Gold, for one. The amount of gold there is, is what there is. The gold standard was a major cause of the Great Depression, and the major reason it lasted so long.
See above.
Fiat cannot be perfectly regulated. Crypto (including BTC) cannot be regulated at all. The amount there is is what there is. Even just the U.S. economy is far too large to be mediated by the amount of Bitcoin that can ever exist, and it's a lot worse if we talk about the global economy.
One of the MANY things that crypto boosters don't understand is that for trade to operate smoothly, the amount of currency in circulation must suit the amount of goods being traded.
Of course scammers can always make another crypto, creating "money" out of thin air, which is what you accuse government of doing, and nobody can stop them. With crypto you'll never have a quantity of currency that matches the economy's need for currency.
Scarcity is not what you want for good money. The correct amount is what you want: Not too much, not too little. Crypto cannot achieve this. Gold cannot achieve this.
Another thing that crypto boosters fail to comprehend: Money serves three purposes: Exchange, store of value, and investment. For store of value you'd like a constant value. But for investment there has to be a small, steady, predictable amount of inflation. The reason nobody will ever invest crypto is that they hope it will rise in price. When the currency rises in price, nobody invests, and a modern industrial economy cannot function without investment. Inflation insures that people will invest their money rather than stuffing it in a mattress, or leaving it in a crypto wallet.
Lie.
Lie.
The very fact that it cannot be "manipulated" is what you fail to see as its supreme flaw, making it useless as currency. Again, you fail to comprehend how critical it is that the amount of currency in circulation matches the amount needed for trade and investment.
Again, zero inflation means zero investment and the entire industrial economy grinds to a halt. The pseudoeconomists promoting crypto (to bolster their own speculation) simply fail to comprehend the necessity of investment.
Exactly: The quantity is fixed, so there's just not enough available to mediate commerce and productive activity.
What's really stark here, and that you again fail to comprehend, is that if the value of the currency keeps rising, nobody will ever invest in or engage in productive activity. The entire economy will collapse because everybody will keep all their money in their digital wallet.
Let's say you invest a better mouse trap. You want to build them to sell. You go to your neighbor and tell him "I need 1,000 BTC so I can buy lumber and steel so I can make mousetraps to sell. We'll make 10% profit because my mousetraps are so good. Your neighbor is going to tell you "No way! My BTC is going to be worth double by next year. I'm keeping it. I'm not going to invest in your mousetrap factory." Multiply that by all the productive activity of the whole economy.
Crypto is useless as currency because there's not enough of it and its value is too unstable. As a store of value it's a gamble. You might win, you might lose. And nobody will invest it in productive enterprise.
"Kicks out crooks"??? Are you kidding me??? Crooks LOVE crypto. When a crook takes your BTC and fails to deliver what was promised, you have NO recourse. When a crook hacks your computer or kidnaps your child and you have to pay ransom in BTC, you have no recourse. (The same is true of cash, but BTC is just SOOOOO much easier for the crooks.)
Right now the whole system of maintaining the ledger is financed by the node operators mining more coins. Once there are no more coins, they'll have to start charging to maintain the ledger. And that's WAY more expensive than what banks do. Small purchases will cost more to process than the cost of the thing you're buying.
The amount of gold there is, is what there is.
The global supply of gold grows at about 2% a year, by design. It is not a fixed supply. Therefore, every 50 yrs or so the supply of gold doubles. Gold does not fit your example. Try again.
Not to mention the future ideas being thrown around to send a mining ship to the nearest asteroid belt and bring back rare metals found there. Which would destroy whatever market there was for whichever metals they find. Gold included.
And the simple fact that gold was backing fiat had nothing to do with the Great Depression. It had everything to do with poor fiat management by the Fed. Gold doesn't make decisions, people did.
And if people are left to make mistakes, they either learn from them, or they fail. That's how it's suppose to be. Actions require consequences. That's what's wrong with the current system. The wrong people end up paying for poor fiat mismanagement.
The economy is far too large to be mediated by the amount of Bitcoin that can ever exist
The USD has 100 pennies per dollar.
1 bitcoin (not crypto) can be divided into 100 Million satoshis.
So for example, if 1 bitcoin = $30k USD, then it takes 3000 sats to make $1.
But as the natural open free market that would return under a Bitcoin standard currency, the pricing could still fluctuate organically.
There's no reason that 3000 sats per dollar couldn't become 300 sats per dollar, or 30 sats per dollar.
So instead of expanding the supply of dollars up by creating them out of thin air, natural expansion can occur on the other side of the decimal point, but only when the actual market of real goods and services decides it. Not when Wall Street or the government does.
That's the difference. Open your mentality outside the current system, and stop trying to prove how Bitcoin (not crypto) doesn't work inside it. And I completely agree with you! The current system is broken. Why would we want to try and put Bitcoin's round peg in that system's square hole?
1 BTC = 1 BTC
The
price of BTC in USD is irrelevant. The
value in BTC is what matters. And that is on the rise, unlike the USD which is inevitably going to zero. And the USD's stability is also getting worse, while BTC's (not crypto) stability will continue to improve as adoption grows.
The global economy under a Bitcoin (not crypto) standard will look/work completely differently, because it won't need the gov/Fed/cental bank oversight to regulate it. It will be far more peer-to-peer interactions.
