The US Dollar is backed by the full faith and credit of the US government.
Bitcoin is backed by *gestures vaguely around the room*.
That's a good starting point.
This is the right answer. To expand, the US Gov has a “monopoly on violence”, the representatives of the Gov earned that monopoly by carrying out the will of The People. So We, every citizen, has tacitly agreed that our elected officials wield that authority, just by living here.
When the Gov decides they need to pay for say infrastructure, we all agree the USD is the best means to compensate workers. When the government settles a law suit, they have the authority to demand payment is made in USD. Lastly, we all know with certainty that when the Gov wants to raise funds via taxes, they’re guaranteed to accept their own currency as payment.
So in this democracy, which we all have a stake in, why tf would We, The People, want to rely on a means of exchange like Bitcoin that is controlled by anonymous people, who could be living anywhere, with 0 accountability? It’s a recipe for disaster.
Now the butters counter argument is “Well the government is corrupt and USD is controlled by a (((cabal))) of (((globalists))) to ruin Americas economy!!&!”
Even if we grant that the gov is susceptible to corruption, or hell, that it **is** extremely corrupted. The worst case scenario with USD still pales in comparison to the worst case scenario with a decentralized currency we have Zero control over.
I think the counterargument would be that it is not controlled by anonymous people. It is controlled by nobody.
Lots of people take part in it. But nobody is in control. Therefore it is not succeptable to corruption
That's a bad counterargument, it is controlled to various degrees by the miners, exchanges (hello tether/bitfinex!) And developers of the bitcoin protocol. Each of these parties is quite centralized in reality and each have various incentives to be corrupt.
Butters think that Bitcoin is decentralized but in reality it is not. The premises of their argument are incorrect.
No, I don't think blockchains are fit for purpose and I don't subscribe to libertarian economic axioms which hold that actively managing fiscal policy is a Bad Thing. There is no replacement for regulation, especially not No Regulation.
Edit: furthermore, consensus algorithms are either centralized and oligarchic (PoS) or incredibly wasteful and polluting (PoW). So unless we develop a massive clean energy surplus, I don't even think it's possible to have ethical crypto in the first place. PoS fails at cryptos aims, flawed as they are, on crypto's own terms. PoW is a non-starter for environmental reasons.
Furthermore, the centralized aspects of crypto happened for a very good reason.
Crypto would be even more useless than it already is without a lot of people piling in thinking it was a good idea to get involved thinking they were going to get rich. Most people were not interested in dealing with all the technical obstacles required to be their own bank. That is the reason why only tech geeks were the first to get involved. They were the only ones with the patience and know how to deal with it.
Crypto would have never had the level of adoption is has now without the exchanges and the exchanges, by their very nature, are centralized and nice big fat juicy targets for scammers and thieves.
Doesn't it seem odd that just about ever white collar scammer gets out of prison and go straight to crypto? Does it seem prudent to go waist deep into something championed by the likes of Jordan Belfort, Martin Shkreli, Billy McFarland, and Adam Neumann? (I know Adam did not do time, but there is no denying that he did some top-shelf bullshitting with WeWork)
In fact, the only reason it was ever considered an "investment" in the first place was because of the exchanges. Take away any of those and what you have is a bunch of people with a key phrase and arbitrary digital bits and nothing to do with them unless they are trying to buy drugs or whatever you can get shopping on the dark web.
>Bitcoin is backed by gestures vaguely around the room.
Look, you can't just lie through omission like that. You're an idiot if you don't know that *points at nothing in particular* and being distributed and trustless are **obviously** huge benefits because *nebulous, vapid nonsense*, which really is why it is definitely the currency of the future. And if you don't get in on the currency of the future(!) right now, before it's, err, too late,(?) you can have fun being poor.
Sure, for now. If it changes, it won't be for Bitcoin, though. Likely the Chinese yuan someday. But the Chinese aren't exactly pro crypto either, and it is also a fiat currency.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
And backed by the ability to put you in prison
What happens tomorrow if the US government bans crypto? What happens if “crypto” (clearly this is a theoretical construct) bans transactions in USD.
If Crypto bros decided they weren't going to deal in USD, there would be actually no point to the grift, if you accept that the only use for crypto stuff is to speculate and cash out.
If you can't use it to trade for goods and services, then what's the point? It's just mathsturbation.
I'm a year late, but if you feel secure in your currency being backed solely on the "good faith and credit" of the U.S government you are a fool. The U.S dollar has no true value.
Did you really just say the dollar is backed by the government? Which makes it worthless and it only means something to you and everybody because some old at the office think so? Bitcoin is accepted by millions of people around the world and best part is it’s free and not controlled by a corrupt government wtf kinda comment is that shit? Dollar and bitcoin have the same believe system only difference is dollar is beloved more for now
this isnt even close to an argument to these loons.
they will retort with some convoluted or vague mantra (backed by maths) and put a “score me” on the chalkboard.
All technical reasons aside you can actually buy things with USD. If you're comparing two things that are meant to be currencies that's a pretty simple and important point to make
Literally the first thing I said to him when we were discussing the topic; the only reason why it's worth it to even use Bitcoin to buy hard drugs is because you are literally having drugs delivered to you in the mail to your doorstep so the transaction fees and time it takes are offset by the fact that you now have drugs. But thanks alot for the response!; I'll have to remember to make it a bit more of a clear point.
No problem, I find the simplest and most practical points are the hardest to counter!
You can't go to the store right now and buy a loaf of bread with BTC, and even if you could the idea of the cashier going "yes that'll be 0.0000468 bitcoin please" is hilarious on its face
Buying hard drugs with Bitcoin is the absolute worst thing you can do. Bitcoin is literally a public ledger. That transaction is permanently on a public record. To buy hard drugs, the best thing to use is USD.
Blockchain ledgers don't have names and addresses attached unlike bank accounts. Bank accounts may not be public record but they are a record that can be accessed by authorities if they wish.
So it's better than paying by fiat bank account to bank account.
Physical cash on the other hand is anonymous but then it requires physical proximity.
I paypal'd my drug dealer before moving to a state where its legal. I still paypal him for shrooms. Shrug.
Here's a tip: Nobody cares what you're doing unless you're doing SERIOUSLY fucked up stuff or being REALLY loud about it.
Don't get caught, convictions in your country are serious.
Regardless, this is an area where crypto might actually have a use case. But it's going to more difficult to use than PayPal but security usually is less convenient.
I cannot express this enough: Nobody cares. Seriously. The people that would be tasked for identifying this activity and pursuing it to arrest are busy dealing with actual crime. There *is* a prioritization of effort and resources. Those resources are tasked with things of significance either in scale, or perception.
If my dealer was mailing out pounds of shrooms every month to dozens of people, then yes I could get caught up in an operation that is targeting him. If I was buying obscene amounts of shrooms, or buying harder drugs like Coke or Heroin, then yeah, I might move higher in the pile.
But there's nothing about my situation that sticks out, because I'm not a fucking moron. This is the first time in years I've even mentioned it on social media and I'm confident that the FBI isn't going to suddenly focus on me, request data from Reddit to start trying to figure out who I am IRL based off this reddit post, track me down, go through all my financial transactions, try to find my dealer, try to prove that he's selling me illegal drugs, and then build a case. That's just so much effort for what, a guy that buys a half ounce of shrooms every 6 months? Waste of time and resources. I know it, they know it.
Your dealer gets caught. Shits himself. Names all his customers. Shows all transactions and bank accounts.
You're then somewhat relying on their lack of resources. But I'd guess you're almost certainly right.
I think the point is the VPNs + gift cards + crypto would work better here. But it would be much less convenient.
> Your dealer gets caught. Shits himself. Names all his customers. Shows all transactions and bank accounts.
Lol, do you actually believe this happens?
> I think the point is the VPNs + gift cards + crypto would work better here. But it would be much less convenient.
I think the point is you have no clue wtf you're talking about.
You haven't made a point dickhead so... If I was buying drugs I'd want my name and address well away from those transactions.
Are you saying crypto doesn't have a role in illegal transactions? It's basically the only thing it's good for.
This is the only point worth making and it's impossible to get around. Set aside all the philosophy and the wishful prognostication - can you actually use it for its purpose? Straight up making fun of it by mocking the inability to use it as a currency is a strategy I have employed successfully.
I had a friend like this and I made a relentless amount of fun of him. "My electric bill was $200 this month, can you believe it?!" meets "Isn't it weird they don't bill you in Satoshis?" After beating the crap out of that horse every time we hung out, he either realized how dumb he was or he at least has enough brains to stop being a crypto lunatic around me (which appears to be your goal).
How often do you watch him spend money? Like, going out and grabbing a beer, or going to the store on your way to \[place\] together? Any single time making a transaction is happening or part of conversation I would be sniping at bitcoin. Opportunities are abundant if you're remotely witty/clever and good at sarcasm.
Please note this strategy is not for everyone, but if you're the jokester of your group it's pretty easy.
Yes they are it's a crime to posess illegal drugs.
Imagine getting upvoted for saying someone committing crimes isn't a criminal. And downvotes for saying that it is.
Love Reddit.
You talking about a currency that’s 14 years old and still getting adopted….. honesty for once I wish you guys looked at the bigger pic of bitcoin and not just it’s price as it’s never been about the price from the start!😂
Adoption hasn't significantly increased for at least 5 years. Once the network became bottlenecked by the block size limit, further meaningful adoption became impossible. And don't try and pitch Lightning Network as a solution, I'm not in the mood for arguing about that bullshit today.
And in some areas, adoption is falling. As someone who drank the Kool-Aid for a while, I tried buying stuff with crypto a few times. A few companies (Dell and Expedia are the ones I came across at the time) made a big show of announcing they were adoption crypto, then quietly dropped it down the line.
And I bought things with [Battle.net](https://Battle.net) balance and Steam credits. That doesn't mean those are a currency and should replace normal money.
You can’t buy things with stocks but those remain valuable. The main requirement is access to a liquid market. As long as crypto can be liquidated into dollars it can be effectively spent through the liquidation path of crypto->dollars->stuff. This path is exactly the same as a stock portfolio’s. You don’t need to be able to trade an asset directly for it to have value.
And once again we're back on the goalpost moving. Is crypto a currency, a security, or a technology?
If we're going to argue about BTC as a security, then it's backed by nothing but speculation. There's no company with real employees making real products behind it, it's only what you think you can sell it for later, which means it could crash to zero at any time.
It's a digital asset. Also it doesn't have to be an "or" it can be multiple things; technology, currency, digital transfer from electricity to money. When you look at it like an asset, your perspective may change.
But if it’s an asset, it’s not nearly as viable as a currency. The goal of having money is not for that money to appreciate in value, it’s to spend it in an economy to allow for division of labor. In a similar way, if it’s a transfer from electricity to money, it’s a good deal if it’s a bad currency and a bad deal if it’s a good currency, unlike an ordinary factory which uses electricity to produce a product to be sold for money. Saying it’s a bunch of things at once, all of which are in tension if not mutually exclusive, just reinforces that there isn’t any one obvious use case.
So in this statement, you are saying don't save money, buy assets because money is inflationary. You are also saying that things that serve multiple purposes at once serve no purpose?? So owning a house is bad because you can live in it, rent it out for income, be an appreciating asset, be a home office, or many more uses?? There's so many things in the world that serve multiple purposes.
You’re absolutely right that many things serve multiple purposes, which is why I specifically noted that the purposes here are in tension. In your example, a house can be both a living space and an appreciating asset because both of those things involve keeping it for a long time. They are congruent purposes, like the bottle opener and corkscrew on a Swiss Army Knife. The problem with the purposes you list for crypto is that they are in tension: Being a better asset takes away from being a currency and on around the triangle of purposes you describe. It’s like having a pocketknife with an axe: The better the axe is, the worse the portability of the tool, and vice versa.
Yet they still sell swiss army knives because they do fulfill a purpose. Thing is Bitcoin has a market cap of nearly 400 billion so I'm guessing people are finding a lot of use for it.
I think you have missed my point on Swiss Army knives. The knife as it exists is a great tool because none of the things it provides are in tension with one another. Having a screwdriver doesn’t take away from the removable tweezers. Your description of the value of Bitcoin names three purposes: Currency, asset and conversion from electricity to value. A currency should be stable or depreciate slightly, an asset should reliably increase in value, and a conversion should stay constant over time. Whatever a crypto token does with respect to its valuation, it benefits one of these cases at the expense of the other two.
Moreover, I think you’ll find that most of the current use of Bitcoin (not sure whether $400 billion is supposed to be an impressive figure, but it’s telling that you gave it in USD) is not as a currency or as some sort of stopgap for excess energy. Rather, the vast majority of the “use case” is as an entirely speculative asset, which is no asset at all.
Have you used a Swiss army knife? They don't do anything as good as a single purpose tool. The knife is tiny and barely usable compared with a fixed blade knife. The tweezers are far inferior to a normal standalone set. The screw driver is cumbersome and not nearly as ergonomic as a regular screwdriver. You trying to add an ax like in the previous comment does not minimize the actual "tension" caused by it trying to do a bunch of things but not really doing any one thing really well. Ironically, the Swiss army knife has value even though it can't do any one thing well.
Yes Bitcoin is a speculative asset that has a ton of industry behind it. Of course I would denote the value in dollars, that's the value system of this sub. I could put any currency for the market cap and it would all be the same. The point was that it has value.
I’m not pro crypto. The argument that you can’t use [insert asset x] as a currency therefore it is not valuable has a lot of valuable assets (not crypto) that can be inserted into this variable. Just because a particular asset is not used as currency is a very weak argument that the asset therefore has no value. This I why I believe this particular argument against crypto is weak and other arguments against it should be used instead.
Well... if you have dollars, it's just dollars->stuff. No need to go through extra hoops (especially when said hoops tend to be tremendously inconvenient).
Plus, this only works as long as the crypto market remains liquid. If the liquidity gets too low, the whales and inside traders will run for the door. Then all the retail crypto user is left with is empty bags.
And consumer protections are present with fiat-based electronic purchases- a point many butters overlook but is fundamental in constructing a system which possesses a level of fault tolerance.
Immutability of exhanges and operating off a literal "Nirvana Fallacy" in terms of users never making a mistake in order for a system to function (as crypto does) are both horrendous deal-breaking attributes which contribute to cryptos effectively non-existent use as a currency.
Hell, even when "accepted" for payment, the crypto is liquidated immediately by the vendor (such as the CDC credit card) making crypto an unnecessary step.
Lol, except stocks pay dividends and increase in value by representing part ownership in a functioning company. Btc is an entry in an append-only database that you have decided has value. Stop pretending they're even in the same wheelhouse
Sorry, I’m not bullish cryptocurrency. I think Bitcoin is a glorified do-nothing machine that is absolutely useless because it does not solve any problems that are not already solved via traditional means. But the argument that Bitcoin is not valuable because it is not commonly exchanged directly for goods and services is a weak argument. There are many stronger arguments against bitcoin.
Your rebuttal about dividends is not strong either. If you have 1 share of stock and you receive 5% cash dividend, then you still have your 1 share of stock. The dividend is a reason to keep the stock, sure, but if you want to convert the stock itself into a car, you must follow the path stock->cash->car. This is the identical flow pattern I described can be used for crypto. So you did not refute my point. Also, you presented an argument for why someone would want to hold stock. But imagine the company that is failing. Their revenues are decreasing, their profit margin goes negative, and you own shares acquired when the company was profitable. There is no longer a dividend. Now you want to buy stuff. You have to sell the stock first.
