This won't ever happen because pretty much nobody who matters wants this. BTC today is firmly a "store of value", where "value" is measured in USD, and the only point of it is to buy it low, and sell high, for USD.
You won't find many today who think buying pizza in BTC is a good idea.
BTC is also completely unsuitable for using as a currency given the block size limit.
Now: we use the Crypto.Com Visa™ credit card with a Bitcoin sticker on it.
Until the point that nobody wants to be the USD bag holder.
Plenty of boomers still don’t think of saving USD as a terrible idea because they were trained their whole life to have faith in it. They are being robbed in plain sight, sadly. But younger generations won’t put up with it.
Apparently yes, a bunch of people are buying cars now at temporarily inflated prices when prices are expected to tank
https://autos.yahoo.com/analysts-warn-possible-used-car-1510...
If you mean to say it's not deflationary because there's a limited amount of it that doesn't technically decrease, that doesn't help.
First, Bitcoin does lose coins over time. When wallet keys are lost, or "dust" happens, that means that money can't ever be spent again. This is independent of the USD value.
Second, the economy can grow. Eg, if the population grows, or a factory starts producing more goods, then there's now more stuff per unit of currency. That's still deflation.
That's exactly what happens with computers and, last I heard, computers are still being purchased.
I'm not sure whether you're opposed to the USD compared to other currencies, or cash in general opposed to stocks/bonds etc. For the former point, the US military's strength* ensures that the dollar is likely to stay the strongest of currencies even in a medium-term environment (say 50-100 years in my estimate), with only the Euro coming close.
For the latter, I don't think that was what the earlier posters were talking about.
* I'm not saying spending so much on the military is necessarily a good idea, neither am I a US citizen
Most people already don't "save" USD. They save equities and then trade them back into USD when it's time to retire. I don't see how BTC changes this other than adding another equity to the list of stuff you can invest in.
With sound money, people could work and save without needing to constantly gamble just to maintain buying power.
If bitcoin replaces fiat, bitcoin becomes the main representation of value. It no longer goes up against a trading pair of fiat. I speculate that its buying power would stabilize and become fairly static.
> Let’s assume BTC replaces fiat (USD)
If BTC replaces fiat, I don't believe it would increase in buying power at a rapid rate. I think it would gradually increase in buying power over time only because the total supply will gradually shrink due to lost coins / dust /etc.
They'll see it as this thing that the old people are all hoarding, and they'll have none of it... Why sign on for an uphill battle for BTC over any other token?
Seems to me that crypto projects should have tangible side effects, so that future generations can value them (or not) based on whether they want to see more of those effects. Compared to that, a fat BTC wallet in cold storage looks like somebody who sucked value out of their community rather than reinvesting it to make positive changes. Why reward such a person by valuing their tokens?
Because the more you think about Bitcoin and the more you learn about how fiat works the more broken the world seems and Bitcoin becomes all that matters.
Despite being just numbers it's the only value in the world that real and you can truly own. You can't even truly own a house in most of the world.
You can transact with your bitcoins *today* without being affected by the blocksize: just use the Lightning network.
It's a solved problem, so it's stupid to bring it up again and again nowadays.
wow, I don't know what kind of hope this is, and I avoid commenting on any crypto currency[0]. Since the comment appears to be genuine, I've felt compelled.
[0]: calling it them "crypto" is an insult to the rest of the cryptography, though
We're operating under this illusion that all value is the same because we use USD as a unit of account, but it causes a lot problems. To give just one example, look at US policy in Latin America in the 80s: We would give weapons to terrorists, and the bargain was that once they had overthrown their governments, the new ones would respect our money. Then, having made ourselves into aristocrats, we'd come in and make off with their natural resources (e.g. Chilean copper).
Better would be that if you want to influence people in a community that you aren't a member of, you have to contribute types of value that actually align with the values of those people.
Of course having only two types, as GP suggests: fiat-value and crypto-value--that's a pretty impoverished type system. I'd rather have carbon-footprint-value and space-exploration-value and infrastrucure-maintenance-value... so that the allocation of types of value in my wallet are sort of an expression of my political will. This way, poison-the-well-and-sell-bottled-water-value can be rejected by pretty much everybody (as it should), while other sectors remain untarnished.
How would you represent/express space exploration value?
