Bitcoin Forum

“Tangible money, old-fashioned money … is a phantom from the past, an anachronism. In its place is an entirely new form of money based not on metal or paper, but on technology, mathematics, and science. This new ‘megabyte’ money is creating a new and different world wherever it proceeds. Money now is an image.”

What do you think of that? What is your position?
Do you believe in bitcoin?
Do you think the economic future is related to blockchain and bitcoin?

I believe in bitcoin but I guess most people of our generation still believe in physical money which you can touch and do not need a device/electricity to use.

Digital money is the trend going forward but physical money will still be the main medium of exchange.

i think money is still on the rise because bitcoin for me is just starting its way up to dominate other currency
in the future bitcoin its true potential

I do believe in cryptocurrencies (and bitcoin), also I believe that the money as metal and paper is close to become history.
But the current global decentralized way we have bitcoin is not the way the money will be in the near future. That's because the governments will always want to control their currency. So maybe currencies based on centralized ledgers will be the next step.
Maybe, if human race will become smart enough and we will have one global government and one global currency, that one could look like bitcoin. But that's.. a little too far in the future.

Until then bitcoin can become a stable global alternative. Good for exchange, good for fast sending around the world, good as alternative to local currencies.

Bitcoin and gold is money. The paper that you pass around and digits in your "account" are IOUs.

I used to believe, but seeing it stuck in 230-250 USD range for such a long time is not a good sign, so don't know what to think. Anyway I sold all of it, so I guess I don't believe much anymore in it.

Very true and this is what alot of people don't understand! They think your talking madness when you try to explain it to them

I think the death of money will probably never happen as there are parts of the world seriously depending on the current fiat currencies. I fully believe and trust in Bitcoin and will continue to support it throughout the upcomming years. The blockchain technology is a great piece of technology that can seriously change the financial world, but as always with technology, things do get replaced by better alternatives quite often. I only hope that the open source nature of Bitcoin will be used wisely to make it future proof and not let it fall behind.

Who said it?

Another fallacious "digital money is coming" argument IMO; it's been here for years already. The whole monetary system is based on the exchange rate value of the US dollar, and in that monetary system, the birth, life and death of the overwhelming majority of US dollars is a digital system controlled by the Federal Reserve. Cash dollars only serve as a secondary or even tertiary mechanism for trade in 2015 and have done for at least a decade or two. All other cash (including Bitcoin and supposedly gold bullion also) derives it's value from the dollar, and so any other cash in any other currency is essenitally a pseudo-dollar (like pegged alts on sidechains to the US dollar mainchain, for those of us that think in purely bitcoin terms  ;D)

The statement also claims that digital money is the beginning of money as a notional or abstract concept, but tangible money must possess abstract value in order for the "money" property to be fulfilled. The valuation of a money is subjective, or at least highly context dependent: gold was accepted as payment in 1913 USA, but from 1914 onwards, it wasn't sensible to continue that for reasons that didn't directly relate to the quality of gold as an instrument of exchange (although indirectly, that was the reason). Even simple haggling over a deal fulfills "context dependent value" for me :D

Nothing could ever replace fiat or physical money, not even bicoins. Not that I don't believe in bitcoins, I do but I think bitcoins needs a lot more time to fully reach it's full potential.

yeah, i agree that the current form of money is outdated and has to extinct and then be replaced by a new form of money in order to survive and satisfy the todays needs.

but i don't think that this need is met necessarily with bitcoin. or at least not this bitcoin that we know and has some flaws. but the technology is there ; based on blockchain or bitcoin itself with patched to fix the flaws. and it eventually would replace the paper money as we know it.

Paper money wouldn't be dead for at least 10 years, I am sure. It is slow process. I think we start using Bitcoin more, and the government could not resist it longer, but paper money are will be here too. We start using Bitcoin for investment more, maybe we would buy some property with it and make business deals, but buy food, pay in a restorauntand etc. we will be with paper money. Again, it's slow process to replace one form of money to another.

I tried to explain it to so many people in my circle of friends and buddies. However they are either not really interested, say it is too complicated to understand it or they are of the opinion they can't do anything to change that. This is why this system is existing since such a long time. They are living in a kind of matrix and don't bother getting screwed.

your right i think bitcoin is just like an alternative source when fiat becomes dead in a country then bitcoin is their solution to that

the death of money will only occur if the value become 0 .

I don't think that traditional money will die just like that. I think that people all over the world would be lost if that happens in the next 20 years. In a 100 years, this will probably happen.

Until then, blockchain tokens like Bitcoin will need to coexist with the traditional money. Is Bitcoin and money the future you asked? Most definitely in my opinion! Otherwise I wouldn't be here!

