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Calamity | 4 years ago
The core concept of bitcoin is that it is decentralized and away from the prying "government". That's what also gives it its "safe haven" allure in much the same way as gold. The question is, is this really to society's benefit? Just think about this past year with COVID - if government didn't have the ability to impact the financial markets and everything was strictly down to human emotion, I'm sure we'd be in a worse place than we are now. Same goes for 2008. Through its actions, the FED is trying to actively avert financial distress - its goal is stability. As a corollary, if you believe that bitcoin will be there to save the day if the entire modern financial system collapses, then I believe you would be sorely mistaken. I'm not sure how such a technology and government infrastructure dependent currency would be usable in a world that has descended into chaos.
I mean just think about a world where Bitcoin is the only currency. So the mega-wealthy are suddenly some early hoarders of the currency who, by holding onto their currency, see their overall wealth INCREASE (through depreciation and constriction of the monetary supply). A currency's main role should be to promote and facilitate financial activity and trade... They sit their with their thousands of bitcoins whilst the rest of the world is transacting in smaller and smaller fractions of bitcoin.
Imagine back in Medieval times: A king sits on his throne with a pile of gold behind him. If he chose not spend it spend and simply kept taxing his people, he would not only accumulate more gold, but the value of every piece of gold would suddenly increase (in the peasant's economy) as the entire peasant population had less gold to do trade with (depreciation). This would further encourage hoarding money instead of using it - i.e. the whole reason currency depreciation is harmful to financial activity.
brezelgoring|4 years ago
No objections, just wanted to point out the confusion.
Calamity|4 years ago