By holding a token and using it as money, I give power to whoever controls its issuance. I'd like more choices about who that is.
Because the money we use is not specific about its intent, people have to accept or reject it all together. It's too big to fail. You can't decline to do business in slavery-money because you have no way of knowing which money is slavery-money. It's all just money-money.
In a typed-value system, you can notice that a certain kind of value is associated with economic activity that hurts people, and you can respond by setting it to 0% in your wallet. This will prevent you from accidentally contributing to its continuation. If all of the good guys do this, then the only people left for the bad guys to do business with will be other bad guys--which will make it more expensive for them to operate.
Sure, factions will emerge, but rather than being delusional about their own efficacy and a drag on the entire system, unsustainable or otherwise objectionable economies will eventually find that nobody accepts their money, and they'll have to change their ways.
You shouldn't be able to retire on wealth made at future generations' expense. Instead, saving for retirement should involve contributing to endeavors that future generations will be happy about.
> If I have gold and you have space coloration there will always be a trade that makes it worth while.
By keeping gold to yourself (and out of the electronics that are useful for making space ships) you're holding back the projects that I think are important. So there's one reason for me to not value your gold, what reason do I have to value it?
Do you mentally compare USD to other random obscure currencies? Of course not. And in a future when USD has been replaced, nobody will care to mentally determine USD prices.
Another way to consider it: when you go to the grocery store, you don’t think about how many sats something costs. Because USD is still king.
My employer can't pay me in crypto because they only have USD flowing in to their business in exchange for their products and services.
What you describe would require basically the entire economy to somehow abandon its fiat currency and switch to crypto - - - I think if this scenario is supposed to be taken remotely seriously, you have to explain how that scenario is supposed to develop - something more than hope that in the future...
Gradually, then Suddenly
Unfortunately I believe we get there via chaos, winners, and losers. I don’t believe the transition will be equitable and clean because I don’t see any way that would be possible. And yet, it’ll be worth it in order to have sound money.
Maybe you should try to look further than yourself. Miners are getting paid in crypto, crypto exchanges are getting paid in crypto. It just has to start somewhere. Investors with crypto staking are getting paid in crypto, or hodlers see their assets increase in value.
Diamonds are getting bought with crypto: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/10/billion-year-old-black-diamo...
Houses in Dubai are getting bought with crypto.
I would say crypto is already kickstarted, let's just see how far it can take us.
It will take us only up to the point where we can no longer convert crypto into actual currency (you know, "money"). After that whoever has crypto will be left "holding the bag", and all the boiler-room operators will have long-ago cashed out.
I wish we could just have digital currency that is traceable, secure, and stable without all the insane hyper-libertarian social-Darwinist scammer stuff.
What is actual currency and why does it have value? And do you feel "actual currency" is perfect as-is with no room for any improvement?
But if we're going to talk about "room for improvement" crypto is much farther from being perfect than the US dollar, Euro, Yen and virtually any other fiat currency that seem to have so many issues according to the crypto enthusiasts.
In fact, crypto currency can't even function as a currency at this point. Not even close.
Of course if you are asking as a rhetorical question - there is room for improvement. BUT - there have been millennia of variations on the concept, experiments, and many failures. As recent history, why don't you read about the United States prior to the Federal Reserve Act. Each state (or even smaller jurisdictions or communities) could produce their own currencies. Company towns operated on their own scrip (analogous to their own chains). How was that? Imagine taking a trip from Town A to Town B and discovering that your money is not accepted at the Town B tavern and inn. Or, is accepted but at a 50% discount to Town B's currency. Which is not accepted for purchase in town A. That was reality in the US and in other places too.
Actual modern fiat currency is still imperfect, as is every cryptocurrency, every computer, and every other thing devised by humans. But. Somehow we have around $90 trillion (equivalent) of economic activity on our humble and imperfect planet, operating on fiat currency systems.
So, I'd ask back, (1) what are the shortcomings of this amazingly successful world economy that operates on fiat currencies and (2) how, precisely, does cryptocurrency improve upon these shortcomings, WITHOUT creating negative externalities that negate proposed benefit?
For example, miners are getting paid in crypto. OK, but what are they using to buy the computers they use and to pay electric bills and the like? I'm guessing is is hard currency...