Certainly if I was selling something I'd denominate it in something relative stable and then change Bitcoin asking price to match the exchange rate to that stable currency. Since the currency there is the USD... Yeah, I'd still be pricing my goods and services in USD.
#BITCOIN: 543% LUMBER: 372% CORN: 126% COPPER: 104% GASOLINE: 69% COFFEE: 56% HOME SALES: 16%
US DOLLAR: 2% if you believe the official CPI
Slow and steady inflation is a stated goal for most governments and central banks.
Every deviation from the expected deflation would be an opportunity for arbitrage. Also, the deflation isn't guaranteed, so it carries a risk, which disincentivizes hoarding.
People will always spend for things they need, they'll also spend it for things they want, but the current fiat system is forcing to spend it just for the sake of spending it forcing over/pointless consumerism on everyone.
It appears some here believe in the labor theory of value. For me, if I cant do better than the machine, then I am not adding value and need to do something else.
This is why wage stagnation or when wages do not keep pace with inflation it's bad.
… then your boss says sales are down and your salary is being cut. “Don’t worry, your purchasing power hasn’t changed!”
… then you need to go to each creditor and try to renegotiate your balance so you’re not overpaying at the current value rather than what it was when you bought your house or car.
… meanwhile the economy slowly grinds to a halt as people and businesses hesitate to get loans for the same reason. That’s when the layoffs start ramping up, which does not improve the state of the economy.
This used to happen periodically and it was ruinous — it’s why systems like the Federal Reserve were created and almost all serious economists target consistent low inflation levels since that has the opposite effect of incentivizing economic activity.
If you can get out of debt, you may see the benefit of bitcoin as a store of value. If you are in debt slavery, you of course want easy money to make your debts easier to pay.
In fact we see this in a small scale in the tech sector all the time: products get more powerful or cheaper or both, meaning people who might want to upgrade often agonize over waiting to spend their money to a point where it will obtain more per unit of value.
Or with Crypto, consider the HODL mentality. BTC would have made a lot more progress towards use as a medium of exchange if an enormous number of people weren't simply buying it on the hope of future value, or speculate by continuously selling the peak and buying the dip. There's even the cautionary tales in the crypto community against actually using any if it to cash out for purchases, such as the person who paid for a Pizza with enough bitcoin to be worth over $100,000,000 today. The message is "Never use it, always HODL" Of course there's always the anecdotal person here an HN who will chime in with, That's not true, I just bought X with it!". Which is fine, but an extreme outlier.
It will never deliver on it's goals when that, and investment speculation, are the two dominant use cases. Bitcoin is trapped in a cul-de-sac right now, and absent some unexpected event, mainstream everyday use of crypto by average people-- if that comes to pass-- will bypass BTC by as it circles around that cul-de-sac.
Because they like controlling their people, keeping them poor, and robbing the value they create.
Authoritarianism is tyranny by another name.
Yeah, the dollar. Because I can be confident that my $USD won't lose half its value in two months. That's what I need in a currency.
:-P
I suspect we're on the verge of a nasty bubble and the only tool the Fed has shown they're confident of using is printing more money.
If there's a place in the world that would currently be a good test bed for a country to make BTC legal tender, it's not El Salvador. Its population simply isn't in a position take much of a risk moving from hard currency like the USD to a volatile asset class.
I don't think you're supposed to store your wealth in cash if you want to preserve it (diversified equity holding are a popular investment too in case you find cryptocurrencies too volatile).