Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

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It's not, actually - the total value of all physical $USD (M0) is only about $3.8T, vs. the figure of $100-300T given for total wealth (which seems low to me, BTW).

The actual truth is even weirder: if Bitcoin takes over as the world currency, its value in $USD will be infinite, but the question will be meaningless, as the dollar will be worthless. Currencies tend to be winner-take-all within a society; if one takes over, its rivals lose all value, as their only value is in being a medium of exchange and store of value.

This is perhaps a contributory factor to the Bitcoin's volatility: if you actually believe it's going to succeed, unambiguously, the rational thing to do is to move all your wealth to Bitcoin. And similarly, if you believe it's going to fail, the currency by definition is worthless.

There are 164 national currencies in the world. The USD is the defaco world currency and the USD is not worth infinite of other currencies and the rest are certainty not worthless.

I think the US government tolerates crypocurrencies because realistically they are far more damaging to countries like Venezula and China who have much more restrictive economies and in those countries the flexibility of bitcoin is a huge advantage.

How many aircraft carries does bitcoin have? 0. Which (in my opinion) happens to be the exact same chance of bitcoin usurping the USD as a global currency short of some fundamental change in world power.

The thought experiment explicitly implies BitCoin usurping the $USD as a global currency, and presumably all other ones as well. I'd agree with your assessment of which countries/currencies are realistically much more likely to suffer, but thought I'd engage with the thought experiment on its original premise.

On the aircraft carrier issue - the killer app (literally) for cryptocurrencies is autonomous weapon systems. Imagine if you could deposit $Xm Bitcoins into an address and have access to a fleet of 100,000 drones on 10,000 speedboats. At that point, we're really in uncharted territory, though.

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