? Buy right after the rebase, before price rises in response to the contraction. These days, an AI bot maker is easier than ever to type up. Even sketchy paper gold has never moved this fast.
While WAMPL, is highly composable in defi, physical metals just sit around waiting to be sold at a premium to the house. XAU at $3500? You get $3350 when you sell. And what's this paper you're getting in exchange used for? Wiping?
Monetary value transfer has always evolved towards ease of divisibility, storage, and transport. Pounds of precious metals have required guards since money was a thing. Paper IOUs are useful, but lead to fractional reserve shenanigans. As far as ‘paper' gold claims on bars ‘somewhere’ is concerned, shenanigans are ongoing. Some estimates place paper gold issuance at 10 times the amount of physical gold they represent. One entity issues 2 ( or 12) notes for one bar, and "technically…you lost all your money” in a bullion bank run.
None of this is a concern for Ampleforth or SPOT. Liquidation-free, graceful, transparent, and pliable, SPOT can wind down with no holders losing their money. Keep your wallet and seed phrase safe and you’re…golden.