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Comment by toolz | Hacker News Reader

History is littered with global reserve currencies outright failing or losing its global reserve status. USD failing wouldn't surprise anyone looking at financial systems through a historical lens. Years after it happens (and I don't think anyone truly believes USD is the last global reserve currency humankind will see) it will be painfully obvious to everyone how unsustainable our inflation driven economy is.

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Ok but the last couple of years is littered with crypto projects outright failing, being rugpulled, found out to be scams, taken down by bumbling idiot CEOs...

So looking at the millenia that currencies have existed we can say that it's not impossible that a currency fails. Looking at cryptocurrencies it's extremely possible that any given crypto project fails.

most crypto projects are independent from one another. Most all of these coin failures happen as tokens on typically the ethereum blockchain, yet ethereum still stands strong as well as many others. There's no argument from me that the vast majority of crypto projects will fail and I sometimes wonder why people portray that as a bad thing. In a free market where pure economic incentives choose the winners and losers, most everything fails. That is what a healthy, dynamic economy looks like. A healthy economy wants many participants trying and only a select few who are positioned at the top of any category should continue to succeed as they are the most well equipped to provide goods or services.

tl;dr; numerous failures is a positive economic signal

Ahhhh you nearly said the line - "this is actually good for bitcoin!"

Alright look the only outcome here for me is good. Either cryptocurrencies melt away into nothing and you guys all go off and find a new Thing. Or Cryptocurrencies surprise everyone and somehow a decade after achieving nothing other than hype they finally find a thing they are useful at, and I can use them for that thing. For now I'm going to continue to treat them all like they're means of buying and selling Ape JPEGs until they can do something else though.

The question isn't whether or not the USD can fail. Of course it can. The question to ask is whether Monero or any other given cryptocurrency will fare better than the USD in the event that it does collapse. That seems much less clear at this point in time.

As a thought experiment: if USD were to fail, yet other world currencies stayed afloat, why would anybody holding non-custodial crypto flock to a dying currency? It’s not entirely unreasonable to predict that “crypto” might outlast a central currency, given the ease at which it can span geographic and state borders.

Unless crypto is backed actual economies, as fiat currency is, that will propably not happen anytime soon.

The assumptions here are:

1. USD fails

2. All the other currencies are "dying"

3. (let's say) Monero exists and is not dying

So yes in the scenario you've constructed where everything but a cryptocurrency dies or is dying, crypto is more successful.

You misread - the scenario is that USD is dying, but other state currencies like Euro or JPY stay afloat.

Ok then in that case everyone flocks to the other reserve currencies for all normal goods and services and crypto remains the primary means of exchange on the Ape JPEG market

> if USD were to fail, yet other world currencies stayed afloat,

This "thought experiment" amounts to "suppose I'm right; then I'd be right wouldn't I? Checkmate."

The entire question here hinges on whether there could be scenario where the USD— and only the USD— collapses, without causing so much chaos that cryptocurrencies also become functionally useless. I would argue there is no such plausible scenario.

Sure, if the entire world economy collapses and we go back to the dark ages, crypto (and the internet in general) will be functionally useless. It seems like a given.

I am imagining a scenario where USD fails, but some other state currencies (and the internet) continue to exist.

> History is littered with global reserve currencies outright failing or losing its global reserve status.

No, its not.

Heck, history isn't even littered with global reserve currencies; there's maybe three total—the Spanish Dollar, British Pound Sterling, and US Dollar—and the Pound Sterling is iffy, given the emergence of the gold standard.

(Regional reserve currencies existed previously, but nothing approximating global.)

I don't see anyone arguing that there have been fewer than 6 world reserve currencies in recorded history and plenty that say more. No idea where you're coming up with at most three.

> I don't see anyone arguing that there have been fewer than 6 world reserve currencies in recorded history and plenty that say more

Name six and the time period during which each was the global reserve currency. (Not that six would be enough for history to be “littered with” examples anyway, but...)

Well firstly global in this context just means that most financial authorities held the currency as a reserve, which for a lot of history I believe mostly only european countries had centralized financial authorities. So we're talking about european reserves for much of history. With that said:

  florentine florin  
  venetian ducat  
  portugese real  
  spanish real  
  dutch guilder  
  french livre  
  british sterling  
  USD

to name 8

everyone is capable of deciding if changing reserve currencies every ~100 years is "littered" or not, but it easily passes as being commonplace in my opinion when you're talking about a millennia of history.

Oh nice work! And the failed ones were all global reserve currencies as we would recognise them today ... right?

Happy to give a response if you'd like to argue your point, but otherwise this just seems like a snarky comment for sake of being snarky on the internet.

My point is really well established. Many real currencies, some failed. Many cryptocurrencies, most failed. The "snark" appears to be required to actually drive the point home. I don't care if you want to argue your point.

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