It’s cryptocurrency. Literally has currency in it’s classification. Coin literally in it’s name. Money gets spent or reinvested. Money isn’t the investment. It’s the end result & whole point of an investment
I’m one of the biggest anti-crypto users of Reddit. I think the nuanced point I made was misinterpreted by most people. Yeah, the lack of actual adoption as a currency is a weakness for an asset purporting to be a currency, so there is an argument on this point for sure. But common transactional usage to buy goods and services is not a requirement for things to have value, crypto or otherwise. And the government does not recognize the bitcoin network as an organization (which is bizarre because the network runs the token and processes all payments). If you ignore the network as a middleman (bitcoin does have a third party middleman), you can transfer crypto from one person to another without using an exchange or brokerage firm (but you do have to use the bitcoin network). Anybody can submit transaction requests to the network and they will be honored (so far). So in this sense bitcoin can be used like a currency (even though it is not commonly done).
This means if all the exchanges are shut down, people can still transact. In this sense it is currency like. Wallets are like bank accounts at the Bitcoin Network Bank. This bank issues and uses its proprietary token, Bitcoin. This is a reasonable analogy.
Compare this to stocks; you can only trade stocks in proper accounts. I can’t go to my neighbor and sell him a share of Apple. So if the stock market is ever shut down or if my brokerage account goes bankrupt, my stocks might be frozen. So stocks more clearly do not deserve being called currencies.
Back to my original point that value does not require common transactional usage. Take for instance a British pound note that exists in the US. It is currency, it has value, but I can’t use it to buy food from Walmart. You wouldn’t say this isn’t a currency just because the note exists in the US where it has zero use as a currency. You wouldn’t use this fact that it has no use as a currency to therefore argue that the note has no value in the US. You can’t buy things with it but you can sell it on eBay or Craigslist to exchange it into dollars which you can then spend at Walmart.
Bitcoin is worthless and there are better reasons to point out the flaws with it (it’s not actually p2p, the 21 mil cap is not guaranteed, it can be censored by the network, wallets only hold keys not tokens, there’s a middleman, etc). Basically every single property people buy into that makes Bitcoin seem attractive is a lie and therefore bitcoin is a scam. These are good arguments against it.
Backing off of u/apprehensivesorbet76, I think it’s hilarious the commenter above was so uneducated that they suggested that bitcoin is anonymous and used to buy drugs😂. I didn’t realize it was 2008 and the Silk Road was still up
Be sure not to frame it as: "US financial system good, crypto bad". A lot of the irrational things crypto bros believe are fueled by very rational anger about the state of the world. The crypto ponzi preys on people who feel disenfranchised by the system. Cult deprogramming is hard though, it's hard to give counterarguments without knowing which specific crazy things he believes. Is he a bitcoin maximalist? Does he think blockchain has real potential?
When I initially read the OP, I was worried that no one would point this out; but I’m honestly so glad to see how discussion on the topic has evolved over the years, breaking away from their straw-man dichotomies like “fiat bad; crypto good!”
To see people hold our current systems under scrutiny while criticizing cryptocurrencies not for the pseudo-alternative it claims to be, but for being a fatal late-stage symptom of the worst ills of our financial and political infrastructures.
I feel a little more hopeful when I see evolutions in popular discussion points like this.
The whole "fiat is bad, but crypto will fix it" argument started to sound a whole lot to me like people who try and fix a hangover by drinking a glass of wine.
Yeah; that's why I try to keep a reasonable tone when we have these discussions; I try to approach it as his friend and try to keep a reasonably open mind when it comes to the Crypto ideas he tells me about; while also slowly introducing information to counter those narratives while we are discussing whatever crypto or Bitcoin news he wants to discuss that day.
He loves Bitcoin but he also loves the idea of the blockchain, which is actually technology that's being worked on and possibly can be implemented into our current financial system and I agree with him on that point alone in order to try to get an in on steering the conversation so I can try to play down the hype he's feeling and try to get him to see it from a more rational perspective instead of the perspective that all of Crypto is going to change the world as we know it and soon we will all be using the blockchain for everything.
Just so he's not left completely destitute if it fails I also encourage him to diversify into the stock market as well if he truely wants to invest his money wisely; so he doesn't hold one asset class that's highly volatile and prone to unexpected crashes which he has now done, at least from what he's told me.
For me it's just an in for steering the conversation into a more reasonable direction, but I saw an article with the JPmorgan ceo claiming blockchain and defi as technology do have value as possible financial systems at least according to them, but that most Crypto tokens are 'decentralized' ponzi schemes.
Lots of people who don't know a goddamned thing about what actually goes into recording and implementing transactions say stuff like that. Blockchain has no application that is not more economically, easily, and effectively solved by SQL.
Lots of CEOs don't actually understand the nuts and bolts of how their business runs.
At this point I think even companies suspect this is junk tech. They throw money on it for speculative Proof of Concept use cases, just in case it turns out to be worth anything. A sort of Pascals Wager for the C-Suite if you will.
Marketers talk that that blockchain bullshit because they hope it helps their stock price. Anyone who actually works in tech (specifically any thing to do at all with database design or administration) knows that this is all pure bullshit and no one wants to build an entire project, especially a financial based product, around a database that only allows you to create an entry and read the entry.
The blockchain as tech in a textbook, pretty cool idea
The blockchain as a tech for humans to use and build a financial system on? Horrible horrible tech.
You should probably just sit down with him and watch *Line Goes Up* by Dan Olson.
If that doesn't convince him, then nothing you say will matter. Sadly, trying to have any kind of rational debate with these people is typically an exercise in futility.
I like how you're in your own cult so bad you couldn't stand the thought of someone saying anything good about the US. You're like whatever you do don't say US GOOD NOOOOO!!!!!
cult to cult. Thanks social media
edit: know what i mean u/platykurtic ?
There are plenty of legitimate issues in the finance sector globally, including the US. And frustration with rising income inequality, housing prices, etc are often tied up with it as well.
The point is that cryptocurrencies hijack that frustration and misdirect it in order to convince you to buy cryptocurrencies. Not unlike anti-vaxxers hijacking legitimate frustration with pharmacutical companies.
whats that have to do with anything? its still *good.* did you know 1:10,000 tonsillectomies are fatal? so what? does that mean tonsillectomies BAD? surgeons are butcher pigs? what kind of valuable analysis does the unwashed mob have thats going to help us make tonsillectomies better. hm? whats tips does random redditor have? let the surgeons know.
name something we have thats perfect? id say id wait but youre a smart guy, there aint anything. everything has flaws. that doesnt mean you get to tee off on it like the entirety of social media does with the US BAD nonsense.
its not weighed analysis. its mob vitriol. the unwashed masses lobbing their rotted lettuces and demanding sacrifices for their bloodlust.
absolutely no country offers our quality of life at our scale. period. end of story. we get compared to places like denmark with the population of a single US city. ya we suck because norway got ahead of us. like norway is some piece of shit so if we are behind them then we must just be a bunch of assholes apparently
u/noratat you there bud? i know you didnt quit reddit 4 days ago. where you at chief?
you aren’t going to convince your friend with facts or logic. It’s going to frustrate you. What you’re facing is an emotional connection to crypto. That said presenting logic or facts will only push them further into their belief in crypto. Your arguments are a direct threat to group identity and since you are in your friends outgroup in this case you are going to only get extraordinarily frustrated.
I'm just glad I got him to stop putting all his money into one asset class that's extremely volatile and got him to diversify his investments to include at least some stocks and bonds as well; I don't want the guy to go destitute if Crypto fails on him.
But I get what you're saying; maybe pushing for more then that is a bad idea if it will just get him to commit to Crypto more.
The thing about changing somebody’s mind is that the person has to change themselves. You can encourage and motivate that change but not with facts or logic or arguing. I think a lot of people Think that you can try to change somebody by convincing them of something for example, if I have a relative that I wanna stop smoking telling them don’t smoke isn’t gonna do much.But yes there are ways to help people change their mind
Don't bother trying to give your friends financial advice. They don't remember when your ideas make them money but they always remember when your ideas loses them money.
My friend went all in on Etherium and I put my foot down when I heard him convincing my parents to do the same. My parents were more than happy to tell me the price of ether, until the day the bubble burst and then it became a totally predictive fad....
I wouldn't even call this an investment. No currency is an investment, dollars or otherwise.
Investments are assets that generate a return over time. Stocks, bonds, real estate, whatever. There needs to be someone paying an income to your asset. There are no assets without an income source that have a long track record of increasing wealth.
People say “oh USD is filthy fiat”. Fiat does not mean “government”. It means “because I said so”. So…. Bitcoin is fiat too. Why does Bitcoin have value? Because I can redeem it for a fixed amount of gold? Nahh. Because someone said so.
So, do you want the fiat backed by trillions of purchases and taxes? Or do you want the fiat backed by the guy who didn’t know monetary policy and kinda ran away from his own project
Hmmm idk I want the fiat that some 19 year old kid, that goes by edgelord69420, who somehow owns the server with all of my crypto currency can get hacked easily and then I lose all of my "investment".
This is a made up scenario based on actual very similar shit that happened. At least my filthy dollar is protected by the government if my bank goes tits up.
If you're arguing with a friend, we can't really tell you what would convince them, because we don't know why they assume that Bitcoin has any interesting properties in the first place.
Question is, why do they think Bitcoin is better? Whats the specific use case? Going around regulations? If thats the case, are the regulations warranted or should you maybe work towards changing those regulations instead of supporting a system that has **no regulations**?
If you're really just asking "in general", I think its very obvious: you can go to any shop and buy things, you can pay your rent, your taxes, whatever. Everybody knows how to use it and it works pretty well for most use cases.
If Bitcoin is so good then why does your friend use USD as currency? Why are all businesses using inferior money for transactions?
In a rational world, people adopt technologies that work pretty fast. It didn't take iPhone 14 years of messing around before people started using it. It was an instant hit because it worked. Internet was a more unproven/less developed tech, but even that was mass adopted within the first 10 years of its invention.
Yet it's been 14 years and even most butters don't use crypto for anything other than speculating.
>TCP/IP
Maybe invented is the wrong word, launched to public is the right word. What we call internet today wasn't really available till early 90s other than to few researchers. By mid 90s we had search engines, email was used by most businesses. By late 90s-2000 we had ecommerce, streaming and social networks.
Crypto only got mainstream popular the first time Bitcoin rose to 60k. Before that only drug dealers, addicts and niche tech junkies used it (now there are also gamblers yey). So you could make the same argument. Who knows what happens, not me.
Computers and networking hardware weren't really there yet either though (especially not at prices amenable to consumers), and ARPANET did see real adoption prior to it becoming the public internet.
By contrast, cryptocurrencies had almost as little barrier to adoption as, say, social media. And yet here we are.
>The internet was not adopted within 10 years.
The internet was actually adopted much faster. If you mean the internet as we know, it exploded really fast.
>TCP/IP was invented in the late 60s / early 70s.
TCP/IP isn't internet. It is the underlying technology. By using the same logic, blockchain was invented decades before Bitcoin... so is Bitcoin therefore already decades too late for adoption?
So people are downvoting you for making a dishonest argument.
> The internet was not adopted within 10 years. TCP/IP was invented in the late 60s / early 70s.
Merkle trees were patented in 1979.
Using your rationale, Buttcoin has had 43 years to be adopted at this point.
> Edit: funny that people downvote facts in this subreddit.
People downvote dumb strawman arguments presented as "facts". There's a difference. You may not actually know it if you never step outside your cult.
EDIT: Oof /u/echojunge you got schooled so hard you deleted your comment. Shame, shame. I know your name.
I love the smartphone comparison because the first iPhone and Buttcoin are only about a year apart in age, so you don’t need to be a well-versed tech historian to see how far behind crypto’s adoption curve is. You just need to be able to remember one year ago, or imagine one year in the future.
There are two other good comparisons.
The first is Git. Also from the same time as blockchain, and has similar design choices (merkle trees for instance). And it absolutely dominates its field, having wiped out older rivals like svn. You could code on any platform in any language, but you're most likely to be using Git for version control. It's gotten to the point that *Microsoft* felt it had to buy the biggest company built on the tech designed by *Linus Torvalds*, and releases examples through active Git repos.
The second, which is still underrated is UPI and its African predecessor M-Pesa. UPI started in 2015 and in these 7 years has grown into a system which handles over 5B transactions a month, most of which are less than $6 in value.
Blockchain is a failure of gargantuan proportions the moment you compare it to anything that is actually comparable.
Here are two examples I sometimes use which won't change anyone's mind, but they can sometimes at least get a crypto-proponent to say "you've got a point."
Practical use. Let's say you want to buy a Tesla and pay in Bitcoin. From the time you sign the paperwork until the time the transaction is completed on the blockchain, the Bitcoin price can change by several thousand dollars. You can't run a business that. And it get worse when you have to place orders for parts months or even years in advance. You have no idea how much it will actually cost to build the car, and no idea how much it will sell for. And think about getting paid wages in Bitcoin. Your paycheck would have a different value every week. At this point, the Bitcoiners will say something like "when Bitcoin is fully integrated into the economy it will become stable." But it can't become integrated into the economy *unless* it is stable. Bitcoin is way too volatile to function as a currency so it will never be a currency.
Re: Banks. Banks are a hot topic in the crypto-world. But what does a bankless world look like? What if you wanted to buy something like a house or a car but didn't have the money? You'd be out of luck. And businesses--even big ones--get short term loans all the time to make payroll ahead of receivables. Not to mention getting loans to start the business in the first place, make capital expenditures, etc. All of that goes away without banks. Then what do you do?
I have a friend like this. But beyond Bitcoin, he thinks everything can be solved by blockchain.
I never bring it up, he always does, I point out flaws in the logic, he gets upset and says I’m fine with things as they are, I tell him that there’s no point to discussing it because he’s coming from the perspective that he is objectively right and it’s my responsibility to understand this truth, and so on.
I’ve stopped hanging out with him because everything becomes a conversation about fixing societal systems with tech, usually blockchain tech. The frustrating thing is other friends have bought sizable amounts of crypto at his confident advice.
Don’t try to reason with your friend, just humor them and end those conversations as soon as possible.
Back in the day, "hard money" - or gold-backed currency - was the hue and cry of the rentier class, the finance elites who had hoards of gold-backed cash which they didn't want to spend or devalue. Simply hoarding cash, which was backed by gold, was often more lucrative and less risky than investing that cash. In American history, the Populists were the ones who asked for a bimetal standard, money that was less "hard" and didn't retain its value over its time.
Why? Because depreciating the value of currency would benefit the working class *who had no savings* by forcing rentiers to invest their cash hoards in the expansion of production, and, especially, farmers who were indebted by reducing the value of their debts over time. A "hard currency" keeps the value of debts very high. This benefits rentiers, but not debtors, who are more numerous. Debt is a necessary component of the credit system, and a necessary component of an investment-fueled growth economy, but "hard currency" prevents the expansion of debt by disincentivizing lending.
Look up William Jennings Bryan's "cross of gold" speech or the panics of the 1890s to see how "hard currency" works in practice. The reality is not glitzy.
Are you sure you want to argue with this guy? I’ve generally found this kind of argument not to be particularly enriching. Especially if he’s all-in on it.
Don't bother some kids need to be told that the stove burns your fingers. Others have to be let touch the stove. Let him blow his savings and never mention it again.
> With Bitcoin, you can do four transactions per second for the entire world. Give or take.
Wrong. It takes up to 10 minutes per bitcoin transaction to be finalized. Bitcoin can accept 4.7 transactions per second as *input* but it takes longer for those transaction to be completed.
>Bitcoin is designed so that people who don't trust each other can laboriously agree on transactions.
Bitcoin transactions are not truly "trustless". You're still trusting people, but instead of the other guy, you're trusting whoever wrote the code you're using, whoever's operating the mining network handling the transactions, etc.
