There are many, many ways people who wish to deal in bitcoins can find a way to convert them into USD. Even if that means buying prooducts from overseas using bitcoin, importing them, then selling the products on ebay for USD.
But this analysis misses the time dimension of money: lending, borrowing and interest [1]. Keynes knew that, and before him Marx, and I bet someone before him too. And in this aspect, I find Bitcoin to be an irreversibly brain-damaged, if interesting, experiment. I look at it and see a massively deflationary currency, dependant on a empirical rule of thumb (Moore's Law), that is even today failing to accommodate the mildest exponential growth. When your currency gains value by the hour, actually borrowing and trading and doing capitalist things are losers' propositions.
Don't get me wrong, I see value in an automated currency that can provide at least an amount of anonymity [2]. In my opinion, Bitcoin is just not it. When your economic theory is still getting an erection over the gold standard, like some 19th century robber baron, you know you just don't have the economic chops to do it. No sane modern-capitalist economy can be given birth by faulty economics.
[1] Unless of course you belong to the school of the Austrians, like whomever wrote the "deflationary currency" joke of an entry in Bitcoin's Wikipedia. For you all evil's root is either the government or fractional reserve banking, so I'm obviously wrong.
[2] Maybe with a fixed 4% inflation rate, like Milton Friedman suggested. It could also be a fiat currency, and simultaneously decentralized and anonymous, if we could take the principles of the free-banking era, see why they failed (because they failed by themselves, no amount of austrian self-bullshitting will change that) and fix them. Who knows, I'm not an economist.
> this analysis misses the time dimension of money: lending, borrowing and interest [1]. Keynes knew that, and before him Marx, and I bet someone before him too. And in this aspect, I find Bitcoin to be an irreversibly brain-damaged, if interesting, experiment
So we went straight from an analysis (what was it btw?) "missing the time dimension of money" - according to you - to Bitcoin being a brain-damaged experiment. What exactly was the logic there?
> a massively deflationary currency .. that is even today failing to accommodate the mildest exponential growth
How does a currency "accommodate exponential growth", and why should it? Are you saying Bitcoin can't be used for lending etc because it's "deflationary"? Don't you think it would be possible for lenders to estimate the risk involved in using (deflationary?) Bitcoins, and then pricing their loans accordingly?
> When your currency gains value by the hour, actually borrowing and trading and doing capitalist things are losers' propositions.
I can't see a problem with a currency gaining value by the hour. If you hold a currency that keeps gaining value, then your purchasing power keeps increasing. Why is that a bad thing? Everyone would be happy to trade in such a currency.
If it were losing value by the hour, well then, yes, people would be reluctant to trade in it.
> When your economic theory is still getting an erection over the gold standard, like some 19th century robber baron, you know you just don't have the economic chops to do it.
Care to tell us what's wrong with the gold standard, and why is anyone who supports it a robber baron?
> For you all evil's root is either the government or fractional reserve banking, so I'm obviously wrong.
Care to explain why the government and fractional reserve banking are good for us all, then?
Everyone would be happy to sell in such a currency, but why on Earth would anyone want to buy with such a currency? The only currency that is good for both sides of the equation is the one that is stable in value.
Conversely, the rich don't. In fact, above a key level depending on how quickly it gains value, the rich functionally never lose any money - they can hold such levels of it that the amount they spend on food is rapidly eclipsed by the increase in value in their wealth.
Of course, this sounds good and is somewhat true with normal currency via investment but there's the rub: with a deflationary currency you don't have to invest. You don't have to put your money in the bank, or loan it out or indeed engage in any type of productive activity to get wealthier. The poor are doomed to work all their lives because they can't get above the magic level of wealth where they don't have to, meanwhile those with the piles of wealth dispense tiny fractions to them to buy necessities. It entrenches a stratified society in a way an inflationary system does not (which is not to say that inflationary money puts us all in the free and clear, but it's better).
A historical example of how bad a too-valuable currency can be was the situation surrounding the Free Silver Movement, a Populist-Progressive plan to make the gold-based late-19th-Century American currency inflationary by increasing the amount of cheaper silver in circulation. This was popular because it would help deeply indebted farmers pay back their loans. William Jennings Bryan made a wonderful speech, the Cross Of Gold speech, on the issue: "You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_of_Gold_speech
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_silver
In the extreme limiting case, the money economy based on the deflationary currency freezes to death: The rich are left holding money nobody else wants when the majority of society goes to some other currency that actually meets their needs.
