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Comment by Webox | Hacker News Reader

I don't get your argument.

Bitcoin is very very volatile and just because it went up the last x years, doesn't make it stable or trustworthy.

My money in my bank is very safe and it doesn't cost me anything.

The inflation itself is a systematic thing and should affect bitcoin equaly.

When corona came, i was looking at the stock market and was surprised how many people left it. It doesn't make much sense to distrist the stock market that much. After all alot of pension funds are existing, lots of companies or people who are self employed also have to keep their money safe. There is a lot of dependency on the share market and we are all bound to a certain degree of not being able to move it out asap.

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I'm assuming you're in the US/Europe/somewhere with a stable currency. Places like Argentina that have had serious devaluation of currency do not see money in their bank accounts as "safe".

Bitcoin can provide a way for e.g. Argentinians to get their money into other currencies when the government is actively preventing that through "standard" mechanisms. It's safe (er, safer) from that perspective.

This isn't a very good use case for bitcoin. It's very easy to buy coins, but getting your money out is as difficult as various governments want it to be. Most of the major exchanges have KYC and anti money laundering laws that can make it hard to transfer large amounts of any crypto into a spendable currency.

If a government is preventing people from transferring money through standard mechanisms, it's only a matter of time until they prevent them from using crypto to do that. If the best use is circumventing the law, it isn't much of a currency at all

How is it safe when it's so volatile and based on speculation?

As someone from a country which has had its currency's value slashed to half 5 years ago, I genuinely don't see how Bitcoin is safe at all. If anything, gold or real estate are safer.

Sure, if it is somehow guaranteed that I won't wake up tomorrow seeing 1 BTC = $30 000, I could see your argument. But is that guaranteed?

I would also like to add that the swings that BTC takes are unpredictable (at least for the common people who would benefit from it being a safe storage for their wealth).

As somebody who saw family wealth slashed 100x due to crazy inflation just 20 years ago, 2x fluctuations are nothing. This is the perspective worth recognizing. Bitcoin is actually very stable by comparison. Edit: fat fingers typing.

Ouch. My condolences.

Yeah, if things are that bad, it could be viable.

Civil war is another viable scenario. However, one should also assess the situation properly if his/her country is in civil war. If things go bad and you have to escape, "safe passage for x amount of gold I have on hand" is more guaranteed than "safe passage for x BTC I promise to pay".

Nothing guarantees you at all, that bitcoin doesn't fall today from 60k back to 100.

A TransferWise Borderless account that allows you to store any of 80 currencies including the USD, in Argentina, is a much better system.

Not to mention, a $20 transaction fee in Argentina is devastating.

> My money in my bank is very safe and it doesn't cost me anything.

Your money is safe, your wealth is not. Taking the US as a reference, it is official government policy that if you store your wealth as money then it has a half life of 35 years.

> Bitcoin is very very volatile and just because it went up the last x years, doesn't make it stable or trustworthy.

I was sneaky in my wording - I'm a gold bug and think Bitcoin is worthless. Nevertheless, a rational person who was interested in bitcoin would probably note that whatever its bad points it is simply not subject to the sort of technical intervention that makes fiat untrustworthy.

Also, using gold as a reference, the unofficial policy half life looks more like 12 years. Using the M2, maybe 14 years.

Supply is only half the inflation calculation, the other half is velocity. That's why the increase in the M2 supply doesn't translate to what you're paying at the grocery store. You've missed half the equation. [1]

[1] https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2014/september/wha...

I'm not missing anything, I just don't care about the inflation calculation. I'm using gold and the M2.

Ok, so you're doing it incorrectly then. That's fine, but it seems weird to give advise on the basis of information that you know is wrong.

That's got all the argumentative power of a damp noodle. If you happen to be using the CPI to adjust your portfolio, you might be saying you've experienced real growth when your investments are literally being outperformed by the steadily growing value of an inert rock.

The inflation rate is basically a proxy measure of wage growth [0]. The money printing hasn't going in to wages. It isn't appropriate to use the CPI to adjust wealth, because then you'd be mistaking asset price inflation for productive growth and putting money into things that don't earn real returns (ie, are grossly mismanaged).

[0] https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2015/november/rela...

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