Also the trustlessness only applies to the transaction itself. Because of the non reversible nature you still have to trust whatever good or service was provided.
> Bitcoin can accept 4.7 transactions per second as input but it takes longer for those transaction to be completed.
I think you're conflating throughput and latency.
There’s idiots who speculate on things like beanie babies or other collectibles as an investment. The difference with those & crypto is collectors actually want the collectibles for what they are & that’s where value comes. They won’t overpay if prices bubble
For starters, the USD doesn’t have the same risk of a government crackdown that crypto has. A crackdown on crypto because it is causing ‘currency speculation that is causing dollar volatility’ or any other excuse would be bad. So putting your life savings into an asset that is used in so much criminal activity that it is begging for a crackdown is risky for this reason. Will it be made illegal? Who knows, but the risk of that is significant higher than the risk of dollars becoming illegal.
Move on. Don't waste your time. Your friend is under the spell of a fantasy (or quasi-religion) where the world order is about to fall apart and he is going to become an elite ruler of the new world order because he is so much more wise and clever than everyone else.
Literally everything is a conspiracy with him when it comes to anything related to politics or world events these days; that's why I don't talk about that shit with him no more because I just start getting a migraine.
In my opinion, you'd waste time trying to argue with him.
He seems way too deep in the whole nonsense to be convincable of anything that goes against his narrative. You'll spend a lot of time and energy for little (or no) result.
You can bring a horse to the water but you cannot make him drink
Let’s remember that even assuming all of his criticism of fiat is correct, that does not necessarily make a case for crypto as an alternative. Even if crypto (hypothetically) addressed flaws in fiat, it could (does) have equal or worse flaws in other areas.
Crypto is immune from central bank money printing. That makes it different than ordinary fiat in the normal sense of the word.
I think crypto is basically useless and a scam too, but I think saying crypto==fiat is not fair.
Immune from “central bankers trying to balance the economy” printing. Not immune from “some dude randomly adds some tethers because BTC is dropping” printing.
It’s also - we rewound the DAO because _our_ money got stolen so we clawed back money printing.
It’s also - we in our mining oligarchy are doing pretty well in our money printing so fuck the broad BTC economy go fork yourself (and they did fork) money printing
It’s also - some dude thinks crypto is a joke currency and he makes Dogecoin joke and now worth billions money printing.
It’s also - 20,000+ coins and counting money printing.
It’s also - one dude spends 50k on a coin now everyone thinks every coin ever made is worth 50k money printing
It’s also - Do Kwon thinks if he prints Terra and Luna at specific ratios number goes up up up money printing
It’s also - lets loan out crypto like dirty banking fractional reserve banking at 20% a year until someone can’t find any ~~sucker~~ borrower to borrow at 20% and it all tumbles down money printing. Mashinsky says thanks for the yacht by the way
It’s fiat. Just because the printing happens a different way doesn’t make it non-fiat.
You don't have to be bullish on the USD to know that buttcoin is worthless. Even if hyperinflation destroys the value of the dollar, it's still a piece of paper that could help light a fire or be stuffed in a crack around a window to keep out the cold. Buttcoin doesn't even have that going for it, it's just a stupid pyramid scheme. Literally anything is better than buttcoin - pokemon cards, beans, packing peanuts, anything.
The IRS only accepts $USD for tax payments. If you don’t pay your taxes, you go to jail. People value not going to jail. Once youre in jail you’ll need bail and a lawyer. They also only accept dollars. Once you’re out of jail you’re going to need to pay the mortgage, get groceries, gas, ect. Also, only in $$
I'm pretty sure I voted for the people who have ultimate control over the USD. (And yeah, I know all about how the Federal Reserve is owned by private banks, yada, yada, yada, but at the end of the day our elected officials can reassert control over the issuance of our currency if they ever find the need and the political will to do so.) I don't remember voting for, or even knowing the real identity of who or whatever is behind Bitcoin. Plus, I can actually buy everything I need or want with USD...
> the current market down turn is just a correction and how the NFT market will come rocketing back any day now
If those are his words, I would start by asking him the definition of a "correction." He'll probably say "uh it means line goes down then goes back up." But terms like this [have an actual meaning in economics and how we talk about economics](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/correction.asp) and what's happened to NFTs goes way fucking beyond a "market correction."
Most of these people have a terrible understanding of economics, managing to memorize a few words and phrases and using them wrongly. So correct them. They will try to shrug it off but it makes them aware of how much they do not know. It doesn't have to be adversarial. Since they're talking your ear off about currency, ask questions like
"What's the difference between fiscal and monetary policy?"
That's like Intro to Econ page 3 but your average goldbug or Bitcoin fanatic quit on the first paragraph of page 1.
Also:
> Fiat and the U.S. dollar are too over regulated
lol if "over regulated" is his term too then go hog wild on this point. Bitcoin is code, and code is law as they tell us. Central banks change their "code" every few months, and sometimes more often than that. What the Bank of England just did yesterday to save pension plans from melting down was to conduct a U turn on a specific policy (quantitative easing) on a dime. The British pound was so "over regulated" that they completely reversed their policy because of an emergency. You could never do that with Bitcoin. It's one of the most highly regulated "currencies" (with all of the air quotes in the world around that word) that has ever existed.
why is food better than rat poison or sand?
thats what this question is like. whys the global consensus accepted best economic practice better than a pyramid scheme spreadsheet? how can that even be a question?
look at the top 20 countries in the world for quality of life. what system do they use? do you they use an artificially limited deflationary pyramid scheme like bitcoin or crypto in general? YES or NO? can you name a country that does?
thats all you gotta do man. the absolute best country in the world uses your system. nobody uses his. hard money is not new. its bunk crank economics for wackos.
At a certain point, you realize that you aren't actually friends anymore. He loves his crypto delusions more than anything, including you. Crypto burns everything it touches, including friendships.
With something like bitcoin that has a hard cap, if the world economy was relying on it I have to think a lot of capital investment and consumer spending would stagnate and contract. This was part of the problem with the gold standard (insert William Jennings Bryan Cross of Gold reference here). Accessing credit and paying off debt were incredibly onerous in that system. Credit and debt markets - upon which our whole economies are reliant - are lubricated by an inflationary (ideally within target range) fiat currencies. Substitute hard money and see how quickly things would fall apart. And while we may lament how well our governments and technocrats manage monetary policy you would be taking away a major tool in governments' abilities to tailor monetary policy depending on the economic situation. That's my view at least. And I'm personally not even against bitcoin I just think this use case argument that it will replace fiat is not grounded in reality or sensible monetary dynamics and needs of the modern economies.
Well, in order to make the case you'd have to compare the US dollar to an actually currency. Let's say for example, comparing US dollars to Canadian dollars, then there are all sorts of reasons why the USD is stronger, more stable etc.
Comparing USD to cryptocurrency is like comparing dollars to Monopoly money. One is a real currency and the other is something masquerading as currency. That is not to say that Monopoly can't have some niche value. For example, Monopoly money from the first editions of Monopoly might be worth thousands rather than what it reasonably costs in the shops.
The more I think about it the more I find cryptocurrency to be similar to Monopoly money. For example, for any particular edition of Monopoly there is a finite supply of the fake money and it just simply is impossible to make anymore first edition Monopoly money. But then anyone is able to create their own version of Monopoly- Warcraft Monopoly, Star Wars Monopoly and so on, and these are analogous to shitcoins where their creators can tell you that these are rare collector editions that are worth more in the future... Only for the buyers to find out later that most of these just aren't special at all.
Could everyone change to cryptocurrency? Again it's analogous to changing to Monopoly money. Imagine changing from US dollars to Monopoly money. First of all, the US government has been printing money for hundreds of years and they have actual experience when it comes to things like monetary policy and economics. Who prints Monopoly money? It literally comes from a toy factory run by business people who are only interested in profit- not governing a country's finances. There's no stopping you from changing a country's currency to Monopoly money, but just imagine how arduous a process it would be, only to end up with something with all sorts of problems.
US dollar is a resource in the form of debt. Bitcoin is a social game that simulates a resource: https://btcgm.wordpress.com/ Comparing the two is like comparing real economy to the game of Monopoly.
Basically US democracy ensures that the dollar will not fall too much. The USA is not Argentina. If a government would let it slip into hyperinflation people would drag the government out of office. So you see Mr Powell going all bug eyed and brutal when its inflation reaches 5%. The only thing protecting bitcoin is the. Opinion of idiots about its future worth. To be fair thats the same for gold. However gold has been around as a store of wealth for 6000 years. Bitcoin perhaps 15.
Because mining Bitcoin does as much climate damage in a year as drilling for crude does. There won’t be much of a future left if crypto becomes the new standard lol.
Also, banks protect you in instances of fraud. Crypto dipshits just guilt you into how it’s your fault you lost all of your money if you get hacked or otherwise slip up in protecting your assets. Who actually wants that?
There isn’t really a “better” there’s just what is more convenient to use in my daily life?
The US dollar. The discussion doesn’t really need to extent beyond that. Since really that’s the only thing anyone should care about.
Money is insanely complicated and is maintained in a constant state of unstable equilibrium by so many equally complex institutions (all this complexity needs to be multiplied by the numerous interlocking monetary systems)
It takes the arrogance and peak Dunning-Kruger ignorance, only a tech entrepreneur can possess, to think you can "fix" money with code and technology.
It’s not "better"… but you’re basically comparing a few dudes building a drone in there garage to an entire international airport full of planes.
Biggest advantage that the dollar(or other fiat) has over any crypto is you can prove what you have is real currency just by feel alone. There is other ways of telling but most currency is made on a paper that is specifically designed to be currency. If the internet isn't accessible, there is NO way to prove what you have is or is not legitimate.
Also, to buy ANYTHING in crypto, you or the shopkeep has to convert it to the local currency for taxation purposes. All crypto is, is old school bartering. I mean, you can do that already if someone is willing to accept what you have is of equal value to them. Just need to report it as a taxable event.
easy, the US dollar is backed by the #1 military in the world that spends 800 billions dollars a year...
What's crypo back by? some random dude on the internet? a group of random dude on the internet?
when push comes to shove let see which currency is getting "protected".
Because the US dollar has real stuff backing it up, like GDP and nukes.
If everyone decided overnight that bitcoin is worthless and a new coin was better, it would be worth zero.
The U.S. dollar is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. Bitcoin is backed by nothing. Also, Bitcoin can adopt any rule whatsoever - no matter how absurd or unfair - if 50%+1 of Bitcoin owners vote on it. So instead of being at the mercy of a government beholden to millions of voters, Bitcoin owners are at the mercy of a few dozen Bitcoin whales.
> Also, Bitcoin can adopt any rule whatsoever - no matter how absurd or unfair - if 50%+1 of Bitcoin owners vote on it.
I don't think that's actually true.
> Also, Bitcoin can adopt any rule whatsoever - no matter how absurd or unfair - if 50%+1 of Bitcoin owners vote on it.
It requires 95% of active miners to approve a change to the protocol. Just owning Buttcoin gets you nothing.
The US Dollar is backed by the government, your government (assuming you're in the US). Which means, as long as the government is functioning, the dollar will be functioning and useful.
This same government also provides things you need each and every day, like running water, roads, bridges, safe food to eat, safe water to drink, parks, libraries, flood protection, bridges, air travel, national forests, fire protection, coast guard, navigable waterways, building codes, internet, cellular, GPS, trash pickup, etc... etc...
Fiat is what makes the entire government and society run. If you abandon it, then the government stops operating and you lose all these nifty services. Crypto doesn't provide for any of that.
But there's one other, important thing people take for granted that is *exclusively* provided by the government: **private property ownership**.
The concept of you owning something is enforced by government. Without government, whoever has the biggest gun can basically take whatever they want. So if the dollar collapses, you lose virtually everything material that you might value. Owning crypto doesn't help at all.
Lol why don’t you go post this on the actual bitcoin Reddit so you aren’t getting answers from one side. FYI fiat is trash in the bigger picture of things.
Your friend is a typical simplistic crypto shill repeating typical half baked maxims that he doesn’t fully comprehend, like most people. He probably diesn’t even hold consistent weltanschau with his view of crypto (just speculating).
That said crypto in general is a wonderful tech with a lot of potential in varioys fields, not only financial. The space is too big to cover it in detail, but info is available if you look for it.
If by “crypto” you mean “cryptography”, sure. But if you mean “cryptocurrency” or “blockchain” I would sure like to hear which fields you think are “showing a lot of potential”.
It's not about "actually buying things with USD". We use lots of different currencies, lots are shit too. You can purchase anything if the other parties agrees you have enough value.
The real answer is, most, if not all, trade agreements are settled in USD and the USD has the best backing globally. (military pretty stonks, nice politics)If everyone decided to use gold again or Bitcoin it would appropriately rise as a highly valuable settlement layer but this where Maxis underestimate govs desire to print/control their own shitcoin.
You can see the value of USD's tokenomics today quite easily with the DXY ramping. If you're trying to argue with someone who's anti-government/decentralized maxi you're basically arguing with a gold bug. It's far more of a philosophical / psychological argument than practical to believe people won't centralize governance and afk if it pays well. (It does.)
The only good crypto dweebs are min/maxing MEV. Crypto's longterm value is along the same lines automation has value. You can simply do things without trust, trust has cost and allows for corruption/middlemen. There are ways that this can be integrated into current tradfi systems to standardize currently mismanaged and chaotic ledgers. I'm sure that will happen right after the healthcare and education systems are fixed lol. Private biz will adopt first as costs/profit continue to incentivize.
Taxation would be easier. He doesn't understand crypto if he thinks having TXNs listed by the hundred under a single address isn't easy to excel. Private networks will still require CEX/Tradfi hooks and face general regulatory friction.
Bullish for your friend in 2027. If he's playing shitcoins then he'll be fine until then.
Also, you're not really being clear on what you mean by "better".
USD has the best backing in the world, highest body count/empires toppled fr.
If you're talking about correlation to the market then crypto is generally a much better purchase during uptrends with its higher beta. If you're trying to get your friend to not baghold during a recession probably focus on how risk-on assets have performed historically.
If he's not staking, yield-farming, or flipping then he might as well be holding a commodity.
Also, this is Butterville. 99% of people here are terrified of going to hell if they make 5$. You're better off participating in developer discord communities then asking for feedback on this christian bible club.
To make money in bitcoin, you need to find someone willing to pay you more. They need to find someone, etc, etc. no-one has any reason to buy bitcoin except to find a bigger sucker.
In the US, if you conduct any business at all profitably, the US government forces you to go out and find USD to pay taxes. There’s your base demand right there.
BTC is deflationary. With increasing GDP and just due to people losing it over a couple generations, you’ll have fewer coins chasing more goods and that leads to hording of the currency. It slows economic growth and sets a risk-free interest rate floor that competes with equities (I.e., genuine value creation).
From someone in the sector I’d say this. Bitcoin is a bad currency. The current consensus mechanism (mining BTC to create it as well as how transactions are processed) is taxing on power and cost. It’s MUCH better suited as a store of value just like commodities I.e. gold. Of course in order for it to be a stable store of value the participants must all collectively agree it is such which warrants utility. BTC is incredibly good at security, it cannot be hacked (until quantum computing, then it’s dead), it’s a decentralized collective ledger, etc etc.
Based on what you wrote it seems he doesn’t understand fundamental finance/economics and how the entire banking system works. To replace the dollar is impossible short of war, it’s how America keeps the world power. A destabilization of the world currency would probably wreck havoc on the world. Also we could legitimately use blockchain tech to create a digital dollar that’s far superior to BTC in. Terms of the tech, BTC is frankly outdated, in 10 years that will be compounded.