In the non-Bitcoin world, the majority usually moves to another currency (a 'hard currency' like USD or Euros) when the local currency is hyper-inflationary toilet paper, but hyper-deflationary Super-Gold (Super-Duper-Super-Gold!) is, as has been explained, just as bad, and so would provoke the same reaction.
It is bad for several reasons. The easiest to grasp is that people tend to keep their money in their hands (hoarding) if that money is acquiring value by itself. If people don't spend their money, or lend it, the economy suffers.
> If it were losing value by the hour, well then, yes, people would be reluctant to trade in it.
If they have a choice of many currencies, yes, that can be a problem. But with legal tender the contrary is true: When there is high inflation people will spend all their money as soon as possible, before it loses value. Too much inflation is bad too, but some inflation is good.
> Care to tell us what's wrong with the gold standard
With the gold standard the supply of money is completely independent of the need for money. The discovery of a great source of gold will bring inflation; an expansion of the economy without a corresponding increase of the money supply will bring deflation. The same would be true with bitcoin and bitcoin mining.
> It is bad for several reasons. The easiest to grasp is that people tend to keep their money in their hands (hoarding) if that money is acquiring value by itself. If people don't spend their money, or lend it, the economy suffers.
What I have never understood about this argument is people can't eat money, they can't sleep under it, they can't do any number of things with it. What they can do is buy things, like food, which allow them to do the things they desire. Having a deflationary currency is pro-citizen, it is pro-poor, and pro-middle class.
These classes are primarily uninterested in "investing." What they are interested in is saving. Saving to go to college, to buy better accommodations, to go on a vacation, to stop working two jobs, etc... They have no interest in complex inflation protection vehicles.
You may say: you are being silly, you don't understand how the financial system works! Maybe I don't, but neither does a large percentage of the population. Shouldn't our default policy always be about protecting those most vulnerable? Those most likely to be exploited? Are we doing that now? Would a deflationary economic system be to their benefit? I think so and so did the creator of bitcoin.
People who have a high amount of debt relative to income (generally the poor, the middle class, governments) benefit from inflation, not deflation, as they can spend full value money today and pay it back with diminished value money later.
Your concept of the poor as savers benefitting from deflation because they save money and stick it in the bank directly conflicts with the core definition of "poor".
It only makes sense to save when there is enough income that the risk of losing savings from a) bad investment or b) inflation is lower than the expected payoff.
But saving makes sense even just to prepare for unexpected expenses. We're not talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars here, in most cases, it's not even tens. Barely scraping by might be a bit of an alien concept to someone pulling in $250K/year from programming.
But they keep having to pay more for Stuff. In other words, their purchasing power keeps decreasing, unless their wages rise to compensage for inflation. Deflation "means" an increase in purchasing power, which means getting more stuff for your money, which is.. good? What's not to like?
> Having a deflationary currency is pro-citizen, it is pro-poor, and pro-middle class.
How so??? With a deflationary currency rich people just need to keep their money at home (not even the bank) and they become richer in real terms. Indebted people see their deflationary-currency-denominated debt become more and more difficult to repay. Home owners see the resale price of their home come down. Poor people have less opportunities to work because people don't need to invest their money to keep their real value. How can all this be pro-citizen?
Do you think people buy stuff because their currency is steadily losing value, or might it be because they need or want stuff?
> When there is high inflation people will spend all their money as soon as possible, before it loses value. Too much inflation is bad too, but some inflation is good.
Your average Joe off the street has no clue about what inflation means or what the current official (understated) rate is. You're talking about a situation where it's obvious to everyone that they just should not hold on to the currency they have. Think hyperinflation.
> With the gold standard the supply of money is completely independent of the need for money.
The need for money? Well, if gold is money, then you don't "need money" because you already have it. There's no need to worry about your money having lots of purchasing power either, that's just a good thing.
> The discovery of a great source of gold will bring inflation;
And conjuring up trillions of quatloos out of thin air will not?
You're saying that the money supply increasing without a corresponding increase in economic activity will cause your currency's purchasing power to dwindle? Well yeah, that's about right. But what exactly is supposed to be the problem you're talking about here?
> an expansion of the economy without a corresponding increase of the money supply will bring deflation.
Yyyep. Again, what's the problem?
> The same would be true with bitcoin and bitcoin mining.
Ditto.
So you think that people don't think twice about buying the newest PC or phone, knowing that they will be able to buy it in 6 months at a lower price? Ora that buying a home now can be bad or good, depending if prices are going up or down? I don't know your average Joe, but my average Jane knows perfectly well what inflation (or deflation) is :)
People buy stuff _because_ they need or want it, but they buy it _when_ they think it's a good time to buy it. Evaluating "a good time to buy" depends on many subjective factors, and (perceived) inflation is an important one.
