Bitcoin Forum

I was thinking that every bitcoiner wants a world without fiat, only bitcoins. Ok, if there was no fiat whatsoever, then where do you think will bitcoin base its value? Will it be in gold? But how much?

How do we determine the real value measure of bitcoin in an economy that has been very dependent on fiat?

i dont think so. bitcoin price goes up or down in every single second unlike fiat. so sometimes you can face a huge loss with btc but it is not the case with fiat. also this is the only major disadvantage of btc over fiat.


yes, it can be gold, silver or any other precious metal. and no body can guess by how much as btc price, as always, is not predictable.
no body knows that from where bitcoin gains its value. it is a mysterious coin.

If every bitcoiner wants a world without fiat then no sense to have it an exchange value to other money system.

Just use the usual bitcoin transactions where value is 1:1.

that fiat money is just a piece of paper while governments say it has value and most of the banks actually have no paper money but the promise of money and others trusting them, but bitcoin is not just promises but actually gives you the promise as codes which others then accept and with acceptance comes trust.

That is where my question lies. If the value is 1:1 then how much will I pay in bitcoins for example a desktop computer? Also how much bitcons will the merchant accept as payment? If I pay 1 BTC, will the merchant accept it? How will we know if we use 1:1 as basis?

@op, i will try to answer your simple questions one by one.

 you can simply see the btc rates at preev.com at the time of purchase and then calculate the actual amount of btc that you have to pay with those rates. this is called 1:1. it means that you dont have to pay any extra btc to purchase the item.
merchant can accept any amount depending on your purchase.
yes but dont send any amount. btw, almost all the merchants convert usd into btc with 1:1 rate so that you can directly pay the given amount.

cross-verify the rates that your merchant is asking, with preev.com. if the conversion rates matches then it is ok, if it dont match then you should ask the seller about it. btw, you should also note that btc price always keeps fluctuating.

i'm bitcoiners and still want fiat from world but if there is no fiat and only bitcoin exist in this world maybe bitcoin will more value than gold because bitcoin will automatically used as the payment of worldwide and it would be more worth from gold

question is quite strange, and you make it into a confused, with basing the price on gold, fiat is everything. you do not think about anything without fiat.

the answer is quite simple actually. it will be gold. gold has been here for thousands of years, and it was, and still is being used as currency. how much would the value of 1 bitcoin in gold be? that question can nobody here answer. i think a certain weight of gold will be dedicated to give a bitcoin it's value. but then again, there is the question of will it be a fixed value, or are there any movements possible. these are questions with no answer.

During the initial distribution of any fiat currency the same question was asked. Markets and transactions essentially create what we see as the value of an object. You asked how much a desktop computer would cost, and the answer for bitcoin is the same as it is for fiat : After calculating in Manufacturing/Production & Advertisement costs, add on a little/lot of profit depending on the demographic of people you're trying to attract and bam you have your price.

Whatever somebody will buy/sell something for is it's value at that given time.

If there is no fiat then you should compare bitcoin with something that most of the people are using(now the fiat is the first one) so you have to give a value to bitcoin like 0.5XAU(14gram of Gold) and then this should be as a reference when people make question on how much does a bitcoin worth.

Very good question indeed.

Btc owes its existance to FIAT. That's why it will never replace FIAT in the future. If btc were a real currency, people wouldn't panic like that when the btc price drops right? (like the one we're having now):)

Gold is nice but you can't carry gold blocks in your pocket and make your daily shopping with them, too damn dangerous. That's why FIAT is invented. But somehow, FIAT became the real gold :D

None of the currency need any other currency to show its value, but it want itself to be a standard for worldwide currencies, we measure the value of bitcoin only because our normal currency currently is our local currency and so we want to know that how much it reach according to our fiat,

just think when you get your salary in your own local currency hw you measure it? do you measure it with other currencies? no, you just count them and know well its value.

I don't think that is a logical argument. Even the initial assumption ("Bitcoin owes its existence to fiat") is not generally true. As indicated by the message in the Genesis block, Satoshi launched Bitcoin to end the central banks reign that is directly tied to fiat money. So one could say that the fraudulent nature of fiat money was the reason for the invention of Bitcoin.

That however does in no way mean that Bitcoin depends on fiat or can't replace fiat. It's all a question of acceptance. If Bitcoin use spreads and it becomes a widely accepted currency, direct trade with native Bitcoin payments (without intermediate fiat conversion) will become more common. Eventually, fiat might become useless, because Bitcoin is easier and more secure (in terms of value stability) to use.

