You need to explain this. Many of us just think it's a good replacement for gold and other precious metals. Is gold a "financial weapon of mass destruction"?
how bitcoin will end looks very ugly to me in any case. either collapsing a global economy or bringing an unprecedented global inflation
But there must be something bad about it as well, right?
1- Limited supply prevents money printing and inflationary theft. Besides there are many coin alternatives and a BTC can be divided to a hundred million units.
2- No `central` authority is a big plus (probably the best property of it). Once crypto coin pass its infancy, the volatility will be much lower.
3-Ease of access. Another superb property.
2 - this is false. if you know how currencies work you will know that this whole "decentralization" makes no sense. central authority is required for a currency because price needs to be stabilized. unlike what some people believe, bitcoin will not "self-stabilize" because currency stabilization has nothing to do with how many people use it. currency stabilization works by an authority dictating how much it should worth and manipulating market towards it. this is not some conspiracy, it is a protection provided for all currency users. not only bitcoin offer zero protection (completely exposed to vol risk), but also it is not really decentralized as 40% of entire bitcoin owned is owned by 1000 people only.
3 - yes, this is a good property. so there should be a state sponsored coin.
Barely anyone uses bitcoin as a percentage of the world's total population, this isn't even remotely feasible today, or likely even in five years.
this comparisons are _not_ doing either bitcoin nor gold justice.
bitcoin is far more liquid, accessible and usable than gold ever will be. I will start calling it Internet Liquid Gold... because while the transactions might be slow, being able to transfer it across continents multiple times back and forth is possible before someone can go to their version of fort knox and put actual gold in a truck.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/23/germanys-central-bank-just-s...
Precisely, because it's slow and expensive. If you're going to hold out transfers of IOUs in place of actual gold, that can work for any commodity; a Bitcoin IOU would function just as well as a gold IOU. As a practical example, most Bitcoin exchanges allow transfers between members instantaneously and without any notable fees. Of course, that reintroduces a trust relationship. The point of having actual gold in-hand, or actual bitcoins recorded on the blockchain, is that the transfer is completed and effectively irreversible. You don't get that with IOUs.
If we were able to infinitely replicate gold and bitcoins, gold would still have value, bitcoins would not.
as an aside, no one can make infinite of anything so I do not think that part of the comment applies.
Collateralized Debt Obligations - every word in the acronym screams credit. A CDO is an instrument that guarantees you a cash flow based on debt. A guarantee for you is an obligation for someone else. Chains of these guarantees and obligations is what enabled the housing bubble. The breaking of these chains caused the Great Recession.
As far as we know, the crypto bubble is not highly leveraged. One Bitcoin is worth one Bitcoin. It could trade for $1 or $1 million, but you are never obligated to take the offered price as a buyer or seller. Yes, it's complex. But it is technically complex, not relationships-obligations complex.
Good news, crypto is still two orders of magnitude smaller