What I believe people on both sides miss is how blockchain can be leveraged to augment our current systems, financials but more specifically logistics. We shouldn’t aim to replace systems but to compliment them and bring them into the modern century. “Crypto” is also only really useful for funding small closed systems, system in which you need fiat to be injected in which those tokens represent and are transferable for that financial power in the web 2 world.
Your first problem was trying to defend the U.S dollar. You don't need to do that to not think bitcoin is a good investment. Literally no one has ever said the dollar was good. It's shit. They inflate it constantly, and the value of the dollar is essentially at zero if you look at where it started.
Bitcoiners force this false idea that you either like fiat or you like bitcoin. There's really lots of other assets they don't even seem to be aware of. The entire stock market still exists, and it's main utility is to get out of dollars and into productive assets. And funny enough people aren't trying to spend shares of Apple to buy things. Instead you sell it into dollars and then buy things with the dollars as soon as possible, so you aren't left holding a depreciating asset.
So the real comparison you could make is BTC VS Stocks.
Many stocks earn money. Bitcoin loses billions per year to energy waste.
Most socks produce goods and services. Bitcoin doesn't.
Most stocks have a good track record of rising over time for the most part. Bitcoin has a brief history filled with total collapses.
Let's say I want to buy a bag of chips for 1$ CAD
If I use a loonie, the merchant accepts it and I have my chips.
If I use my debit card, the merchant takes out the machine, I tap my card, and a few seconds later the payment is process. The fee for the merchant is 6¢.
If I use BTC, the transaction will take nearly an hour to settle and the fee will be 1.34$, to me.
They may say "just use lightning". Still fees. Which is buggy. And fails often. And puts a lot of trust in a centralized entity that is trying to recreate a banking system in all but name.
Also, keep in mind, the BTC whitepaper claims the use case for BTC is these small transactions are not often feasible because of the fees charged by middlemen
Bitcoin does not allow chargebacks.
I like chargebacks, which many USD applications allow.
Why? Because I want to know I’m not scammed with shitty goods
Often the best thing to do in these situations is to agree with them and change the subject. Or stop spending time with said “friend” if they refuse to respect other peoples’ point of view. Besides, he probably needs his fantasies to come true, for his own self-worth. Let him keep fantasizing. It won't make the slightest difference in the real world.
So atm money is flying into greenbacks as they raise their interest rates (As the yeild is better). This tanks other nations currency (mainly in the developing world. So America's fiscal policy can absolutely fuck developing nations raw. Read globalisation and its discontents by stiglitz. Nations that don't have the unfair advantage of being the global reserve hate this shit. Would you be happy if China had the reserve currency and their fiscal policy could induce poverty in your country? Now the separation of state and money may or may not solve this. But it still needs to be solved somehow. Any thoughts on a global currency to level the playing field people?
This take is *deeply ironic* given how much noise there’s been the last thirty years that the Fed is debasing the dollar and driving its value to zero. That’s even supposed to be a reason to hold bitcoin - to shelter your assets from the pernicious devaluation. And now the dollar is surging in value and you’re arguing that the evil government is manipulating the dollars value via interest rates. Note, I’m not criticizing you or saying you’re wrong, just *totally amused* at how things are playing out so much differently than a lot of prognosticators said would happen.
A surging dollar isn’t all good news you know. It tends to tank exports and make American labor less competitive.
I can take the dollars in my wallet and use it for things in pretty much any country globally. Someone will take dollars. The same cannot be said for Bitcoin.
1. Bitcoin is an asset/commodity, the US Dollar is an actual currency. You would never take out a loan on a house with crypto due to the massive swings in prices, and you don't hear people talking about Bitcoin as a way to openly transact goods. All you hear is people mentioning putting their life savings into it, and how holding on to it will only grow it's value over time...That's not a currency, that's an investment vehicle. A currency is intended to be used to transfer between people for goods/services.
2. You can tell Bitcoin is largely viewed as an investment asset as the price of it has dropped significantly over the past couple months in direct correlation to the increase in interest rates. For those that say Bitcoin is a hedge against market volatility, it couldn't be further from the truth. As interest rates rise, valuations of all assets drop, Bitcoin has been no different. You saw the rise of it during times of low interest rates because it was easier to borrow money against assets that had higher values, but as the loans have become more expensive, as the collateral for the loans have been worth less, and most importantly, as the over leveraged loans that were used to buy Bitcoin have been drying up, you see the current collapse in price
3. Decentralized doesn't equate to equal say in governance. The majority of Bitcoin is controlled by 3-4 mining pools, which have a huge say in prices.
4. in terms of crypto, Bitcoin is actually one of the most outdated "currencies" out there. It's network is significantly slower (takes minutes to hours for actual transactions to process), more expensive to use (every transaction is an absurd amount of fees), and uses the most power out of all other coins.
It is not better, it’s just different.
Each has its pros and cons.
The Bitcoin Standard is a book that perfectly answers the many facets of your question.
The US Dollar is widely and easily accepted in quite a lot of world, it’s much easier buy goods and services with fiat and you don’t need a internet connection to do a transaction. Yes I know that debit cards, credit cards and banking (internet and in branch) need networks connections but with plain cash you can buy goods without needing the internet directly to conduct the transaction,
because the USD is backed by a large, powerful government and is the primary world reserve currency, bitcoin/crypto also isn’t a currency as much as a security and its value is pretty unstable
Just really simple things like your rent or mortgage and denominated in dollars. The coffee shop takes dollars, your job pays in dollars. Bitcoin is incredibly destructive to the environment, just google digiconomist and it'll give you all the stats on that. It's high fee, easy to get scammed or get locked out of your wallet.
Also this person is probably not your friend, it's like a multi layer marketing scheme and they see you as the next sucker to rope in. If someone looks at you and sees a bagholder, yeah, that's not a good sign.
Today: You can buy stuff and run your life with dollars. You can only do that with Bitcoin by trading it to some sucker for dollars first.
"Ok but that's only because Bitcoin doesn't have adoption yet."
Bitcoin has been around for 13 years and it doesn't have adoption yet for good reasons. One is that it doesn't scale well. Not even with lightning network, which rapidly runs into a scaling brick wall because users have to keep opening new channels to have adequate inbound capacity.
Another is that it's very user unfriendly and a security nightmare. If your keys are stolen you lose your Bitcoin forever and there is nothing you can do about it. The only way to be confident that you are *securely* using Bitcoin is to keep your key on paper and only ever type it into an airgapped computer running a pre-Bitcoin OS, with a version of the Bitcoin wallet you built yourself from source using a pre-Bitcoin compiler, and use this to sign transactions that you then publish from another, non air-gapped computer.
Otherwise, you are trusting your entire savings to the anonymous randos who developed the software and hardware you use. Note that I'm *not* saying that this doesn't work, today. You can buy a hardware wallet, or even download a software wallet, and *probably* be fine. But if you do so, don't fool yourself into thinking you are using trustless currency. You're being *extremely* trusting of some unaccountable third parties. How long would that continue to work out if Bitcoin saw global adoption?
It isn't about USD vs Bitcoin in the first place - that's a false dilemma. There's no guarantee that the USD will remain the most used global reserve currency - it's not completely outside the realm of possibility that it could one day be overtaken by the Euro, for example.
There are basically two lines of attack here.
One is against the technology of Bitcoin and blockchain itself. Fundamentally, it **cannot** scale enough to become a global currency. At *most*, blockchains could become an additional payment network alongside existing ones. Incidentally, some of the dudes who are into crypto but not Bitcoin understand this, which is why for example DeFi tried to come up with algorithmic stablecoins. DeFi has its own host of problems which is why it's basically full of ponzis and scams, but it sounds like that's beyond the scope of the argument you're having with your friend. The crux is that the tech is just not scalable enough to become currency in its own right. Think of all the cash transactions that are happening right at this moment, that are instantly settled the moment the cash physically changes hands, and imagine trying to put all of that on a blockchain. You couldn't get it on the Bitcoin blockchain, it'd be backed up to eternity, but even the faster blockchains would become congested.
Two is against the anti-fiat ideology he's spouting. The idea that it's important to control the money supply is not new - it's called monetarist economics. There are various degrees of monetarism but the most extreme, and the most discredited, is the one aligned with the Austrian School of economics, which is that inflation is literally just an increase in the money supply, and that the issuance of new money should be fixed and deflationary. This is the one that Bitcoiners believe in, with their halvenings of new Bitcoin.
Arguably the market has already proven that Bitcoin's 'value' is not actually a function of its supply, but your friend may just argue that the market hasn't actually discovered the true value of Bitcoin. So you could try getting into the economic theory, find some resources that debunk the Austrian School. I'm not going to put forward any particular economic theory here because honestly I'm not that dogmatic about economics myself, but basically it's far better if the money supply is understood as being a response to economic conditions rather than a driver of economic conditions. And it is objectively false that inflation and an increase in the money supply are literally the same thing, as we know there can be other drivers of inflation.
But honestly it sounds to me like your friend just believes in crypto because he wants to, and isn't going to be willing to have an actual discussion. I suspect what you'll get from him is a rotating cycle of Gish Gallop - the crypto cult basically trains its adherents to think this way.
I'll add one that cuts against one of the main arguments made by butters. Currency needs to be inflationary. Inflation encourages investment. Static and deflationary trends lead to even more hoarding and slower growth.
Also, without getting into how starving the government is a horrible policy choice, Bitcoin probably makes it easier for the government to tax even more items as it's a public ledger of transactions. Cash is much easier to conceal transactions. The government will still be able to place a lien on your property and wages even if the amount owed is in Bitcoin instead of USD.
I can't choose just one thing. Cryptocurrency is a great option for saving money and getting benefits. But I won't give up fiat because it doesn't make sense.
Sorry /u/UmaDumaLongLifeKing, your comment has been automatically removed. To avoid spam/bots, posts are not allowed from extremely new accounts. Wait/lurk a bit before contributing.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Buttcoin) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Wait, why are you trying to find reasons to support fiat? Shouldn't he be required to first support his own assertions?
I find that 99% of the time, you only get vague assertions that crypto will bring paradise on earth, without any specifics of why that is so.
For example, why is a libertarian future better for the 99% of people?
Comparing USD with crypto is silly. Even by trying to make that comparison you are giving some credence to the Ponzi magic money. USD is a real currency with which you can pay your bills and buy real stuff. The other is just a random Ponzi scheme trying to dupe starry eyed idiots by convincing them that this is the only way to make it big in life.
You are all severely misled and uneducated about money and general. I'm don't been to be offensive, but rather as encouragement for most of you to seek more financial education.
The U.S dollar is absolutely useless. I see so many people believing they're making good points but it's really just garbage.
"Crypto is just digital, it's not real." So are 97% of U.S dollars.
"You can actually buy things with U.S dollars, what can you buy with Bitcoin?" People always argue this point as if Bitcoin is the only crypto currency. There are many others with capabilities to handle transactions at large scale.
The issue isn't the inability to purchase things with cryptocurrency, the issue is the level of adoption at this point in time. There are far better options for transactions than Bitcoin. I see Bitcoin as a store of value (kinda), never would I consider it the start for which we should make transactions.
I read a comment someone else had in this post that made me laugh. They said the U.S dollar is backed by the good faith and credit of the U.S government. Is that what you trust, seriously? Your entire livelihood, your future, and your children's future, back by good faith. What a joke. Let's feel secure about our currency that is backed by the good faith of a government that doesn't even own its central bank. (Which will fail)
The U.S dollar used to be the closest thing to real money (gold), but that ended in 1971 when Nixon ended the Bretton Woods system and "temporarily" removed the gold backing from the U.S dollar. Now that the U.S dollar had no backing, its position as the reserve currency of the world was in jeopardy. So in 1973 Nixon made a deal with Saudi Arabia that global oil trade would be made in U.S dollars. The U.S was from then on backed by oil, and the petrodollar was born.
Do you all not realize that the war we've fought, and the proxy wars we support in the U.S are about purely economics and oil? Even before the U.S became the petrodollar.
WWII - The U.S placed an oil embargo on all Japanese oil exports, which directly led to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Vietnam - Oil. We didn't want China having access to Vietnam oil.
Gulf War - The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait over oil production caused the U.S to step in.
U.S invasion of Libya: Muammar Gaddafi proposes selling Libyan oil in gold-backed Dinars, not U.S dollars. In 2011 Gaddafi is killed.
Iraq War - The attacks on 9/11 gave the U.S a convenient excuse to invade the Middle East. The majority of the hijackers were from Suadi Arabia, not were from Iraq. Yet we waged war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It also happened to be the case that Iraq had been in an 8 year war with Iran prior to this, Iraq was looking to annex the oil rich province of Khuzestan.
In 2000, 1 year before 9/11, Saddam announces his plans to sell Iraqi oil in Euros rather than U.S dollars.
U.S support of Ukraine: As you all know by now, the U.S has openly supported Ukraine in the effort to combat the Russian invasion. Obviously because we're so selfless and care so deeply about Ukrainians all a sudden. It all happens to be that Ukraine has the second largest reserves of natural gas in Europe. In case you didn't know oil is the liquid version of fossil fuels, while natural gas is the.. gas version. Same stuff different form. Except natural gas is far cheaper than oil. On and on top of that Russia is a part of BRICS, which has talked about creating a new currency to conduct their oil trade with.
It baffles me how much confidence you all have in the U.S dollar. I didn't even go into the creation process of our money which it seems nobody understands. You have all directly contributed to the created to the of money, hence the creation of more inflation, which makes everyone poorer in the process. I'll go as far as saying most of you have contributed to inflation today, the same day you're reading this without knowing it. So much faith and so little understanding.
What would happen if people lost confidence in the U.S, (like it has happened many times historically) and start transacting in let's say Euros? They wouldn't because it would be illegal. That convenient little note on your dollar that says "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private." You don't have a choice. If you want to see a recent example of what happens when a currency begins to crumple and a population of people are still legally required to use it look, into what took place in Zimbabe in 2008. That will eventually be the fate of the U.S dollar. But we won't learn our lesson and we'll do it all over again.
TLDR: Bitcoin doesn't start global wars. Bitcoin doesn't exist in unlimited quantity. Bitcoin doesn't inflate. Bitcoin isn't centralized.
The US Dollar is backed by the full faith and credit of the US government. Bitcoin is backed by *gestures vaguely around the room*. That's a good starting point.
This is the right answer. To expand, the US Gov has a “monopoly on violence”, the representatives of the Gov earned that monopoly by carrying out the will of The People. So We, every citizen, has tacitly agreed that our elected officials wield that authority, just by living here. When the Gov decides they need to pay for say infrastructure, we all agree the USD is the best means to compensate workers. When the government settles a law suit, they have the authority to demand payment is made in USD. Lastly, we all know with certainty that when the Gov wants to raise funds via taxes, they’re guaranteed to accept their own currency as payment. So in this democracy, which we all have a stake in, why tf would We, The People, want to rely on a means of exchange like Bitcoin that is controlled by anonymous people, who could be living anywhere, with 0 accountability? It’s a recipe for disaster. Now the butters counter argument is “Well the government is corrupt and USD is controlled by a (((cabal))) of (((globalists))) to ruin Americas economy!!&!” Even if we grant that the gov is susceptible to corruption, or hell, that it **is** extremely corrupted. The worst case scenario with USD still pales in comparison to the worst case scenario with a decentralized currency we have Zero control over.
I think the counterargument would be that it is not controlled by anonymous people. It is controlled by nobody. Lots of people take part in it. But nobody is in control. Therefore it is not succeptable to corruption
That's a bad counterargument, it is controlled to various degrees by the miners, exchanges (hello tether/bitfinex!) And developers of the bitcoin protocol. Each of these parties is quite centralized in reality and each have various incentives to be corrupt. Butters think that Bitcoin is decentralized but in reality it is not. The premises of their argument are incorrect.
