Bitcoin has wild swings in value just because. It has no inherent value so it can be priced at anything. Meanwhile the Fed manages the USD to keep the currency stable, ie avoiding inflation or deflation as much as possible.
You can't debase bitcoin because it has no basis to begin with.
“The price may fall” is a nice way to say “the value would be mostly erased”
Like with any store of value, the value of bitcoin is backed by the fact that people believe it holds value.
Unlike gold, however, bitcoin has no practical value in and of itself. (Gold, at least, looks pretty and doesn’t really decay. It’s a great conductor of electricity too)
Bitcoin also isn’t as eternal as gold. In a doomsday scenario where global internet access goes down, gold would still work, bitcoin would not.
You can’t debase gold either.
So what value does bitcoin have? It’s easier to transfer, maybe? (One must compete with gas prices IIRC)
No, it means the value would be much much closer to 0 than it is now. That’s why I said “mostly erased” and not “entirely erased”
> Gold wouldnt survive your doomsday scenario either
Yes it would… if the internet goes down, gold will still “survive.”
It’s not going anywhere…
> if youre going that far to find the fault in bitcoin then you will also have to concede that your gold is just going to be a metal
“a metal” has inherent value as a material. A record in a digital ledger does not…
> worthless in a scenario where guns and bullets mean holding power, no matter how pretty it looks or which technologies depend on it.
You say that, but historically gold was valuable even though technology didn’t depend on it and even though guns existed. Even before that, actually.
It’s strange that I need to explain that…
Please tell me that you know that markets have existed and exist without the internet.
In those markets, gold is and was valued…
> Historically gold was valuable because it was somewhat rare and you could barter with it.
Historically and currently. The existence of the internet doesn’t change that…