Column: What worries Würmser
Gold rush 4.0
Experience shows that where there is gold, the rush is not far away. The first gold rush in history was documented 325 years ago in Brazil. The most famous rushes have taken place - how could it be otherwise - in North America. The biggest was the California Gold Rush in 1799 in Charlotte, North Carolina, and who is not familiar with the Colorado Gold Rush or the gold rush on the Klondike River, where 570 tons of gold have been mined to date. Today's value is no less than: 27,468,300,000,000 euros.
Gold attracted tens of thousands of people, but even then less than half were not after the magic metal. Most sought adventure or employment in the new trades of the exploding gold mining towns. The merchants and tradesmen who supplied the intoxicated with all kinds of gadgets made the best profit anyway. Scrooge McDuck is said to have laid the foundations for his fortune here, which is estimated at the incredible sum of five fantasy billions, nine trillion thalers and 16 kreuzer.
The nuggets of yesteryear are history. Data is the new gold and is supposedly just waiting to be mined. Gold rush 4.0, so to speak. However, the world doesn't seem to have changed fundamentally since then, because in the first data gold rush in history, many things seem strangely familiar, only the names are different: Silicon Valley is the new Klondike, Jeff Bezos is playing Scrooge McDuck and B2C retailers are helping themselves to the data gold lying around on the Internet to their heart's content and making big money with it.
But how much does a date like this actually cost? How much could I charge for my movement and encounter data from July 6, 2021? Okay, that's not so interesting for everyone, but the data from all cars, pallets or parcels, the data from commercial vehicle telematics or other machines is more interesting.
Gold has only made such an incredible career because it could be traded at any time. A kilo bar currently costs around 49,000 euros. If the much-cited data gold is to be raised, especially in the B2B sector, a price tag must finally be put on it.
The column appeared in materialfluss SPEKTRUM 2021.
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