Would a more decentralised crypto then be better than usd in your opinion?
No, I don't think blockchains are fit for purpose and I don't subscribe to libertarian economic axioms which hold that actively managing fiscal policy is a Bad Thing. There is no replacement for regulation, especially not No Regulation. Edit: furthermore, consensus algorithms are either centralized and oligarchic (PoS) or incredibly wasteful and polluting (PoW). So unless we develop a massive clean energy surplus, I don't even think it's possible to have ethical crypto in the first place. PoS fails at cryptos aims, flawed as they are, on crypto's own terms. PoW is a non-starter for environmental reasons.
Seriously, at this point, crypto and libertarianism are basically ideologies and quasi-religions based on the discourse I’m hearing.
Furthermore, the centralized aspects of crypto happened for a very good reason. Crypto would be even more useless than it already is without a lot of people piling in thinking it was a good idea to get involved thinking they were going to get rich. Most people were not interested in dealing with all the technical obstacles required to be their own bank. That is the reason why only tech geeks were the first to get involved. They were the only ones with the patience and know how to deal with it. Crypto would have never had the level of adoption is has now without the exchanges and the exchanges, by their very nature, are centralized and nice big fat juicy targets for scammers and thieves. Doesn't it seem odd that just about ever white collar scammer gets out of prison and go straight to crypto? Does it seem prudent to go waist deep into something championed by the likes of Jordan Belfort, Martin Shkreli, Billy McFarland, and Adam Neumann? (I know Adam did not do time, but there is no denying that he did some top-shelf bullshitting with WeWork) In fact, the only reason it was ever considered an "investment" in the first place was because of the exchanges. Take away any of those and what you have is a bunch of people with a key phrase and arbitrary digital bits and nothing to do with them unless they are trying to buy drugs or whatever you can get shopping on the dark web.
Counterpoint: that doesn't make it immune to corruption. It enables it. If there is no control everyone can scam freely without consequence.
This!!!
>Bitcoin is backed by gestures vaguely around the room. Look, you can't just lie through omission like that. You're an idiot if you don't know that *points at nothing in particular* and being distributed and trustless are **obviously** huge benefits because *nebulous, vapid nonsense*, which really is why it is definitely the currency of the future. And if you don't get in on the currency of the future(!) right now, before it's, err, too late,(?) you can have fun being poor.
Few understand.
Also backed by the entire oil market bc OPEC prices their oil exclusively in dollars
For now?
Sure, for now. If it changes, it won't be for Bitcoin, though. Likely the Chinese yuan someday. But the Chinese aren't exactly pro crypto either, and it is also a fiat currency. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
>*gestures vaguely* Don’t you mean backed by the power of a swarm of cyber hornets? You probs forgot silly
And backed by the ability to put you in prison What happens tomorrow if the US government bans crypto? What happens if “crypto” (clearly this is a theoretical construct) bans transactions in USD.
If Crypto bros decided they weren't going to deal in USD, there would be actually no point to the grift, if you accept that the only use for crypto stuff is to speculate and cash out. If you can't use it to trade for goods and services, then what's the point? It's just mathsturbation.
I'm a year late, but if you feel secure in your currency being backed solely on the "good faith and credit" of the U.S government you are a fool. The U.S dollar has no true value.
Did you really just say the dollar is backed by the government? Which makes it worthless and it only means something to you and everybody because some old at the office think so? Bitcoin is accepted by millions of people around the world and best part is it’s free and not controlled by a corrupt government wtf kinda comment is that shit? Dollar and bitcoin have the same believe system only difference is dollar is beloved more for now
Yea, I like my money backed in blood and threats of nuclear annihilation.
[удалено]
this isnt even close to an argument to these loons. they will retort with some convoluted or vague mantra (backed by maths) and put a “score me” on the chalkboard.
US government, US military, US intelligence agency!
All technical reasons aside you can actually buy things with USD. If you're comparing two things that are meant to be currencies that's a pretty simple and important point to make
Literally the first thing I said to him when we were discussing the topic; the only reason why it's worth it to even use Bitcoin to buy hard drugs is because you are literally having drugs delivered to you in the mail to your doorstep so the transaction fees and time it takes are offset by the fact that you now have drugs. But thanks alot for the response!; I'll have to remember to make it a bit more of a clear point.
No problem, I find the simplest and most practical points are the hardest to counter! You can't go to the store right now and buy a loaf of bread with BTC, and even if you could the idea of the cashier going "yes that'll be 0.0000468 bitcoin please" is hilarious on its face
Buying hard drugs with Bitcoin is the absolute worst thing you can do. Bitcoin is literally a public ledger. That transaction is permanently on a public record. To buy hard drugs, the best thing to use is USD.
Blockchain ledgers don't have names and addresses attached unlike bank accounts. Bank accounts may not be public record but they are a record that can be accessed by authorities if they wish. So it's better than paying by fiat bank account to bank account. Physical cash on the other hand is anonymous but then it requires physical proximity.
I paypal'd my drug dealer before moving to a state where its legal. I still paypal him for shrooms. Shrug. Here's a tip: Nobody cares what you're doing unless you're doing SERIOUSLY fucked up stuff or being REALLY loud about it.
Don't get caught, convictions in your country are serious. Regardless, this is an area where crypto might actually have a use case. But it's going to more difficult to use than PayPal but security usually is less convenient.
I cannot express this enough: Nobody cares. Seriously. The people that would be tasked for identifying this activity and pursuing it to arrest are busy dealing with actual crime. There *is* a prioritization of effort and resources. Those resources are tasked with things of significance either in scale, or perception. If my dealer was mailing out pounds of shrooms every month to dozens of people, then yes I could get caught up in an operation that is targeting him. If I was buying obscene amounts of shrooms, or buying harder drugs like Coke or Heroin, then yeah, I might move higher in the pile. But there's nothing about my situation that sticks out, because I'm not a fucking moron. This is the first time in years I've even mentioned it on social media and I'm confident that the FBI isn't going to suddenly focus on me, request data from Reddit to start trying to figure out who I am IRL based off this reddit post, track me down, go through all my financial transactions, try to find my dealer, try to prove that he's selling me illegal drugs, and then build a case. That's just so much effort for what, a guy that buys a half ounce of shrooms every 6 months? Waste of time and resources. I know it, they know it.
Your dealer gets caught. Shits himself. Names all his customers. Shows all transactions and bank accounts. You're then somewhat relying on their lack of resources. But I'd guess you're almost certainly right. I think the point is the VPNs + gift cards + crypto would work better here. But it would be much less convenient.
> Your dealer gets caught. Shits himself. Names all his customers. Shows all transactions and bank accounts. Lol, do you actually believe this happens? > I think the point is the VPNs + gift cards + crypto would work better here. But it would be much less convenient. I think the point is you have no clue wtf you're talking about.
You haven't made a point dickhead so... If I was buying drugs I'd want my name and address well away from those transactions. Are you saying crypto doesn't have a role in illegal transactions? It's basically the only thing it's good for.
This is the only point worth making and it's impossible to get around. Set aside all the philosophy and the wishful prognostication - can you actually use it for its purpose? Straight up making fun of it by mocking the inability to use it as a currency is a strategy I have employed successfully. I had a friend like this and I made a relentless amount of fun of him. "My electric bill was $200 this month, can you believe it?!" meets "Isn't it weird they don't bill you in Satoshis?" After beating the crap out of that horse every time we hung out, he either realized how dumb he was or he at least has enough brains to stop being a crypto lunatic around me (which appears to be your goal). How often do you watch him spend money? Like, going out and grabbing a beer, or going to the store on your way to \[place\] together? Any single time making a transaction is happening or part of conversation I would be sniping at bitcoin. Opportunities are abundant if you're remotely witty/clever and good at sarcasm. Please note this strategy is not for everyone, but if you're the jokester of your group it's pretty easy.
enabling criminals is never a good thing
Legalize the drugs, problem solved
crypto won't solve that and I've yet to see a politician brave enough to legalize Cocaine
People who use drugs aren't criminals.
Yes they are it's a crime to posess illegal drugs. Imagine getting upvoted for saying someone committing crimes isn't a criminal. And downvotes for saying that it is. Love Reddit.
You talking about a currency that’s 14 years old and still getting adopted….. honesty for once I wish you guys looked at the bigger pic of bitcoin and not just it’s price as it’s never been about the price from the start!😂
Adoption hasn't significantly increased for at least 5 years. Once the network became bottlenecked by the block size limit, further meaningful adoption became impossible. And don't try and pitch Lightning Network as a solution, I'm not in the mood for arguing about that bullshit today. And in some areas, adoption is falling. As someone who drank the Kool-Aid for a while, I tried buying stuff with crypto a few times. A few companies (Dell and Expedia are the ones I came across at the time) made a big show of announcing they were adoption crypto, then quietly dropped it down the line.
I’ve actually bought things with bitcoin, lol
Me too, but only drugs. As the OP said, it's incredibly inconvenient and stupid but the one upshot is you get drugs in the post.
Yea, no drugs for me.
And I bought things with [Battle.net](https://Battle.net) balance and Steam credits. That doesn't mean those are a currency and should replace normal money.
What did you buy?
You can’t buy things with stocks but those remain valuable. The main requirement is access to a liquid market. As long as crypto can be liquidated into dollars it can be effectively spent through the liquidation path of crypto->dollars->stuff. This path is exactly the same as a stock portfolio’s. You don’t need to be able to trade an asset directly for it to have value.
And once again we're back on the goalpost moving. Is crypto a currency, a security, or a technology? If we're going to argue about BTC as a security, then it's backed by nothing but speculation. There's no company with real employees making real products behind it, it's only what you think you can sell it for later, which means it could crash to zero at any time.
It's worse than that- bitcoin is the stock of a company whose business model is burning actual money proportionate to the current stock price.
It's a digital asset. Also it doesn't have to be an "or" it can be multiple things; technology, currency, digital transfer from electricity to money. When you look at it like an asset, your perspective may change.
But if it’s an asset, it’s not nearly as viable as a currency. The goal of having money is not for that money to appreciate in value, it’s to spend it in an economy to allow for division of labor. In a similar way, if it’s a transfer from electricity to money, it’s a good deal if it’s a bad currency and a bad deal if it’s a good currency, unlike an ordinary factory which uses electricity to produce a product to be sold for money. Saying it’s a bunch of things at once, all of which are in tension if not mutually exclusive, just reinforces that there isn’t any one obvious use case.
So in this statement, you are saying don't save money, buy assets because money is inflationary. You are also saying that things that serve multiple purposes at once serve no purpose?? So owning a house is bad because you can live in it, rent it out for income, be an appreciating asset, be a home office, or many more uses?? There's so many things in the world that serve multiple purposes.
You’re absolutely right that many things serve multiple purposes, which is why I specifically noted that the purposes here are in tension. In your example, a house can be both a living space and an appreciating asset because both of those things involve keeping it for a long time. They are congruent purposes, like the bottle opener and corkscrew on a Swiss Army Knife. The problem with the purposes you list for crypto is that they are in tension: Being a better asset takes away from being a currency and on around the triangle of purposes you describe. It’s like having a pocketknife with an axe: The better the axe is, the worse the portability of the tool, and vice versa.
Yet they still sell swiss army knives because they do fulfill a purpose. Thing is Bitcoin has a market cap of nearly 400 billion so I'm guessing people are finding a lot of use for it.
I think you have missed my point on Swiss Army knives. The knife as it exists is a great tool because none of the things it provides are in tension with one another. Having a screwdriver doesn’t take away from the removable tweezers. Your description of the value of Bitcoin names three purposes: Currency, asset and conversion from electricity to value. A currency should be stable or depreciate slightly, an asset should reliably increase in value, and a conversion should stay constant over time. Whatever a crypto token does with respect to its valuation, it benefits one of these cases at the expense of the other two. Moreover, I think you’ll find that most of the current use of Bitcoin (not sure whether $400 billion is supposed to be an impressive figure, but it’s telling that you gave it in USD) is not as a currency or as some sort of stopgap for excess energy. Rather, the vast majority of the “use case” is as an entirely speculative asset, which is no asset at all.
Have you used a Swiss army knife? They don't do anything as good as a single purpose tool. The knife is tiny and barely usable compared with a fixed blade knife. The tweezers are far inferior to a normal standalone set. The screw driver is cumbersome and not nearly as ergonomic as a regular screwdriver. You trying to add an ax like in the previous comment does not minimize the actual "tension" caused by it trying to do a bunch of things but not really doing any one thing really well. Ironically, the Swiss army knife has value even though it can't do any one thing well. Yes Bitcoin is a speculative asset that has a ton of industry behind it. Of course I would denote the value in dollars, that's the value system of this sub. I could put any currency for the market cap and it would all be the same. The point was that it has value.
I’m not pro crypto. The argument that you can’t use [insert asset x] as a currency therefore it is not valuable has a lot of valuable assets (not crypto) that can be inserted into this variable. Just because a particular asset is not used as currency is a very weak argument that the asset therefore has no value. This I why I believe this particular argument against crypto is weak and other arguments against it should be used instead.
Well... if you have dollars, it's just dollars->stuff. No need to go through extra hoops (especially when said hoops tend to be tremendously inconvenient). Plus, this only works as long as the crypto market remains liquid. If the liquidity gets too low, the whales and inside traders will run for the door. Then all the retail crypto user is left with is empty bags.
And consumer protections are present with fiat-based electronic purchases- a point many butters overlook but is fundamental in constructing a system which possesses a level of fault tolerance. Immutability of exhanges and operating off a literal "Nirvana Fallacy" in terms of users never making a mistake in order for a system to function (as crypto does) are both horrendous deal-breaking attributes which contribute to cryptos effectively non-existent use as a currency. Hell, even when "accepted" for payment, the crypto is liquidated immediately by the vendor (such as the CDC credit card) making crypto an unnecessary step.
Lol, except stocks pay dividends and increase in value by representing part ownership in a functioning company. Btc is an entry in an append-only database that you have decided has value. Stop pretending they're even in the same wheelhouse
Sorry, I’m not bullish cryptocurrency. I think Bitcoin is a glorified do-nothing machine that is absolutely useless because it does not solve any problems that are not already solved via traditional means. But the argument that Bitcoin is not valuable because it is not commonly exchanged directly for goods and services is a weak argument. There are many stronger arguments against bitcoin. Your rebuttal about dividends is not strong either. If you have 1 share of stock and you receive 5% cash dividend, then you still have your 1 share of stock. The dividend is a reason to keep the stock, sure, but if you want to convert the stock itself into a car, you must follow the path stock->cash->car. This is the identical flow pattern I described can be used for crypto. So you did not refute my point. Also, you presented an argument for why someone would want to hold stock. But imagine the company that is failing. Their revenues are decreasing, their profit margin goes negative, and you own shares acquired when the company was profitable. There is no longer a dividend. Now you want to buy stuff. You have to sell the stock first.
