Another thing I wonder with bitcoin in particular is if everyone had bitcoin and no other currency, and something like COVID happened, what entity would provide liquidity in order to help those affected by a disaster?
disclaimer: I do not hold any crypto.
I'm sure a person who uses apartments as a store of value in San Francisco (and renting them out) would be quite defensive if the city would want to get rid of zoning regulations.
What? It's not specific to the way you transact. Governments are providing liquidity, if the whole world used crypto they would do payouts the same way just in crypto. Perhaps I misunderstand the question.
What "entity" would give people bitcoins?
Market making in crypto is usually done by overcollateralized liquidity pools, farming and staking.
For most of history, countries couldn't make money appear out of thin air (outside of mining more silver or later gold, which has practical limits). In good times countries made a tax surplus that they could spend in bad times. Or they borrow money from financiers and pay it back later.
1. https://www.history.com/news/how-did-the-gold-standard-contr....
But the power to just print money has to be used responsibly, there's no shortage of examples of countries damaging their economy by triggering hyperinflation. And if you want a global currency there is no institution that would be trusted with that kind of responsibilty by enough countries.
Of course the power to print money comes with responsibility. That isn't up for debate.
I think you will find hyperinflation more tightly correlated with economic sanctions that cut off countries from the global trade market. A currency is worthless if you can't buy goods with it.
It's a phenomena that grew out of western imperialists that levied massive debts on their former colonies in exchange for independence. Colonies that reneged on those debts were sanctioned. Physically and violently prevented from engaging in trade, ships pilfered etc. Many new governments responded by printing the money those debts were issued in - if they could.
Maybe if governments weren’t able to paper themselves out of bad decisions, they would make fewer bad decisions?
And to fix those bad decisions, they resorted to drastic measures like seizing property. Gradual inflation of fiat currency is a dramatic improvement over those days.