But this doesn't happen overnight. I'm sure as a transitional period, we'll see countries continue to adopt bitcoin to back their existing fiat. Then, as those fiats still eventually fail, they'll move to bitcoin (not crypto) directly. But the Bitcoin network isn't really ready for that anyway, yet, so a slow transition is the smart approach. Advancements in level 2 techs are making BTC easier to use. The Lightning network is a good first step, and eventually there will be new advancements developed that either enhance Lighting, or replace it altogether. That's what tech does. It evolves, increases efficiencies.
for trade to operate smoothly, the amount of currency in circulation must suit the amount of goods being traded.
New debt is required to manipulate that currency fluctuation.
So yes, that system fails without direct manipulation of the currency in circulation.
The new system doesn't require new debt. It actually holds the massive corporations accountable for poor business practices.
It exposes them without the Gov bailing them out because they're "too big to fail".
If companies were not able to take advantage of the not-yet-inflated money they get from central banks right after massive money printing by the Fed, they would then be in the same boat as the rest of us, level the playing field, and have real consequences to poor management.
The mentality of the "economy" can't just be Wall St related.
The USA is no longer the industrial power it used to be. And that's squarely on the shoulders of all the politicians who use the lie of a "strong" economy equaling a numbers up Wall St.
It's only the financial power at this point, and even that is crumbling because other countries are starting to see they don't need to own US debt anymore.
The bond market is collapsing. That's all the Fed really cares about. Nothing else matters to them. Because they know if that fails, they've failed, and everyone will see the house of cards shell game that they've been running for over a century is done.
True investments are in production of real goods and services, not just Futures and paper on Wall St.
We need more people investing in themselves, starting their own businesses again. Not sending their "investment" money overseas where all the real productivity has been sent.
if the value of the currency keeps rising, nobody will ever invest in or engage in productive activity.
A slow rise in the value of the currency won't eliminate investing in good production activity.
On the contrary, if people can take more chances on opportunities of their own, like a small business, because of a more stable currency and less risk, there will still be economic growth. They just won't have to rely on "neighbors", banks, or other debt, because they'll be able to actually save up for it. And not be so reliant on Wall St/central banking. Think outside of the box of Keynesian economy classes.
Take a look into the history of the gold Florin. It was the currency used in the Italian region from the mid-1200's to the mid-1400's.
It was a currency that remained mostly constant during that time, because the rulers left it alone, which led to economic stability, and eventually allowed people to stop living day to day and start planning ahead, which further stabilized the society to the point of expanding the economy so much that it led to the Renaissance Age. Because the money was stable, people's time preference slowed and could begin other interests, like art and culture. The Renaissance is widely considered one of the most concentrated eras of human growth in history. And it would not have been possible without the stability that the Florin provided.
Of course greedy and corrupt dictators wouldn't leave it alone and eventually manipulated it as well. But the 2 centuries of the stable gold Florin is one of the longest lasting examples of a sound money base in history.
the whole system of maintaining the ledger is financed by the node operators mining more coins.
Miners and network nodes are two different things.
The
miners do the proof of work required to
enter the transactions to the ledger.
They are compensated with transaction fees and a block reward. The fees vary based on volume of the transactions, but still typically cheaper than other forms of money transfers. And the block reward is the only way new BTC (not crypto) is introduced to the supply. (until the final 21million are mined)
As the block rewards are halved every ~4 yrs, the miners have already adapted their transaction fees to make sure it is still profitable to continue once the block rewards are less, and eventually gone.
The job of
verifying those transactions and keeping the ledger clean and true is done by the vast network of
decentralized nodes running the Bitcoin core software all around the world. And anyone can run a node, become a part of securing the safest decentralized ledger in history.
The miners need the nodes and vise versa. It's a symbiotic relationship.
Unlike the current system which is a parasitic relationship of the Fed and Gov at the top feeding off everyone at the bottom through theft by inflation, taxation, and currency manipulation.
Money serves three purposes: Exchange, store of value, and investment.
- Medium of exchange: A portable instrument that is
used as an intermediary to facilitate the sale and purchase of goods between parties.
- Store of Value: An asset that can
retain its purchasing power into the future and can be retrieved to be used again at a later time.
The value of the US dollar has lost more than 96% of its purchasing power since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913.
- Unit of Account: K
eeps track of changes in the value of items over time and multiple transactions.
This is not what investments do. Investment is not a primary purpose/function of money. It's not even a secondary function.
Investments are not a
required purpose for money at all.
It sounds more like what a
ledger does. Like what the Bitcoin (not crypto) blockchain does. Hmm.
Dude, we can pick each other's cases apart forever. I'm not trying to convert you.
Simply trying to put to rest some false accusations against Bitcoin (not crypto) that are out there and hopefully encourage others to do their own research.
If it's not for you, so be it. I just don't want someone hearing false negatives and making up their mind based on those.
Education is everything. And in a world of "fake news" channels, and clickbait cherry-picking articles, it's hard to know what's real and what isn't.
The toughest to get to listen are those, like you, who have benefitted the most from the current system. Why would they want anything to change? They're happy with the status quo, I get it.
But for every 1 of those folks, there are 10 people who aren't happy with the current system, and may not know they can do something about it now.
I'm here for them.
www.latimes.com
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