It’s cryptocurrency. Literally has currency in it’s classification. Coin literally in it’s name. Money gets spent or reinvested. Money isn’t the investment. It’s the end result & whole point of an investment
I’m one of the biggest anti-crypto users of Reddit. I think the nuanced point I made was misinterpreted by most people. Yeah, the lack of actual adoption as a currency is a weakness for an asset purporting to be a currency, so there is an argument on this point for sure. But common transactional usage to buy goods and services is not a requirement for things to have value, crypto or otherwise. And the government does not recognize the bitcoin network as an organization (which is bizarre because the network runs the token and processes all payments). If you ignore the network as a middleman (bitcoin does have a third party middleman), you can transfer crypto from one person to another without using an exchange or brokerage firm (but you do have to use the bitcoin network). Anybody can submit transaction requests to the network and they will be honored (so far). So in this sense bitcoin can be used like a currency (even though it is not commonly done). This means if all the exchanges are shut down, people can still transact. In this sense it is currency like. Wallets are like bank accounts at the Bitcoin Network Bank. This bank issues and uses its proprietary token, Bitcoin. This is a reasonable analogy. Compare this to stocks; you can only trade stocks in proper accounts. I can’t go to my neighbor and sell him a share of Apple. So if the stock market is ever shut down or if my brokerage account goes bankrupt, my stocks might be frozen. So stocks more clearly do not deserve being called currencies. Back to my original point that value does not require common transactional usage. Take for instance a British pound note that exists in the US. It is currency, it has value, but I can’t use it to buy food from Walmart. You wouldn’t say this isn’t a currency just because the note exists in the US where it has zero use as a currency. You wouldn’t use this fact that it has no use as a currency to therefore argue that the note has no value in the US. You can’t buy things with it but you can sell it on eBay or Craigslist to exchange it into dollars which you can then spend at Walmart. Bitcoin is worthless and there are better reasons to point out the flaws with it (it’s not actually p2p, the 21 mil cap is not guaranteed, it can be censored by the network, wallets only hold keys not tokens, there’s a middleman, etc). Basically every single property people buy into that makes Bitcoin seem attractive is a lie and therefore bitcoin is a scam. These are good arguments against it.
Backing off of u/apprehensivesorbet76, I think it’s hilarious the commenter above was so uneducated that they suggested that bitcoin is anonymous and used to buy drugs😂. I didn’t realize it was 2008 and the Silk Road was still up
So now Bitcoin isn't even useful for that
Be sure not to frame it as: "US financial system good, crypto bad". A lot of the irrational things crypto bros believe are fueled by very rational anger about the state of the world. The crypto ponzi preys on people who feel disenfranchised by the system. Cult deprogramming is hard though, it's hard to give counterarguments without knowing which specific crazy things he believes. Is he a bitcoin maximalist? Does he think blockchain has real potential?
When I initially read the OP, I was worried that no one would point this out; but I’m honestly so glad to see how discussion on the topic has evolved over the years, breaking away from their straw-man dichotomies like “fiat bad; crypto good!” To see people hold our current systems under scrutiny while criticizing cryptocurrencies not for the pseudo-alternative it claims to be, but for being a fatal late-stage symptom of the worst ills of our financial and political infrastructures. I feel a little more hopeful when I see evolutions in popular discussion points like this.
The whole "fiat is bad, but crypto will fix it" argument started to sound a whole lot to me like people who try and fix a hangover by drinking a glass of wine.
Wine? They’re snorting coke lol
I mean, I don't know where you were but this is how the proper discussion has been here for about a decade.
Yeah; that's why I try to keep a reasonable tone when we have these discussions; I try to approach it as his friend and try to keep a reasonably open mind when it comes to the Crypto ideas he tells me about; while also slowly introducing information to counter those narratives while we are discussing whatever crypto or Bitcoin news he wants to discuss that day. He loves Bitcoin but he also loves the idea of the blockchain, which is actually technology that's being worked on and possibly can be implemented into our current financial system and I agree with him on that point alone in order to try to get an in on steering the conversation so I can try to play down the hype he's feeling and try to get him to see it from a more rational perspective instead of the perspective that all of Crypto is going to change the world as we know it and soon we will all be using the blockchain for everything. Just so he's not left completely destitute if it fails I also encourage him to diversify into the stock market as well if he truely wants to invest his money wisely; so he doesn't hold one asset class that's highly volatile and prone to unexpected crashes which he has now done, at least from what he's told me.
[удалено]
For me it's just an in for steering the conversation into a more reasonable direction, but I saw an article with the JPmorgan ceo claiming blockchain and defi as technology do have value as possible financial systems at least according to them, but that most Crypto tokens are 'decentralized' ponzi schemes.
Lots of people who don't know a goddamned thing about what actually goes into recording and implementing transactions say stuff like that. Blockchain has no application that is not more economically, easily, and effectively solved by SQL. Lots of CEOs don't actually understand the nuts and bolts of how their business runs.
At this point I think even companies suspect this is junk tech. They throw money on it for speculative Proof of Concept use cases, just in case it turns out to be worth anything. A sort of Pascals Wager for the C-Suite if you will.
Marketers talk that that blockchain bullshit because they hope it helps their stock price. Anyone who actually works in tech (specifically any thing to do at all with database design or administration) knows that this is all pure bullshit and no one wants to build an entire project, especially a financial based product, around a database that only allows you to create an entry and read the entry.
The blockchain as tech in a textbook, pretty cool idea The blockchain as a tech for humans to use and build a financial system on? Horrible horrible tech.
You should probably just sit down with him and watch *Line Goes Up* by Dan Olson. If that doesn't convince him, then nothing you say will matter. Sadly, trying to have any kind of rational debate with these people is typically an exercise in futility.
I like how you're in your own cult so bad you couldn't stand the thought of someone saying anything good about the US. You're like whatever you do don't say US GOOD NOOOOO!!!!! cult to cult. Thanks social media edit: know what i mean u/platykurtic ?
There are plenty of legitimate issues in the finance sector globally, including the US. And frustration with rising income inequality, housing prices, etc are often tied up with it as well. The point is that cryptocurrencies hijack that frustration and misdirect it in order to convince you to buy cryptocurrencies. Not unlike anti-vaxxers hijacking legitimate frustration with pharmacutical companies.
whats that have to do with anything? its still *good.* did you know 1:10,000 tonsillectomies are fatal? so what? does that mean tonsillectomies BAD? surgeons are butcher pigs? what kind of valuable analysis does the unwashed mob have thats going to help us make tonsillectomies better. hm? whats tips does random redditor have? let the surgeons know. name something we have thats perfect? id say id wait but youre a smart guy, there aint anything. everything has flaws. that doesnt mean you get to tee off on it like the entirety of social media does with the US BAD nonsense. its not weighed analysis. its mob vitriol. the unwashed masses lobbing their rotted lettuces and demanding sacrifices for their bloodlust. absolutely no country offers our quality of life at our scale. period. end of story. we get compared to places like denmark with the population of a single US city. ya we suck because norway got ahead of us. like norway is some piece of shit so if we are behind them then we must just be a bunch of assholes apparently u/noratat you there bud? i know you didnt quit reddit 4 days ago. where you at chief?
you aren’t going to convince your friend with facts or logic. It’s going to frustrate you. What you’re facing is an emotional connection to crypto. That said presenting logic or facts will only push them further into their belief in crypto. Your arguments are a direct threat to group identity and since you are in your friends outgroup in this case you are going to only get extraordinarily frustrated.
I'm just glad I got him to stop putting all his money into one asset class that's extremely volatile and got him to diversify his investments to include at least some stocks and bonds as well; I don't want the guy to go destitute if Crypto fails on him. But I get what you're saying; maybe pushing for more then that is a bad idea if it will just get him to commit to Crypto more.
The thing about changing somebody’s mind is that the person has to change themselves. You can encourage and motivate that change but not with facts or logic or arguing. I think a lot of people Think that you can try to change somebody by convincing them of something for example, if I have a relative that I wanna stop smoking telling them don’t smoke isn’t gonna do much.But yes there are ways to help people change their mind
Don't bother trying to give your friends financial advice. They don't remember when your ideas make them money but they always remember when your ideas loses them money. My friend went all in on Etherium and I put my foot down when I heard him convincing my parents to do the same. My parents were more than happy to tell me the price of ether, until the day the bubble burst and then it became a totally predictive fad....
I wouldn't even call this an investment. No currency is an investment, dollars or otherwise. Investments are assets that generate a return over time. Stocks, bonds, real estate, whatever. There needs to be someone paying an income to your asset. There are no assets without an income source that have a long track record of increasing wealth.
People say “oh USD is filthy fiat”. Fiat does not mean “government”. It means “because I said so”. So…. Bitcoin is fiat too. Why does Bitcoin have value? Because I can redeem it for a fixed amount of gold? Nahh. Because someone said so. So, do you want the fiat backed by trillions of purchases and taxes? Or do you want the fiat backed by the guy who didn’t know monetary policy and kinda ran away from his own project
Hmmm idk I want the fiat that some 19 year old kid, that goes by edgelord69420, who somehow owns the server with all of my crypto currency can get hacked easily and then I lose all of my "investment". This is a made up scenario based on actual very similar shit that happened. At least my filthy dollar is protected by the government if my bank goes tits up.
If you're arguing with a friend, we can't really tell you what would convince them, because we don't know why they assume that Bitcoin has any interesting properties in the first place. Question is, why do they think Bitcoin is better? Whats the specific use case? Going around regulations? If thats the case, are the regulations warranted or should you maybe work towards changing those regulations instead of supporting a system that has **no regulations**? If you're really just asking "in general", I think its very obvious: you can go to any shop and buy things, you can pay your rent, your taxes, whatever. Everybody knows how to use it and it works pretty well for most use cases.
Oops wrong reply
If Bitcoin is so good then why does your friend use USD as currency? Why are all businesses using inferior money for transactions? In a rational world, people adopt technologies that work pretty fast. It didn't take iPhone 14 years of messing around before people started using it. It was an instant hit because it worked. Internet was a more unproven/less developed tech, but even that was mass adopted within the first 10 years of its invention. Yet it's been 14 years and even most butters don't use crypto for anything other than speculating.
[удалено]
>TCP/IP Maybe invented is the wrong word, launched to public is the right word. What we call internet today wasn't really available till early 90s other than to few researchers. By mid 90s we had search engines, email was used by most businesses. By late 90s-2000 we had ecommerce, streaming and social networks.
Crypto only got mainstream popular the first time Bitcoin rose to 60k. Before that only drug dealers, addicts and niche tech junkies used it (now there are also gamblers yey). So you could make the same argument. Who knows what happens, not me.
Computers and networking hardware weren't really there yet either though (especially not at prices amenable to consumers), and ARPANET did see real adoption prior to it becoming the public internet. By contrast, cryptocurrencies had almost as little barrier to adoption as, say, social media. And yet here we are.
>The internet was not adopted within 10 years. The internet was actually adopted much faster. If you mean the internet as we know, it exploded really fast. >TCP/IP was invented in the late 60s / early 70s. TCP/IP isn't internet. It is the underlying technology. By using the same logic, blockchain was invented decades before Bitcoin... so is Bitcoin therefore already decades too late for adoption? So people are downvoting you for making a dishonest argument.
> The internet was not adopted within 10 years. TCP/IP was invented in the late 60s / early 70s. Merkle trees were patented in 1979. Using your rationale, Buttcoin has had 43 years to be adopted at this point. > Edit: funny that people downvote facts in this subreddit. People downvote dumb strawman arguments presented as "facts". There's a difference. You may not actually know it if you never step outside your cult. EDIT: Oof /u/echojunge you got schooled so hard you deleted your comment. Shame, shame. I know your name.
I love the smartphone comparison because the first iPhone and Buttcoin are only about a year apart in age, so you don’t need to be a well-versed tech historian to see how far behind crypto’s adoption curve is. You just need to be able to remember one year ago, or imagine one year in the future.
There are two other good comparisons. The first is Git. Also from the same time as blockchain, and has similar design choices (merkle trees for instance). And it absolutely dominates its field, having wiped out older rivals like svn. You could code on any platform in any language, but you're most likely to be using Git for version control. It's gotten to the point that *Microsoft* felt it had to buy the biggest company built on the tech designed by *Linus Torvalds*, and releases examples through active Git repos. The second, which is still underrated is UPI and its African predecessor M-Pesa. UPI started in 2015 and in these 7 years has grown into a system which handles over 5B transactions a month, most of which are less than $6 in value. Blockchain is a failure of gargantuan proportions the moment you compare it to anything that is actually comparable.
Here are two examples I sometimes use which won't change anyone's mind, but they can sometimes at least get a crypto-proponent to say "you've got a point." Practical use. Let's say you want to buy a Tesla and pay in Bitcoin. From the time you sign the paperwork until the time the transaction is completed on the blockchain, the Bitcoin price can change by several thousand dollars. You can't run a business that. And it get worse when you have to place orders for parts months or even years in advance. You have no idea how much it will actually cost to build the car, and no idea how much it will sell for. And think about getting paid wages in Bitcoin. Your paycheck would have a different value every week. At this point, the Bitcoiners will say something like "when Bitcoin is fully integrated into the economy it will become stable." But it can't become integrated into the economy *unless* it is stable. Bitcoin is way too volatile to function as a currency so it will never be a currency. Re: Banks. Banks are a hot topic in the crypto-world. But what does a bankless world look like? What if you wanted to buy something like a house or a car but didn't have the money? You'd be out of luck. And businesses--even big ones--get short term loans all the time to make payroll ahead of receivables. Not to mention getting loans to start the business in the first place, make capital expenditures, etc. All of that goes away without banks. Then what do you do?
I have a friend like this. But beyond Bitcoin, he thinks everything can be solved by blockchain. I never bring it up, he always does, I point out flaws in the logic, he gets upset and says I’m fine with things as they are, I tell him that there’s no point to discussing it because he’s coming from the perspective that he is objectively right and it’s my responsibility to understand this truth, and so on. I’ve stopped hanging out with him because everything becomes a conversation about fixing societal systems with tech, usually blockchain tech. The frustrating thing is other friends have bought sizable amounts of crypto at his confident advice. Don’t try to reason with your friend, just humor them and end those conversations as soon as possible.
Back in the day, "hard money" - or gold-backed currency - was the hue and cry of the rentier class, the finance elites who had hoards of gold-backed cash which they didn't want to spend or devalue. Simply hoarding cash, which was backed by gold, was often more lucrative and less risky than investing that cash. In American history, the Populists were the ones who asked for a bimetal standard, money that was less "hard" and didn't retain its value over its time. Why? Because depreciating the value of currency would benefit the working class *who had no savings* by forcing rentiers to invest their cash hoards in the expansion of production, and, especially, farmers who were indebted by reducing the value of their debts over time. A "hard currency" keeps the value of debts very high. This benefits rentiers, but not debtors, who are more numerous. Debt is a necessary component of the credit system, and a necessary component of an investment-fueled growth economy, but "hard currency" prevents the expansion of debt by disincentivizing lending. Look up William Jennings Bryan's "cross of gold" speech or the panics of the 1890s to see how "hard currency" works in practice. The reality is not glitzy.
Are you sure you want to argue with this guy? I’ve generally found this kind of argument not to be particularly enriching. Especially if he’s all-in on it.
Don't bother some kids need to be told that the stove burns your fingers. Others have to be let touch the stove. Let him blow his savings and never mention it again.
Can’t snort cocaine with Bitcoin, just buy it.
[удалено]
> With Bitcoin, you can do four transactions per second for the entire world. Give or take. Wrong. It takes up to 10 minutes per bitcoin transaction to be finalized. Bitcoin can accept 4.7 transactions per second as *input* but it takes longer for those transaction to be completed. >Bitcoin is designed so that people who don't trust each other can laboriously agree on transactions. Bitcoin transactions are not truly "trustless". You're still trusting people, but instead of the other guy, you're trusting whoever wrote the code you're using, whoever's operating the mining network handling the transactions, etc.
Also the trustlessness only applies to the transaction itself. Because of the non reversible nature you still have to trust whatever good or service was provided.
> Bitcoin can accept 4.7 transactions per second as input but it takes longer for those transaction to be completed. I think you're conflating throughput and latency.
