Could be used potentially as a basis for virtual currency.
Bitcoin miners use computers to crunch the mathematical formulas that create the basis for the currency.
Indeed, the 2012 Republican platform effectively demanded a return to gold, calling for a commission to "investigate possible ways to set a fixed value for the dollar" (which it took as self-evidently desirable), and making it clear that the preferred route involved a "metallic basis" for the currency.
However, if we were to decide to use gold as the sole basis for our currency, we would have to value it at some order of magnitude higher than it is today in order not to create massive deflationary instability.
"That, politically, is a precarious basis for a currency".
The platform calls for a return to "a metallic basis for U.S. currency".
At the time the repeal seemed a minor setback to silverites, but it marked the beginning of the end of silver as a basis for American currency.
The FAQs follow prior guidance from 2014, and address such matters as determining the tax basis for a virtual currency, treatment of wages paid in virtual currencies, classification of gain or loss as capital gain or loss, or ordinary income or loss.
So even if it offers a more solid longer-term basis for running a currency union, it is no quick fix for today.
In the longer run, he thinks the basket could form the basis for a single currency for the Mercosur trade group, which links Argentina with Brazil and others.
