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Comment by xiphias2 | Hacker News Reader

,,The U.S. dollar was originally defined under a bimetallic standard of 371.25 grains (24.057 g) fine silver or, from 1837, 23.22 grains (1.505 g) fine gold, or $20.67 per troy ounce''.

The definition of the US dollar changed over time, but according to how it was defined originally, it lost 99% of its value.

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The purpose of currency is not to retain long term value. The purpose is to act as a means of exchange so we don't have to barter for transactions.

If you want a long-term hold of value - buy some sort of asset that has utility beyond it's trading value.

This is the key thing 99.9% of the crypto community does not understand.

The winning crypto, one day, will be the one that DOES NOT make you rich.

Exactly. This is why Eth has a wildly superior value proposition than pretty much any other coin, because it drives a useful blockchain ecosystem and isn’t just another stagnant store of value…

Unfortunately, ETH, while definitely better, still makes the same deflationary mistake. The ETH money supply growth is still effectively a negative interest rate since economies grow much much faster than their ever-shrinking coin generation.

It is the reason gas prices are choking Ethereum economic activity.

> The winning crypto, one day, will be the one that DOES NOT make you rich.

Well said! I bailed on Bitcoin in 2017 when I started seeing breathless coverage on CNBC. Once the speculators get out, cryptocurrencies could become very powerful. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening any time soon. Crypto needs to become boring before it can become useful.

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