Replace gold with uranium

[JeremyRand]

Bitcoin is similar to gold, in that it primarily derives its value from scarcity rather than some external benefit you get by destroying it. In contrast, Namecoin's value is derived from an external benefit you get by destroying it, making Namecoin more like "cryptographic oil/uranium" instead of "cryptographic gold". Thus, it would be symbolically useful to replace the NMC/XAU exchange rate with the exchange rate between Namecoin and oil or uranium. Oil is a less ideal analogy since destroying oil causes global heating as a side effect, while destroying NMC or uranium does not, so let's go with uranium.

Real-time uranium prices are not available because uranium is not traded on a public/open market like other commodities. However, we can get a recent uranium price from the St. Louis Federal Reserve graph download API. The website URL is https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PURANUSDM ; the API URL is https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.csv?bgcolor=%23e1e9f0&chart_type=line&drp=0&fo=open%20sans&graph_bgcolor=%23ffffff&height=450&mode=fred&recession_bars=off&txtcolor=%23444444&ts=12&tts=12&width=968&nt=0&thu=0&trc=0&show_legend=yes&show_axis_titles=yes&show_tooltip=yes&id=PURANUSDM&scale=left&cosd=1990-01-01&coed=2022-10-01&line_color=%234572a7&link_values=false&line_style=solid&mark_type=none&mw=3&lw=2&ost=-99999&oet=99999&mma=0&fml=a&fq=Monthly&fam=avg&fgst=lin&fgsnd=2020-02-01&line_index=1&transformation=lin&vintage_date=2022-10-01&revision_date=2022-10-01&nd=1990-01-01.

Replace all instances of 2022-10-01 in the URL with the current date.
The result is a CSV file; the final row is the most recent data point, it's a date followed by the price in USD/lb.

(Spinoff of #7)

[JeremyRand]

@domob1812 Opinions?

[domob1812]

To be honest, that seems rather far fetched to me. It might make sense from a philosophical point of view, but I can't imagine a "NMC/Uranium" rate to be anything but a random number to any possible user.

[JeremyRand]

@domob1812 Well, right now, both the Bitcoin and Namecoin explorers show a BTC/Gold and NMC/Gold rate, both of which seem to be random numbers to me. (I certainly can't think of any reason a Namecoin user would care about the NMC/Gold exchange rate.) My impression is that the reason the Bitcoin explorer shows a gold exchange rate is not because anyone actually cares about the rate, but rather simply because Bitcoin is symbolically a cryptographic analogue to gold. So yes, the actual number shown for an NMC/Uranium rate is not going to help users any more than the NMC/Gold rate, but (as you say) it makes more sense philosophically/symbolically, which is (AFAICT) the point of showing that rate.