If you need a computer right now, you'll buy it now. But overall, people only really need a handful of things, like sustenance, shelter, healthcare etc. No one needs some cheap trinkets from China or whatever. We're just trained to covet Stuff.
Economic theories or policies can't be based on the expectation that people are some kind of spending-automatons that will spendspendspend all the money they have, forever and ever, because inflation encourages them to.
A wise little worker ant will set aside quite a large percentage of his income, just in case a serious need for money arises.
The wise little worker person, on the other hand, will produce a production P, and get in return some money. Part of that money he will use for consumption C, and part of it he will set aside for savings S. But what he sets aside is NOT production, as in the case of the ant, it is just money - that is, unless the wise little worker person isn't so wise and actually stashes food or car parts or something like that.
The percentage of his production that he is not consuming (after having bartered it through the mean of money) is either going to the consumption C of somebody else, to the accumulation of capital (ie investment goods, thus investment I) or to the actual stashes of our world - stocks S.
If you think not in terms of money, but in terms of actual goods, you should agree that P = C + I + S (everything that is produced either goes to consumption, investment (capital) or stocks).
Now, what happens if C goes globally down, because everybody becomes a wise little worker person? In the immediate, S goes up - the "wise little worker ant" effect, if you will. But soon after, companies that create consumption goods reduce production - because nobody needs big stocks of consumption goods. Now, that could be compensated by increased production by companies that create investment goods - but who is going to request those investment goods, if it looks like people globally want to consume less?
So, what will actually happen is that C goes down, I stays the same or goes down, and after a little time P goes down. And our wise little worker person will lose his job, because less production + increased productivity (technology) = less jobs.
Now, notice that this works on a global scale. On a local scale, it can happen that C + I + S > P - this is for example currently true for the US, and in the long run US citizens will have to decrease their consumption, because that is overconsumption is only compensated by a billion wise little worker ants somewhere else who are actually lending part of their production to the US, in exchange of fiat money. But the decrease of consumption in the US has to be compensated by an increase elsewhere - otherwise, our wise little worker people will discover that ant-economy doesn't work for them.
> In the immediate, S goes up - the "wise little worker ant" effect, if you will. But soon after, companies that create consumption goods reduce production - because nobody needs big stocks of consumption goods.
Again, people will - and should - buy things they need. They may also buy some things they want, if they can afford them. If people stop buying Company X's products, then it will decrease capacity, and possibly go bankrupt, etc. There's nothing wrong with that.
You may decide to start producing and selling buckets of feces, but even though selling three hundred million of them at 50 dollars each would have a positive effect on the economy, it doesn't mean buying one would make any sense for anyone.
Our economies can't keep "growing" exponentially for all eternity, and that's alright. Nothing has been fixed since 2008, and the Status Quo's attempts at whipping up another housing bubble and getting us spending-automatons to spendspendspend are increasingly ineffective.
But the transition to a happy degrowth FOR SURE can't happen with simple market mechanisms. At least you need to limit the working hours. At worst you need a completely controlled economy. Technological innovation + free market + degrowth = massive and unsustainable unemployment, that's for sure.
My position is that of common sense.
That seems like a poor example since the cost of technology is constantly decreasing.
People still buy stuff even though they could wait because they need (or want) it.
Waiting longer means a decrease in consumption, and less (aggregate) consumption means less (aggregate) production, which also means less total jobs even if productivity is stable (not to mention if it is increasing, as it is because of technological innovation).
Value is the result of supply and demand. What is the demand for a medium of exchange? Why not just use monopoly money, or acorns, or lumps of clay?
For that matter, why do US citizens not use CAN instead of USD? What drives the citizens of a country to use the currency issued or authorized by that country's government?
"For example selling X widgets for Y bitcoins and exchange those for Z months use of a VPN."
Yeah, and what do you think the VPN provider is paying its bills with? When the government says, "Pay us the tax on your energy use," what does the VPN provider reply with? "Here are some Bitcoins?" Unless the government is accepting Bitcoin for tax payments -- which would effectively turn Bitcoin into a fiat currency -- your service provider is either going to need a way to convert their Bitcoin currency into some other currency, or they will require that you pay them with something other than Bitcoin.
2. BTC's unique feature is the instantaneity and anonymity of transactions.
Who said it was?
"the value of something to a given person is the maximum price the person is willing to pay"
Which is dependent on the supply and demand of that "something."
