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znt | 4 years ago
The thing is is your average American would never even consider the ultimate possibility of a foundational collapse of their economy and currency.
And it's not just the average American. Nearly all hedge funds etc have USD as their basis.
Bitcoin, Gold, Stocks, real estate etc has a value tag that's denominated in Dollars.
You open up your portfolio and be happy when the USD value goes up in a nice green color.
But what happens when USD gets diluted and debased so much that it's not possible to stop anymore. Are we not past point of no return already?
Debasement of currency marked the end of the Roman empire, why would American empire be any different?
Because US has nukes?
Because they can force the rest of the world to keep using USD at gunpoint?
For how long?
chollida1|4 years ago
This is false, many have CAD, EUR, and other currencies as their basis.
> Bitcoin, Gold, Stocks, real estate etc has a value tag that's denominated in Dollars.
This is false as well. You can measure BTC,Gold, stocks or realestate in any currency you want.
Do you really think Canadians denominate their real estate in USD? Why would BTC, Gold or stocks be any different.
The US denominates BTC, Gold, Stocks and real estate in USD. The reset of hte world uses their own currency.
thereare5lights|4 years ago
The fall of the Roman Empire had so many causes that to attribute it to one thing is misleading at best.
unknown|4 years ago
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csomar|4 years ago
And the alternative? The EUR which is held by an EU that will likely break in the future. The CNY which is held by China (great idea :) ) or Russia's currency which is inflating like there is no tomorrow.
Bitcoin/Gold could be a hedge but it's quite volatile to preserve value especially for short/medium term holding periods.
There is no alternative to the USD at the moment.
samatman|4 years ago
Which is a huge if! That's the maximalist bet, and I still have trouble believing in it even as I've watched intermediate predictions come true.
If the BTC chain became a Schelling point, where all market players see it as their best move to hold some, then eventually a satoshi could be worth about a 2021 US cent. It would then be unlikely to fluctuate more than a fraction of a percent in BTC/fiat pairs per day, unless one of those fiat coins happened to be hyperinflating.
If both of those things happened, then pricing things in satoshis would be more stable than pricing them in fiat, because that's what hyperinflation is: it's when inflation in a currency gets so bad that it becomes a bad unit of account.
The fact that there's no alternative to the USD at the moment is the best argument for the BTC chain forming that Schelling point. But! It hasn't happened, and contrary the maximalists, there is no law of nature which says that it will.
TMWNN|4 years ago
People and countries outside the US don't use the dollar because of the US military, any more than they use the Swiss franc because of the Swiss military. They use both currencies (and the UK pound, and the Euro, and the Japanese yen) because decades of experience show that the countries that issue said currencies are the least likely to default on their financial obligations, and are most transparent about their own financials.
Russians and Chinese themselves avoid using their own countries' currencies when abroad as much as possible because they are most aware of this. To put another way, the primacy of the dollar isn't a supply issue (something that the US directly forces), but a demand issue (it's the currency everyone else prefers to use).
(This is where you'll bring up the "petrodollar". No, the petrodollar isn't real. Well, it's real in the sense that oil is, like almost every other product, usually denominated in US dollars when sold internationally. What's not real is the theory that the US has a particular need for (say) Iraq back in the day to denominate its oil sales in dollars, as opposed to Euro. Or that Venezuela attempting to denominate its oil in yuan today surely augurs the collapse of the US economy tomorrow.)
jkhdigital|4 years ago
After decades of this, we've reached the point where the US Dollar is so deeply embedded in nearly every global supply chain that everyone needs it all the time. I don't think it has anything to do with being transparent about financials or unlikely to default; it's just accepted everywhere and has a better stock-to-flow ratio (i.e. stability) than the alternatives.
bubbleRefuge|4 years ago
jkhdigital|4 years ago
imtringued|4 years ago
Other countries are dumping their deficit into the US and we are the ones pretending that the US is doing something wrong.
runawaybottle|4 years ago