Is the price increasing, or are their fiat currencies worth less? Hyperinflation is real, bank runs are real, and Bitcoin never fails an audit.
For all practical purposes, it really isn't. Hyperinflation is a boogeyman used by deficit hawks and Bitcoin supporters to scare people into supporting their way of thinking without providing real arguments.
Think about it: people talk as though hyperinflation is always just around the corner, waiting to pounce at the slightest misstep. But in the last century, through all the ups and downs of the economic cycle, amounting to thousands of "country-years", how many instances of hyperinflation (other than countries totally destroyed by war) have there been? The answer is: three. Weimar Germany, Zimbabwe, and Yugoslavia. Don't you think it would be more frequent if it was really such a serious threat?
And none of those three examples are even really relevant. Germany's hyperinflation happened when we had a pre-modern grasp of monetary theory, and Zanzibar and Yugoslavia were both ruled by ignorant despots. I'm just gonna come out and say it: in a modern country with even a marginally competent central bank (which we have, whether you want to admit it or not), hyperinflation cannot happen; it is a myth.
> bank runs are real
Have there been any bank runs in the developed world in the last half-century where people actually lost their deposits? Again, a government with even the minimum amount of competence to institute deposit insurance makes it not an issue.
> Bitcoin never fails an audit
Only for a uselessly narrow definition of "Bitcoin". The protocol itself, sure, but for almost every company that actually does business in Bitcoin, it's a different story. Every Bitcoin exchange either has gone bust or will, most Bitcoin mining companies are scams that only ship once the difficulty has increased to the point where the hardware is no longer useful, etc.
I understand SHA-256 and ECC; they are easy to trust and more trustworthy than authority. Bitcoin is the most simple thing that could possibly work; and it meets "worse is better" criteria.
What backs FDIC insurance? A haircut, or printed money?
You are describing ordinary inflation, and using the word "hyperinflation" to make it sound scarier than it is. That is FUD. And "lost half its value" completely ignores the fact that nominal wages have increased at the same time. Please don't use this first-grade nonsense on Hacker News, you're talking to intelligent people here.
> At a time when the US Dollar is falling in significance as a global reserve currency, and a central bank holding ~$4.5 trillion in assets, you have no doubts?
The US dollar is falling in significance as a global reserve currency, being replaced by... the fiat currencies of other nations. How does this prove the ascendancy of Bitcoin?
> I understand SHA-256 and ECC; they are easy to trust and more trustworthy than authority.
You did not read my previous post. Bitcoin itself it perfectly fine, but it is too low-level to use for most practical transactions, you need to build layers of abstraction (futures, exchanges, wallets) on top of it. These are mostly run by companies that are either extremely shady, have terrible security, or both.
> What backs FDIC insurance? A haircut, or printed money?
A large insurance fund paid for by bank taxes, as even a few minutes of research would tell you.
There are good arguments in favor of Bitcoin, but I want you to understand that when its defenders routinely trot out the same easily-disproven cookie-cutter arguments repeated on autopilot, it becomes very easy for people not to take you seriously.
Banking is a Prisoner's Dilemma, because the first ones to escape get their cash, the middle ones deal with insurance, and the last ones lose everything.
Use always-audited Bitcoin. Readers here have an advantage of being able to understand the underlying technology.
Venezuela would like to have a word.