"BTC's unique feature is the instantaneity and anonymity of transactions."
"Instant" in the "10-30 minutes" sense, and anonymous in the "you can be tracked" sense...
(There are a few subtleties here, such as that willingness to pay should be measured in terms of opportunity costs rather than dollars, but all this stuff can be found in an economics textbook.)
What the is maximum you willing to pay for breathable air? How much would you be willing to pay if you could not find free air everywhere you went?
Demand is not "the maximum price people are willing to pay," it is "the willingness and ability to pay a given price."
That's the problem with HN. It is clear when someone's arguments have no foundation in modern economic theory and practice, yet these arguments get thrown around with a false sense of certitude. I cited the textbook definition for "value," and yet you argue that it's dependent on supply and demand, which ignored the fact that the definition of value that I cited is precisely what makes up demand.
Person A is willing to pay $200 for a watch. Yet the market price of that watch is $20. Just because that person saved $180 does not mean that value of the watch to person A suddenly and magically fell by $180. Clearly this person found $200 worth of utility in that watch, or else s/he wouldn't have been willing to pay for it at that price.
> "Instant" in the "10-30 minutes" sense, and anonymous in the "you can be tracked" sense...
Now your arguments are focusing on semantics.
EDITS: clarity and less snark.
If your textbook is telling you that value is equivalent to demand, perhaps you need a new textbook. It is easy to illustrate the effect supply has on value with the following thought experiment:
If I told you that I was charging $10 to step inside my house and breath some air, would you be willing to pay? Now imagine a world where breathable air is a scarce resource, and there are no other sources of breathable air for miles around my house; would you be willing to pay in that case?> perhaps you need a new textbook.
That clause is utterly devoid of any logical content.
Your thought experiment demonstrates nothing except the basic concept of "people will buy whatever is cheapest." Let's say fresh air is worth $1 million to me. If you were charging $10, I would not pay because I can get it for free and gain a "consumer surplus" of $1 million. That does not change the fact that I would be willing to pay $1 million if air were a scarce resource.
There is no "standard" definition of "value:"
http://www.ehow.com/info_7904133_difference-between-classica... http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/NeoclassicalEconomics.ht...
Your claim that value is nothing more than "demand" is not universally accepted among economists. I did not throw out any definitions; all I did was point out that value is affected by both supply and demand, which is a straightforward neoclassical interpretation.
The other article only prove my point. Neoclassical economics is the "mainstream," "standard" economic theory, for both conservative and liberal economists alike. It mentions classical economics only for the sake of historical context (it was prevalent in the 19th century but is now outdated).
You don't even properly state my argument. I never said value = demand. I said value is what makes up demand. That is an important distinction, and it is one that makes sense (if you don't value something, you don't demand it. If you value something, you do demand it.)
Lastly, you ignored my response to your thought experiment.
"monopoly money, or acorns, or lumps of clay" can be created almost indefinitely. Of course BTC can too, but must be done by forming consensus amongst the majority of the P2P systems. Lumps of clay you don't need consensus. Just more clay.
"What drives the citizens of a country to use the currency issued or authorized by that country's government?"
Legal Tender law. If a debt is offered to be paid in 'legal tender' and the debtee refuses to accept it, the debtor can have the court discharge the debt under the law.
Make an acorn for yourself in that case. Acorns are pretty similar to Bitcoin in that regard: you need Oak trees to produce acorns, just like you need CPU time to produce Bitcoin.
"Legal Tender law. If a debt is offered to be paid in 'legal tender' and the debtee refuses to accept it, the debtor can have the court discharge the debt under the law."
Not all countries have such laws. There is, however, another important category of law that gives fiat currencies their value: taxes. The fact that law-abiding citizens must pay their government periodically creates a large demand for whatever the government accepts as a tax payment. Typically, governments accept a currency they issue, or else they authorize the use of some other currency.
People accept a medium of exchange in exchange for their goods and services because they trust that they can later exchange it for something they want.
The "demand" for a medium of exchange lies in direct bartering being inconvenient, because whoever wants something you have, might not have something you want, right then and there. In this case, instead of a trade not happening, you can just accept a medium of exchange, and use it later to get what you want.
> Why not just use monopoly money, or acorns, or lumps of clay?
If people knew they could exchange lumps of clay for goods and services, they would accept them as payment for goods and services.
> What drives the citizens of a country to use the currency issued or authorized by that country's government?
That very same government?
It would turn Bitcoin into legal tender. Legal tender can be fiat or not (for a very long time, gold was the legal tender).
http://www.moneycrashers.com/deflation-definition-causes-eff...