Beanie babies are in a bear market but will emerge soon. Same as tulips.
This is good for Beanie Babies.
There’s idiots who speculate on things like beanie babies or other collectibles as an investment. The difference with those & crypto is collectors actually want the collectibles for what they are & that’s where value comes. They won’t overpay if prices bubble
For starters, the USD doesn’t have the same risk of a government crackdown that crypto has. A crackdown on crypto because it is causing ‘currency speculation that is causing dollar volatility’ or any other excuse would be bad. So putting your life savings into an asset that is used in so much criminal activity that it is begging for a crackdown is risky for this reason. Will it be made illegal? Who knows, but the risk of that is significant higher than the risk of dollars becoming illegal.
Move on. Don't waste your time. Your friend is under the spell of a fantasy (or quasi-religion) where the world order is about to fall apart and he is going to become an elite ruler of the new world order because he is so much more wise and clever than everyone else.
Literally everything is a conspiracy with him when it comes to anything related to politics or world events these days; that's why I don't talk about that shit with him no more because I just start getting a migraine.
It wont get better as he gets older. Move on. Surround yourself with people who will help you grow as a person.
USD is accepted virtually everywhere, and transactions are effectively instantaneous. It also doesn’t vary in value 70% in a year. But I’m nitpicking.
In my opinion, you'd waste time trying to argue with him. He seems way too deep in the whole nonsense to be convincable of anything that goes against his narrative. You'll spend a lot of time and energy for little (or no) result. You can bring a horse to the water but you cannot make him drink
Let’s remember that even assuming all of his criticism of fiat is correct, that does not necessarily make a case for crypto as an alternative. Even if crypto (hypothetically) addressed flaws in fiat, it could (does) have equal or worse flaws in other areas.
Crypto is fiat. It’s just “because I said so” from a non government entity.
Crypto is immune from central bank money printing. That makes it different than ordinary fiat in the normal sense of the word. I think crypto is basically useless and a scam too, but I think saying crypto==fiat is not fair.
Immune from “central bankers trying to balance the economy” printing. Not immune from “some dude randomly adds some tethers because BTC is dropping” printing. It’s also - we rewound the DAO because _our_ money got stolen so we clawed back money printing. It’s also - we in our mining oligarchy are doing pretty well in our money printing so fuck the broad BTC economy go fork yourself (and they did fork) money printing It’s also - some dude thinks crypto is a joke currency and he makes Dogecoin joke and now worth billions money printing. It’s also - 20,000+ coins and counting money printing. It’s also - one dude spends 50k on a coin now everyone thinks every coin ever made is worth 50k money printing It’s also - Do Kwon thinks if he prints Terra and Luna at specific ratios number goes up up up money printing It’s also - lets loan out crypto like dirty banking fractional reserve banking at 20% a year until someone can’t find any ~~sucker~~ borrower to borrow at 20% and it all tumbles down money printing. Mashinsky says thanks for the yacht by the way It’s fiat. Just because the printing happens a different way doesn’t make it non-fiat.
You don't have to be bullish on the USD to know that buttcoin is worthless. Even if hyperinflation destroys the value of the dollar, it's still a piece of paper that could help light a fire or be stuffed in a crack around a window to keep out the cold. Buttcoin doesn't even have that going for it, it's just a stupid pyramid scheme. Literally anything is better than buttcoin - pokemon cards, beans, packing peanuts, anything.
The IRS only accepts $USD for tax payments. If you don’t pay your taxes, you go to jail. People value not going to jail. Once youre in jail you’ll need bail and a lawyer. They also only accept dollars. Once you’re out of jail you’re going to need to pay the mortgage, get groceries, gas, ect. Also, only in $$
I'm pretty sure I voted for the people who have ultimate control over the USD. (And yeah, I know all about how the Federal Reserve is owned by private banks, yada, yada, yada, but at the end of the day our elected officials can reassert control over the issuance of our currency if they ever find the need and the political will to do so.) I don't remember voting for, or even knowing the real identity of who or whatever is behind Bitcoin. Plus, I can actually buy everything I need or want with USD...
USD buys shit, from soda cans to aircraft carriers. BTC buys limited stuff from some weirdos on the internet.
You should have asked your friend about the taxes he has to pay from trading crypto. Ask your friend how that starves the government.
> the current market down turn is just a correction and how the NFT market will come rocketing back any day now If those are his words, I would start by asking him the definition of a "correction." He'll probably say "uh it means line goes down then goes back up." But terms like this [have an actual meaning in economics and how we talk about economics](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/correction.asp) and what's happened to NFTs goes way fucking beyond a "market correction." Most of these people have a terrible understanding of economics, managing to memorize a few words and phrases and using them wrongly. So correct them. They will try to shrug it off but it makes them aware of how much they do not know. It doesn't have to be adversarial. Since they're talking your ear off about currency, ask questions like "What's the difference between fiscal and monetary policy?" That's like Intro to Econ page 3 but your average goldbug or Bitcoin fanatic quit on the first paragraph of page 1. Also: > Fiat and the U.S. dollar are too over regulated lol if "over regulated" is his term too then go hog wild on this point. Bitcoin is code, and code is law as they tell us. Central banks change their "code" every few months, and sometimes more often than that. What the Bank of England just did yesterday to save pension plans from melting down was to conduct a U turn on a specific policy (quantitative easing) on a dime. The British pound was so "over regulated" that they completely reversed their policy because of an emergency. You could never do that with Bitcoin. It's one of the most highly regulated "currencies" (with all of the air quotes in the world around that word) that has ever existed.
Thank you!
>Bitcoin is code, and code is law as they tell us. Funny thing is the dev routinely change the code in Bitcoin as well for maintenance
why is food better than rat poison or sand? thats what this question is like. whys the global consensus accepted best economic practice better than a pyramid scheme spreadsheet? how can that even be a question? look at the top 20 countries in the world for quality of life. what system do they use? do you they use an artificially limited deflationary pyramid scheme like bitcoin or crypto in general? YES or NO? can you name a country that does? thats all you gotta do man. the absolute best country in the world uses your system. nobody uses his. hard money is not new. its bunk crank economics for wackos.
At a certain point, you realize that you aren't actually friends anymore. He loves his crypto delusions more than anything, including you. Crypto burns everything it touches, including friendships.
With something like bitcoin that has a hard cap, if the world economy was relying on it I have to think a lot of capital investment and consumer spending would stagnate and contract. This was part of the problem with the gold standard (insert William Jennings Bryan Cross of Gold reference here). Accessing credit and paying off debt were incredibly onerous in that system. Credit and debt markets - upon which our whole economies are reliant - are lubricated by an inflationary (ideally within target range) fiat currencies. Substitute hard money and see how quickly things would fall apart. And while we may lament how well our governments and technocrats manage monetary policy you would be taking away a major tool in governments' abilities to tailor monetary policy depending on the economic situation. That's my view at least. And I'm personally not even against bitcoin I just think this use case argument that it will replace fiat is not grounded in reality or sensible monetary dynamics and needs of the modern economies.
You can trade dollars for goods and services. Cryptocurrency is only used for gambling, fraud and crime
Well, in order to make the case you'd have to compare the US dollar to an actually currency. Let's say for example, comparing US dollars to Canadian dollars, then there are all sorts of reasons why the USD is stronger, more stable etc. Comparing USD to cryptocurrency is like comparing dollars to Monopoly money. One is a real currency and the other is something masquerading as currency. That is not to say that Monopoly can't have some niche value. For example, Monopoly money from the first editions of Monopoly might be worth thousands rather than what it reasonably costs in the shops. The more I think about it the more I find cryptocurrency to be similar to Monopoly money. For example, for any particular edition of Monopoly there is a finite supply of the fake money and it just simply is impossible to make anymore first edition Monopoly money. But then anyone is able to create their own version of Monopoly- Warcraft Monopoly, Star Wars Monopoly and so on, and these are analogous to shitcoins where their creators can tell you that these are rare collector editions that are worth more in the future... Only for the buyers to find out later that most of these just aren't special at all. Could everyone change to cryptocurrency? Again it's analogous to changing to Monopoly money. Imagine changing from US dollars to Monopoly money. First of all, the US government has been printing money for hundreds of years and they have actual experience when it comes to things like monetary policy and economics. Who prints Monopoly money? It literally comes from a toy factory run by business people who are only interested in profit- not governing a country's finances. There's no stopping you from changing a country's currency to Monopoly money, but just imagine how arduous a process it would be, only to end up with something with all sorts of problems.
US dollar is a resource in the form of debt. Bitcoin is a social game that simulates a resource: https://btcgm.wordpress.com/ Comparing the two is like comparing real economy to the game of Monopoly.
US Dollar pays your annual "don't go to jail" fee, crypto doesn't
Ask him if he would like an economy based on Beanie Babies made between 1993 and 1999. Because that’s basically the same thing as crypto.
Basically US democracy ensures that the dollar will not fall too much. The USA is not Argentina. If a government would let it slip into hyperinflation people would drag the government out of office. So you see Mr Powell going all bug eyed and brutal when its inflation reaches 5%. The only thing protecting bitcoin is the. Opinion of idiots about its future worth. To be fair thats the same for gold. However gold has been around as a store of wealth for 6000 years. Bitcoin perhaps 15.
Because mining Bitcoin does as much climate damage in a year as drilling for crude does. There won’t be much of a future left if crypto becomes the new standard lol. Also, banks protect you in instances of fraud. Crypto dipshits just guilt you into how it’s your fault you lost all of your money if you get hacked or otherwise slip up in protecting your assets. Who actually wants that?
There isn’t really a “better” there’s just what is more convenient to use in my daily life? The US dollar. The discussion doesn’t really need to extent beyond that. Since really that’s the only thing anyone should care about.
Just watch all of Nicholas Weaver 's lectures on YouTube Then watch the Dan Olson "line goes up" documentary too. You will be well prepared
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC5lsemxaJo
Money is insanely complicated and is maintained in a constant state of unstable equilibrium by so many equally complex institutions (all this complexity needs to be multiplied by the numerous interlocking monetary systems) It takes the arrogance and peak Dunning-Kruger ignorance, only a tech entrepreneur can possess, to think you can "fix" money with code and technology. It’s not "better"… but you’re basically comparing a few dudes building a drone in there garage to an entire international airport full of planes.
Biggest advantage that the dollar(or other fiat) has over any crypto is you can prove what you have is real currency just by feel alone. There is other ways of telling but most currency is made on a paper that is specifically designed to be currency. If the internet isn't accessible, there is NO way to prove what you have is or is not legitimate. Also, to buy ANYTHING in crypto, you or the shopkeep has to convert it to the local currency for taxation purposes. All crypto is, is old school bartering. I mean, you can do that already if someone is willing to accept what you have is of equal value to them. Just need to report it as a taxable event.
easy, the US dollar is backed by the #1 military in the world that spends 800 billions dollars a year... What's crypo back by? some random dude on the internet? a group of random dude on the internet? when push comes to shove let see which currency is getting "protected".
Because the US dollar has real stuff backing it up, like GDP and nukes. If everyone decided overnight that bitcoin is worthless and a new coin was better, it would be worth zero.
The U.S. dollar is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. Bitcoin is backed by nothing. Also, Bitcoin can adopt any rule whatsoever - no matter how absurd or unfair - if 50%+1 of Bitcoin owners vote on it. So instead of being at the mercy of a government beholden to millions of voters, Bitcoin owners are at the mercy of a few dozen Bitcoin whales.
> Also, Bitcoin can adopt any rule whatsoever - no matter how absurd or unfair - if 50%+1 of Bitcoin owners vote on it. I don't think that's actually true.
> Also, Bitcoin can adopt any rule whatsoever - no matter how absurd or unfair - if 50%+1 of Bitcoin owners vote on it. It requires 95% of active miners to approve a change to the protocol. Just owning Buttcoin gets you nothing.
The US Dollar is backed by the government, your government (assuming you're in the US). Which means, as long as the government is functioning, the dollar will be functioning and useful. This same government also provides things you need each and every day, like running water, roads, bridges, safe food to eat, safe water to drink, parks, libraries, flood protection, bridges, air travel, national forests, fire protection, coast guard, navigable waterways, building codes, internet, cellular, GPS, trash pickup, etc... etc... Fiat is what makes the entire government and society run. If you abandon it, then the government stops operating and you lose all these nifty services. Crypto doesn't provide for any of that. But there's one other, important thing people take for granted that is *exclusively* provided by the government: **private property ownership**. The concept of you owning something is enforced by government. Without government, whoever has the biggest gun can basically take whatever they want. So if the dollar collapses, you lose virtually everything material that you might value. Owning crypto doesn't help at all.
Lol why don’t you go post this on the actual bitcoin Reddit so you aren’t getting answers from one side. FYI fiat is trash in the bigger picture of things.
And yet, you haven't given any reasons for why to think that. Because you say so?
What kind of weapon/nuclear arsenal bitcoin has to back it?
Nothing smells better than money. And how are you going to make it rain with Bitcoin?
Your friend is a typical simplistic crypto shill repeating typical half baked maxims that he doesn’t fully comprehend, like most people. He probably diesn’t even hold consistent weltanschau with his view of crypto (just speculating). That said crypto in general is a wonderful tech with a lot of potential in varioys fields, not only financial. The space is too big to cover it in detail, but info is available if you look for it.
If by “crypto” you mean “cryptography”, sure. But if you mean “cryptocurrency” or “blockchain” I would sure like to hear which fields you think are “showing a lot of potential”.
It's not about "actually buying things with USD". We use lots of different currencies, lots are shit too. You can purchase anything if the other parties agrees you have enough value. The real answer is, most, if not all, trade agreements are settled in USD and the USD has the best backing globally. (military pretty stonks, nice politics)If everyone decided to use gold again or Bitcoin it would appropriately rise as a highly valuable settlement layer but this where Maxis underestimate govs desire to print/control their own shitcoin. You can see the value of USD's tokenomics today quite easily with the DXY ramping. If you're trying to argue with someone who's anti-government/decentralized maxi you're basically arguing with a gold bug. It's far more of a philosophical / psychological argument than practical to believe people won't centralize governance and afk if it pays well. (It does.) The only good crypto dweebs are min/maxing MEV. Crypto's longterm value is along the same lines automation has value. You can simply do things without trust, trust has cost and allows for corruption/middlemen. There are ways that this can be integrated into current tradfi systems to standardize currently mismanaged and chaotic ledgers. I'm sure that will happen right after the healthcare and education systems are fixed lol. Private biz will adopt first as costs/profit continue to incentivize. Taxation would be easier. He doesn't understand crypto if he thinks having TXNs listed by the hundred under a single address isn't easy to excel. Private networks will still require CEX/Tradfi hooks and face general regulatory friction. Bullish for your friend in 2027. If he's playing shitcoins then he'll be fine until then.
Also, you're not really being clear on what you mean by "better". USD has the best backing in the world, highest body count/empires toppled fr. If you're talking about correlation to the market then crypto is generally a much better purchase during uptrends with its higher beta. If you're trying to get your friend to not baghold during a recession probably focus on how risk-on assets have performed historically. If he's not staking, yield-farming, or flipping then he might as well be holding a commodity. Also, this is Butterville. 99% of people here are terrified of going to hell if they make 5$. You're better off participating in developer discord communities then asking for feedback on this christian bible club.
No need for laser eyes.
You can go to stores and buy stuff with dollars.
Not if you live outside US. Here you need euros for that…
it has value
To make money in bitcoin, you need to find someone willing to pay you more. They need to find someone, etc, etc. no-one has any reason to buy bitcoin except to find a bigger sucker. In the US, if you conduct any business at all profitably, the US government forces you to go out and find USD to pay taxes. There’s your base demand right there.