This is a good video about money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqvKjsIxT_8

OP, you pasted this exact same question on Reddit. Are you testing the response to some copywriting or something?

Here's my same answer from there:

Reads like hype. History tends to make fools of those who proclaim the death of monetary forms. Gold was dismissed as a relic of barbarism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries - but look at its price today (spiking as China devalues the Yuan once again).

What does seem to be on the way out is the credibility of fiat currency. Fiat's inflationary and centrally-planned nature will be its undoing.

Wealth will flow into trustless currencies like precious metals and cryptocurrencies, though I doubt fiat will ever entirely disappear. PM is as trustless as it gets and the safest option for long-term wealth storage. Cryptocurrency is superior for all other tradtional monetary functions, plus it allows new functions.

This process will take time however, it's premature to say that decentralised money has replaced other forms or redefined money as "an image."

Hyperinflation happens very fast so you never know. There are many example where you can see that.

cash are bound to disappear eventually, not because of bitcoin, but because of their own issues with governments, which are known already

bitcoin is not even in match vs cash but vs electronic payment in general, i only really doubt that bitcoin would be the king, i could see it working side by side with other forms of payment

I strongly believe in the value of bitcoin and the value of the cryptos as an invention. I hope that they have a great future because with those every economy will have for sure new ways to explore, to have growth and to have stability.

As about my believe in bitcoin I have explained in the thread below my meaning of its role in the world of currencies:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1191118.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1191118.0)

Every comment on this thread is welcomed.

It makes me think of the evolution of man depicted by these fools.. http://www.telegraphcrossfit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/evolution-man-computer.gif (http://www.telegraphcrossfit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/evolution-man-computer.gif)

We have the same type of evolution in money -->  (i) Commodity Money (ii) Metallic Money (iii) Paper Money (iv) Credit Money (v) Digital money

As with anything else in life... We need to evolve and change over time.... Bitcoin is the next step in the evolution of money.  ::)

Sure, but fiat's source is tyranny, specifically the power to impose your currency on others and make them play your game. Fiat is a fruit of human nature's darker side; I believe it'll survive as long as we do. The best we can hope for is to force it underground or relegate it to warlords.

Cashless society has both benefits and drawbacks. Something like that can be used to control or oppress people. I like the idea of Bitcoin as the cash of cashless society.

...

"Money" is a slippery concept...

I am in the camp that "money" should perform the three below roles:

-- Unit of Account ("how much" different things cost)

-- Means of Exchange (transferring value between sellers and buyers)

-- Store of Value (worth about as much tomorrow as today)

*   *   *

Currency (US$, etc.) are almost always used by everyone, even in hyperinflations.  This is a historical fact.  My reading is that there have been ZERO recent hyperinflations where silver or gold were used over currency.  I NEVER saw silver coins (for example) being used in Peru's hyperinflation in the late 1980s.

Bitcoin, at least for now, basically FAILS as a "Means of Exchange", too clumsy and not enough acceptance.

BTC is more volatile, at least for now, so somewhat fails as a Unit of Account and Store of Value.

As BTC matures, its role may gain more traction as a MofE as well as, perhaps, a SofV.

It's hard to see BTC being better than gold as a Store of Value.  Could happen, but I suspect that is way in the future, if ever.

Money will eventually become obsolete in the full sense of it

THIS SAYS IT ALL!


http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2011/08/average-life-expectancy-for-fiat.html

Monetary scholar Edwin Vieira ... pointed out that every 30 to 40 years the reigning monetary system fails and has to be retooled. The last time around for the U.S. was in 1971, when Nixon cancelled the convertibility of dollars into gold. Remarkably, the world bought into the unbacked dollar as its reserve currency, but only because that was the path of least resistance. But here we are 40 years later, and it is clear to anyone paying attention that the monetary system is irretrievably broken and will fail.

Gee, I hope we don't go back to bartering.

Couldn't agree more... More and more people are coming to realize the problems we have with a centralized bank issuing money out of then air to lend to banks.  It just becomes a matter of time before people will realize that cryptos are the way to go, because it's a finite currency that can be transferred anywhere.  The main obstacles to over come would be tx times, fungibility, and the fact that people will really have to over come the fear of not possessing cold hard cash.

I think there will be other cryptos out there in the future that can provide those quick tx times, and then another one that can provide the secure fungible crypto.  Bitcoin will be mainly valuable in the far future, I think, as the "gold standard" these cryptos depend on for a "pricing" or to see how much purchasing power it has... because I believe in the far future, bitcoin will become the very stable and highly priced crypto which ideally represents gold itself.

People will always seek some sort of currency to trade with others. Prisoners use cigarettes, canned fish. People in zimbabwe used rand or usd when their currency collapsed.

