Comment by incomingpain | Hacker News Reader

Comment by incomingpain | Hacker News Reader

Crypto is a greater-fool investment, hence the cultfest. You require someone else to come with their money in order for you to exit successfully.

The difference with say stock market is that theoretically you're buying future cashflows. Similarly can never exist for crypto.

The interesting thing is that it's a bad comparison. You should compare crypto not to stocks but rather fiat currency. Fiat currency is a greater fool investment but worse. The central bank goes and prints oodles of new money effectively taking purchasing power from you. Even worse than that. They like to pretend to give you 0.1% in your savings account. You are only losing slightly slower.

Being inflationary is bad for you personally; good for the economy; and great for central banks who can print money to fund deficit spending.

What is crypto even anyone? It's really just minting your own currency with a clear set of rules and letting transactions happen. What is a '99 Mclaren F1? It's also a deflationary currency with unusual set of rules to let transactions happen for the rich. What difference is a Picasso or other painting from crypto? Certainly deflationary.

Fundamentally the rich have been playing the deflationary currency game for a long time using paintings, hypercars, antique coins, stocks, etc.

Pick your poison to avoid the central bank inflation game. Stop paying for the government's deficits by holding fiat currency.

I mean. Yes. That's kind of the point of inflationary currency: to encourage capital investment in industry and innovation via stocks, bonds, or whatever. The fact that you're discouraged from holding onto raw USD is not a bug, it's a feature. Maybe even the whole point.

And it's not just the rich that are "forced" to invest their money in other stuff. Take a look at what assets typical 401ks and pensions funds contain.

Why am I constantly told that mindless consumption is some great evil yet the entire of society is designed to encourage consumption through constant devaluation of the currency? I see no argument why stable value is not the best of all worlds. Deflation and inflation both have economic warping side effects. With a constant price I only invest when I truly believe there is a real return, not just trying to keep up with inflation.

If you want ~cash very very low risk without deflation buy inflation-protected treasuries. (Aka series I bonds)

This is a common misconception, money is not valuable in and of itself, but only as much worth as it has as the "grease" that keeps the gigantic economic machine rolling.

Value is being created all the time. The "total value" of the world is not stable, it's going up, and to make sure those arriving later at the game are not disadvantaged just because they arrived late, currencies need to be slightly inflationary so that they don't keep pooling in the hands of those who got there first.

I mean, why does the central bank have an official 2% inflation target? They should have an official 0% inflation target - stable prices, not 2% increasing prices. Increasing is not stable!

And people always want more - that's the nature of humanity and why we live in skyscrapers instead of caves. You don't need a society-wide psychological experiment of currency-devaluation to encourage people to spend and invest money.

>Why am I constantly told that mindless consumption is some great evil

The history on this is amazing. The rules were written in the 1700s and are still true today. For example, The Law of Nations by Emer de Vattel Founding fathers of the USA used much of the Arab world's recent experiences, at the time, to understand these natural laws and why decadence is the problem.

Consumption isn't evil, it's decadence that is evil. The video game Crusader Kings follows this: https://ck2.paradoxwikis.com/Decadence

What modern day commies are failing to see the distinction and so they see all consumption as decadence. Marx argued against this; but modern commies dont agree with marx. Unnecessary to go into this but this is what you're seeing.

>yet the entire of society is designed to encourage consumption through constant devaluation of the currency? I see no argument why stable value is not the best of all worlds.

Why is inflation pegged at 2% as opposed to say 3%? It comes from gold inflation. There is technically a finite amount of gold in the solar system. There's even less on earth. There's even less accessible via profitable mining. There is a production of gold which dilutes/inflates their value and it averages at 2%.

After governments dropped the gold standard, they artificially kept 2% just because they dont want to be the one to mess with that # and cause something bad to happen and take the blame.

Now step back. Why suddenly is crypto such a big deal? The USA dropped the gold standard, they remained a reserve currency because of their debt ceiling and low debt. At least back in the 70s-80s.

The European Union on the otherhand has debt ceiling defined at 60%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability_and_Growth_Pact

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/government-debt-...

Does that look like 60%? They knew they couldn't stay in the EU. Brexit happened.

https://tradingeconomics.com/france/government-debt-to-gdp

Does that look like 60%? France will be leaving the EU eventually as well. As well as bring their own currency back in order to print money.

These are all natural laws between nations and why it keeps failing. It's decadence. It's decadent deficit spending on things they cannot afford. This is what modern day commies dont seem to understand that Marx did explain.

>Deflation and inflation both have economic warping side effects. With a constant price I only invest when I truly believe there is a real return, not just trying to keep up with inflation.

USSR collapsed and we have so little communism today because communism fails to handle decadence. Though yes it did function for so long because the decadence was in the 'black market'. Mind you, capitalism doesn't seem to do a great job neither. Not many countries have the mind to control their deficit spending and limit their decadence.

You're 99% there: there is no reason to want inflation or deflation. But the final wrinkle is that if your wealth is sitting around as money, it's not "doing" anything.

One concept I've had in the past is a currency system where you never hold the medium of exchange for any length of time. Instead, you have something like an ultra-diversified investment portfolio that covers a massive swath of securities, commodities, etc. that you can buy microshares of. You could picture an electronic transaction system where prices are denominated in dollars, and whenever you want to buy something, you briefly trade away your shares for dollars and pass them to the seller, who immediately resolves those dollars back into shares.

In other words, your store of value is electronically handled by owning shares of things that have literal value, and you never have to worry about how much the medium of exchange is "worth". Creation or destruction of dollars is not really a concern for the users of such a system.

Obviously, though, there are some holes in this system in terms of implementation, otherwise I'd probably be off working on it!

A bond with maturity that vests into USD is an asset held in the currency.

You dont want to be holding bonds.

You don't hold bonds to make money, but to have a relatively safe place to store your money with a good chance of minimal losses.

> Crypto is a greater-fool investment, hence the cultfest. You require someone else to come with their money in order for you to exit successfully.

That's only true if someone saving in Bitcoin intends to "exit". I certainly don't intend to ever exit. I will spend it however, when it's widely accepted as payment.

We should review where things are at in 20 years. Talk to you then.

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