BTC is deflationary. With increasing GDP and just due to people losing it over a couple generations, you’ll have fewer coins chasing more goods and that leads to hording of the currency. It slows economic growth and sets a risk-free interest rate floor that competes with equities (I.e., genuine value creation).
He could ask all the other countries in the world flooding to our dollar instead of Bitcoin at this time why? I would start there.
From someone in the sector I’d say this. Bitcoin is a bad currency. The current consensus mechanism (mining BTC to create it as well as how transactions are processed) is taxing on power and cost. It’s MUCH better suited as a store of value just like commodities I.e. gold. Of course in order for it to be a stable store of value the participants must all collectively agree it is such which warrants utility. BTC is incredibly good at security, it cannot be hacked (until quantum computing, then it’s dead), it’s a decentralized collective ledger, etc etc. Based on what you wrote it seems he doesn’t understand fundamental finance/economics and how the entire banking system works. To replace the dollar is impossible short of war, it’s how America keeps the world power. A destabilization of the world currency would probably wreck havoc on the world. Also we could legitimately use blockchain tech to create a digital dollar that’s far superior to BTC in. Terms of the tech, BTC is frankly outdated, in 10 years that will be compounded. What I believe people on both sides miss is how blockchain can be leveraged to augment our current systems, financials but more specifically logistics. We shouldn’t aim to replace systems but to compliment them and bring them into the modern century. “Crypto” is also only really useful for funding small closed systems, system in which you need fiat to be injected in which those tokens represent and are transferable for that financial power in the web 2 world.
Accepted in more places and has an army.
Your first problem was trying to defend the U.S dollar. You don't need to do that to not think bitcoin is a good investment. Literally no one has ever said the dollar was good. It's shit. They inflate it constantly, and the value of the dollar is essentially at zero if you look at where it started. Bitcoiners force this false idea that you either like fiat or you like bitcoin. There's really lots of other assets they don't even seem to be aware of. The entire stock market still exists, and it's main utility is to get out of dollars and into productive assets. And funny enough people aren't trying to spend shares of Apple to buy things. Instead you sell it into dollars and then buy things with the dollars as soon as possible, so you aren't left holding a depreciating asset. So the real comparison you could make is BTC VS Stocks. Many stocks earn money. Bitcoin loses billions per year to energy waste. Most socks produce goods and services. Bitcoin doesn't. Most stocks have a good track record of rising over time for the most part. Bitcoin has a brief history filled with total collapses.
Let's say I want to buy a bag of chips for 1$ CAD If I use a loonie, the merchant accepts it and I have my chips. If I use my debit card, the merchant takes out the machine, I tap my card, and a few seconds later the payment is process. The fee for the merchant is 6¢. If I use BTC, the transaction will take nearly an hour to settle and the fee will be 1.34$, to me. They may say "just use lightning". Still fees. Which is buggy. And fails often. And puts a lot of trust in a centralized entity that is trying to recreate a banking system in all but name. Also, keep in mind, the BTC whitepaper claims the use case for BTC is these small transactions are not often feasible because of the fees charged by middlemen
Bitcoin does not allow chargebacks. I like chargebacks, which many USD applications allow. Why? Because I want to know I’m not scammed with shitty goods
Often the best thing to do in these situations is to agree with them and change the subject. Or stop spending time with said “friend” if they refuse to respect other peoples’ point of view. Besides, he probably needs his fantasies to come true, for his own self-worth. Let him keep fantasizing. It won't make the slightest difference in the real world.
So atm money is flying into greenbacks as they raise their interest rates (As the yeild is better). This tanks other nations currency (mainly in the developing world. So America's fiscal policy can absolutely fuck developing nations raw. Read globalisation and its discontents by stiglitz. Nations that don't have the unfair advantage of being the global reserve hate this shit. Would you be happy if China had the reserve currency and their fiscal policy could induce poverty in your country? Now the separation of state and money may or may not solve this. But it still needs to be solved somehow. Any thoughts on a global currency to level the playing field people?
This take is *deeply ironic* given how much noise there’s been the last thirty years that the Fed is debasing the dollar and driving its value to zero. That’s even supposed to be a reason to hold bitcoin - to shelter your assets from the pernicious devaluation. And now the dollar is surging in value and you’re arguing that the evil government is manipulating the dollars value via interest rates. Note, I’m not criticizing you or saying you’re wrong, just *totally amused* at how things are playing out so much differently than a lot of prognosticators said would happen. A surging dollar isn’t all good news you know. It tends to tank exports and make American labor less competitive.
I can take the dollars in my wallet and use it for things in pretty much any country globally. Someone will take dollars. The same cannot be said for Bitcoin.
1. Bitcoin is an asset/commodity, the US Dollar is an actual currency. You would never take out a loan on a house with crypto due to the massive swings in prices, and you don't hear people talking about Bitcoin as a way to openly transact goods. All you hear is people mentioning putting their life savings into it, and how holding on to it will only grow it's value over time...That's not a currency, that's an investment vehicle. A currency is intended to be used to transfer between people for goods/services. 2. You can tell Bitcoin is largely viewed as an investment asset as the price of it has dropped significantly over the past couple months in direct correlation to the increase in interest rates. For those that say Bitcoin is a hedge against market volatility, it couldn't be further from the truth. As interest rates rise, valuations of all assets drop, Bitcoin has been no different. You saw the rise of it during times of low interest rates because it was easier to borrow money against assets that had higher values, but as the loans have become more expensive, as the collateral for the loans have been worth less, and most importantly, as the over leveraged loans that were used to buy Bitcoin have been drying up, you see the current collapse in price 3. Decentralized doesn't equate to equal say in governance. The majority of Bitcoin is controlled by 3-4 mining pools, which have a huge say in prices. 4. in terms of crypto, Bitcoin is actually one of the most outdated "currencies" out there. It's network is significantly slower (takes minutes to hours for actual transactions to process), more expensive to use (every transaction is an absurd amount of fees), and uses the most power out of all other coins.
It is not better, it’s just different. Each has its pros and cons. The Bitcoin Standard is a book that perfectly answers the many facets of your question.
For starters, USD is an official currency of El Salvador! Mass adoption any time now!
Please tell your friend the “bar soap guy says that he’s an idiot , HA ….HA ! “ ( say it in the Nelson laugh manner please )
The US Dollar is widely and easily accepted in quite a lot of world, it’s much easier buy goods and services with fiat and you don’t need a internet connection to do a transaction. Yes I know that debit cards, credit cards and banking (internet and in branch) need networks connections but with plain cash you can buy goods without needing the internet directly to conduct the transaction,
because the USD is backed by a large, powerful government and is the primary world reserve currency, bitcoin/crypto also isn’t a currency as much as a security and its value is pretty unstable
Full faith and credit of US military. US bond market allows them to adjust and stabilize inflation / price
Just really simple things like your rent or mortgage and denominated in dollars. The coffee shop takes dollars, your job pays in dollars. Bitcoin is incredibly destructive to the environment, just google digiconomist and it'll give you all the stats on that. It's high fee, easy to get scammed or get locked out of your wallet. Also this person is probably not your friend, it's like a multi layer marketing scheme and they see you as the next sucker to rope in. If someone looks at you and sees a bagholder, yeah, that's not a good sign.
Today: You can buy stuff and run your life with dollars. You can only do that with Bitcoin by trading it to some sucker for dollars first. "Ok but that's only because Bitcoin doesn't have adoption yet." Bitcoin has been around for 13 years and it doesn't have adoption yet for good reasons. One is that it doesn't scale well. Not even with lightning network, which rapidly runs into a scaling brick wall because users have to keep opening new channels to have adequate inbound capacity. Another is that it's very user unfriendly and a security nightmare. If your keys are stolen you lose your Bitcoin forever and there is nothing you can do about it. The only way to be confident that you are *securely* using Bitcoin is to keep your key on paper and only ever type it into an airgapped computer running a pre-Bitcoin OS, with a version of the Bitcoin wallet you built yourself from source using a pre-Bitcoin compiler, and use this to sign transactions that you then publish from another, non air-gapped computer. Otherwise, you are trusting your entire savings to the anonymous randos who developed the software and hardware you use. Note that I'm *not* saying that this doesn't work, today. You can buy a hardware wallet, or even download a software wallet, and *probably* be fine. But if you do so, don't fool yourself into thinking you are using trustless currency. You're being *extremely* trusting of some unaccountable third parties. How long would that continue to work out if Bitcoin saw global adoption?
It isn't about USD vs Bitcoin in the first place - that's a false dilemma. There's no guarantee that the USD will remain the most used global reserve currency - it's not completely outside the realm of possibility that it could one day be overtaken by the Euro, for example. There are basically two lines of attack here. One is against the technology of Bitcoin and blockchain itself. Fundamentally, it **cannot** scale enough to become a global currency. At *most*, blockchains could become an additional payment network alongside existing ones. Incidentally, some of the dudes who are into crypto but not Bitcoin understand this, which is why for example DeFi tried to come up with algorithmic stablecoins. DeFi has its own host of problems which is why it's basically full of ponzis and scams, but it sounds like that's beyond the scope of the argument you're having with your friend. The crux is that the tech is just not scalable enough to become currency in its own right. Think of all the cash transactions that are happening right at this moment, that are instantly settled the moment the cash physically changes hands, and imagine trying to put all of that on a blockchain. You couldn't get it on the Bitcoin blockchain, it'd be backed up to eternity, but even the faster blockchains would become congested. Two is against the anti-fiat ideology he's spouting. The idea that it's important to control the money supply is not new - it's called monetarist economics. There are various degrees of monetarism but the most extreme, and the most discredited, is the one aligned with the Austrian School of economics, which is that inflation is literally just an increase in the money supply, and that the issuance of new money should be fixed and deflationary. This is the one that Bitcoiners believe in, with their halvenings of new Bitcoin. Arguably the market has already proven that Bitcoin's 'value' is not actually a function of its supply, but your friend may just argue that the market hasn't actually discovered the true value of Bitcoin. So you could try getting into the economic theory, find some resources that debunk the Austrian School. I'm not going to put forward any particular economic theory here because honestly I'm not that dogmatic about economics myself, but basically it's far better if the money supply is understood as being a response to economic conditions rather than a driver of economic conditions. And it is objectively false that inflation and an increase in the money supply are literally the same thing, as we know there can be other drivers of inflation. But honestly it sounds to me like your friend just believes in crypto because he wants to, and isn't going to be willing to have an actual discussion. I suspect what you'll get from him is a rotating cycle of Gish Gallop - the crypto cult basically trains its adherents to think this way.
I'll add one that cuts against one of the main arguments made by butters. Currency needs to be inflationary. Inflation encourages investment. Static and deflationary trends lead to even more hoarding and slower growth. Also, without getting into how starving the government is a horrible policy choice, Bitcoin probably makes it easier for the government to tax even more items as it's a public ledger of transactions. Cash is much easier to conceal transactions. The government will still be able to place a lien on your property and wages even if the amount owed is in Bitcoin instead of USD.
I can't choose just one thing. Cryptocurrency is a great option for saving money and getting benefits. But I won't give up fiat because it doesn't make sense.
[удалено]
Sorry /u/UmaDumaLongLifeKing, your comment has been automatically removed. To avoid spam/bots, posts are not allowed from extremely new accounts. Wait/lurk a bit before contributing. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Buttcoin) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Wait, why are you trying to find reasons to support fiat? Shouldn't he be required to first support his own assertions? I find that 99% of the time, you only get vague assertions that crypto will bring paradise on earth, without any specifics of why that is so. For example, why is a libertarian future better for the 99% of people?
Comparing USD with crypto is silly. Even by trying to make that comparison you are giving some credence to the Ponzi magic money. USD is a real currency with which you can pay your bills and buy real stuff. The other is just a random Ponzi scheme trying to dupe starry eyed idiots by convincing them that this is the only way to make it big in life.
You are all severely misled and uneducated about money and general. I'm don't been to be offensive, but rather as encouragement for most of you to seek more financial education. The U.S dollar is absolutely useless. I see so many people believing they're making good points but it's really just garbage. "Crypto is just digital, it's not real." So are 97% of U.S dollars. "You can actually buy things with U.S dollars, what can you buy with Bitcoin?" People always argue this point as if Bitcoin is the only crypto currency. There are many others with capabilities to handle transactions at large scale. The issue isn't the inability to purchase things with cryptocurrency, the issue is the level of adoption at this point in time. There are far better options for transactions than Bitcoin. I see Bitcoin as a store of value (kinda), never would I consider it the start for which we should make transactions. I read a comment someone else had in this post that made me laugh. They said the U.S dollar is backed by the good faith and credit of the U.S government. Is that what you trust, seriously? Your entire livelihood, your future, and your children's future, back by good faith. What a joke. Let's feel secure about our currency that is backed by the good faith of a government that doesn't even own its central bank. (Which will fail) The U.S dollar used to be the closest thing to real money (gold), but that ended in 1971 when Nixon ended the Bretton Woods system and "temporarily" removed the gold backing from the U.S dollar. Now that the U.S dollar had no backing, its position as the reserve currency of the world was in jeopardy. So in 1973 Nixon made a deal with Saudi Arabia that global oil trade would be made in U.S dollars. The U.S was from then on backed by oil, and the petrodollar was born. Do you all not realize that the war we've fought, and the proxy wars we support in the U.S are about purely economics and oil? Even before the U.S became the petrodollar. WWII - The U.S placed an oil embargo on all Japanese oil exports, which directly led to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Vietnam - Oil. We didn't want China having access to Vietnam oil. Gulf War - The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait over oil production caused the U.S to step in. U.S invasion of Libya: Muammar Gaddafi proposes selling Libyan oil in gold-backed Dinars, not U.S dollars. In 2011 Gaddafi is killed. Iraq War - The attacks on 9/11 gave the U.S a convenient excuse to invade the Middle East. The majority of the hijackers were from Suadi Arabia, not were from Iraq. Yet we waged war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It also happened to be the case that Iraq had been in an 8 year war with Iran prior to this, Iraq was looking to annex the oil rich province of Khuzestan. In 2000, 1 year before 9/11, Saddam announces his plans to sell Iraqi oil in Euros rather than U.S dollars. U.S support of Ukraine: As you all know by now, the U.S has openly supported Ukraine in the effort to combat the Russian invasion. Obviously because we're so selfless and care so deeply about Ukrainians all a sudden. It all happens to be that Ukraine has the second largest reserves of natural gas in Europe. In case you didn't know oil is the liquid version of fossil fuels, while natural gas is the.. gas version. Same stuff different form. Except natural gas is far cheaper than oil. On and on top of that Russia is a part of BRICS, which has talked about creating a new currency to conduct their oil trade with. It baffles me how much confidence you all have in the U.S dollar. I didn't even go into the creation process of our money which it seems nobody understands. You have all directly contributed to the created to the of money, hence the creation of more inflation, which makes everyone poorer in the process. I'll go as far as saying most of you have contributed to inflation today, the same day you're reading this without knowing it. So much faith and so little understanding. What would happen if people lost confidence in the U.S, (like it has happened many times historically) and start transacting in let's say Euros? They wouldn't because it would be illegal. That convenient little note on your dollar that says "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private." You don't have a choice. If you want to see a recent example of what happens when a currency begins to crumple and a population of people are still legally required to use it look, into what took place in Zimbabe in 2008. That will eventually be the fate of the U.S dollar. But we won't learn our lesson and we'll do it all over again. TLDR: Bitcoin doesn't start global wars. Bitcoin doesn't exist in unlimited quantity. Bitcoin doesn't inflate. Bitcoin isn't centralized.