You seemed to have forgotten to mention toilet wine... prisoners love toilet wine... and soap on a rope. High value commodities there. ::)

There is huge problem with money 'created' by science, mathematics and existing only on technological plane of cyberspace.
They need POWER to be viable. That is making them simply not usable in certain situations. I doubt if we'll ever switch to 'virtual' currency without
solving this 'source of energy' problem.

Before bitcoins, money already existed in images and on-screen displays. :) Bank accounts that have billions of dollars on them exhibits only in digital space but not in the physical world we are in. Also, no limit in supply means inflation; bitcoin handles it with a fixed and diminishing supply. There is a lot of potential in an unregulated money compared to a money produced by and issued by the government. It's just that most people are still tied to using fiat that they couldn't part with it.

Wouldn't you say that solar power would be the next source of power that would solve this problem?  I could see the next big mining farm, incorporating a way to use solar panels for mining rigs. It would be expensive for the initial investment... but it will be one hell of a good one in the long run of things IMO.

You've mentioned science, and science would probably come along with a solution to that. Solar power is a thing now, and further developments with it could mean that we will have less reliance in fossil fuels and non-renewable enwrgy sources. Also, with mathematics we can come up with a rather secure form of money compared to its fiat counterpart. The only problem I see is how the masses would transit to virtual currency.

For who says oh its stable I don't believe it anymore,expect a surprise when it halveshalves,you will be surprised

Small comparison: you can pay for everything everywhere with paper FIAT money. It will be accepted without problems. You don't need to have working smartphone, you don't need internet or any other network. It is just you your trading partner and money in this equation, it is simple.
With bitcoin or any other virtual currency thing are getting complicated to the point that is not longer easy and fast to pay for something.

Small comparison? Would you want to be controlled to use your money or would you want freedom in spending or holding what you have? This is exactly the problem: people already give up on things that could probably change the future before trying it. Airplanes were once deemed as a lucrative idea but look ay where we are right now?

All I was trying to do is show bitcoin's or rather 'virtual currency' limits. I don't like FIAT money and I hate current financial and banking system.
But society is not ready for 'cryptocurrency' revolution. I wish we were ready, I wish there was better technology to push bitcoin towards even niche adoption.
 

That is what I'm pointing out: it's clear that we aren't ready to use any cryptocurrency on a daily basis. It would take time for us to cope up, but we would get there soon.

It will take some time for cryptocurrency to be popular.

It does, but I still claim that the traditional money won't dissappear just like that. Older generation would never get used to only a digital currency. Do you know that in France still exist people that make all of the calculations from euros back to the francs? All of the prices are also shown in francs and in euros in stores.

Subsequently I think that the wave of the biggest change will be introduced by the banks and their private blockchains and private digital currencies!

In the first sentence you say "nothing could ever", in the seconds you say "needs lot more time to reach full potential". Make your mind, is it never or someday when it reaches full potential? I say Bitcoin (or some other better cryptocurrency will slowly replace fiat money in the next 20-30 years. Why? Because, simply told, it's better in every aspect and naturally it must win.

Don't forget that most of the world population doesn't use Internet. So in my opinion it would be a very bad thing if "physical" money will be forced to disappear. The best scenario is that it should be a free choice between digital and physical money, so that everyone would choose the better option by himself.

Cryptocurrency will not dominate in many decades.

this site report that half the population are using internet http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

but from this value you must removed very young kid, and new born, which are quite a lot, so i would not say that the majrity are not using internet

and certainly this does not mean that they are not using some form of electronic paymen, you don't need internet to pay with credit card in a phisical shop...

It is already popular, it's just that the average people cannot fully comprehend on how does it really work. And I doubt if cryptos would really replace fiat. It can, but the question is how and when.

Somehow despite everything people chose to ignore the fact that it is going to be the future one day. I wish when time goes by people will start realizing and see its benefit especially when you have banks freezing your money even if it belongs to you. Too bad adoption is still moving at a very slow rate.

I understand that this is a mot but someone could fear this situation. So for those I have the below explanation.

It is absolutely impossible. It was like someone which have discovered the richness or the good life and would want the poorness and the difficulties of the hard life. There may be someone who can love this change (and even apply it) but only one or two cannot have the power to impose their choice to the rest of the peoples. They will be seen as a strange by some and as a fools by some others. But no one will follow their choice.

Change is coming, slow is good, fast would be bad, because haste will make a lot of casualties along the way. We have time to ease out the flaws and make a system that is good for all, ease in use and stable. So slow it is, and we will get there in the end!

Bitcoin needs to work on developing technologies:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1204912.0