Currently we are far from this point. Fiat still dominates the world, hence it is used as a reference point for value by most people. But Bitcoin use is constantly increasing, so it is not impossible that Bitcoin might someday become a new reference point for value in the future. For today, Bitcoin is at least used as reference to express the value of the various altcoins...

ya.ya.yo!

Bitcoin is just a sequence of codes that programmers made and say it has value, Ironic isn't it.
just a piece of advice, don't ever compare bitcoin and fiat about it's value, because both of them
has no value when both of them started, but trust gave them value.

How do we determine the real value of fiat money?Do you think that fiat money have  real value?

They have value because people use them.

Bitcoin has value because people trust and use bitcoins,not because it costs X amount of dollars.

In theory, in a world without fiat, there would no point in basing Bitcoin's value on gold. Fiat's value is based on gold because the local governments possess gold reserves to back the value of fiat. Since Bitcoin is decentralized, there would be no gold reserves backing its value -- not unless some rich, altruistic investor provides a supply and insures everyone's Bitcoins with it. The only "thing" that can back Bitcoin's value are the products and services that people are willing to trade for it, and that's where its value would be based on. In the theoretical scenario, the market would initially look like a primitive type of barter system where values are skewed. However, as more services are rendered and more products are traded, the value will gradually stabilize.

Personally though, in a world without fiat, I would rather have a steady source of clean water and healthy food rather than any number of Bitcoins. A world without fiat can only be one of two things: an ideal utopian society where technology is absolute and Darwinian principles have culled most outliers, or a Mad Max type of world where a one-gunned man reigns king. The latter just seems 99.9999999% more likely to me.

+1 Bitcoin price would reflect precious metals or even raw materials. Btc itself has no proper value, its price is the pure reflection of confidence people put in it. If you want to express the value of it without fiat, just look at what you can buy with it.

maybe we will use gold as main currency?  :D
1bitcoin = 1kg gold or maybe 1gram = 1bitcoin etc

i think without fiat we can't do trade with simple because fiat make each transaction easy and simple.

what is fiat?
- something that you base every thing else's value in the world on it. from a cup of coffee in the morning to the house you live in, is measured in value with fiat.

so if there were no fiat, then there were something else in its place that is being used to measure things values. most probably gold.

If there's no fiat, people will back to use goods for trading

Let say that you have 1 cow that has $ 300 value
if 1 BTC = $ 600 so 1 BTC can be trade for 2 cows

I am bitcoiner and I love this technology but I don't want world without fiat. If we are saying bitcoin is better we must understand that we are comparing it with something else. If you are removing one part of comparison then how can you fairly judge its advantages and disadvantages?

There is no exact scientific answer to your answer question as it’s totally depending on probability. If there was no fiat then the price of bitcoin would be based on demand and supply law and since users would be tremendously high for limited bitcoins then price of 1 bitcoin might touch current market capital.

if we study about the previous time when there was no paper money system and there was only barter system. so i think if there was not yet fiat currency introduced i think we will still using barter system, and if you are talking about a specific currency mean USD or Euro i think then we will compare bitcoin to some other currency. and it will then depend on the price an value of that currency ,

Bitcoin would have to have a much higher adoption rate before we could picturs a world without fiat. Even if there was no fiat currency we could still find somthing of value to price it against.

well if there was no fiat then bitcoin would be adopted a long time back, i think that bitcoin will be adopted at a very rapid pace, and bitcoin will replace fiat easily

If there was no fiat maybe you are correct, it will be based on the price of gold, maybe silver, copper, or perhaps oil, those commodities.  But it will be hard to know the price of the bitcoin if there is no fiat.  Someone will just put up a price and that's it.  There will be no direction if it will be just a make-up price.  The us dollar is the fiat money in the world.  All the price were based on it.  So it is good I think that it was based on it.

Bitcoin would have its value determined by whatever something costs to make it; if someone wants 1 mBTC per item, the retailer could sell it for 1.5 mBTC, and boom, item costs 1.5 mBTC new and 1 mBTC from the manufacturer.

Another system that could work would be pegging the values of various goods to a certain amount of Bitcoin, and just working off of that. Sit down and tell everyone "1 ton of wheat grains will cost 5 satoshi" (assuming that we adjust for a world where Bitcoin is universal, and Bitcoin effectively takes over the monetary system and replaces a majority of the value of the fiat system). Then everyone adjusts for that.

The confusion arises because some people consider Bitcoin as money, others as just another good (financial asset). If it does what money is expected to do, there would be no problem with pricing goods in bitcoins (since this is precisely what the concept of money means). If it doesn't (i.e. it is not money), then it is just like any other good out there that needs to be given a tag in some currency...

That is, how much one unit of Bitcoin costs in terms of that currency

i think fiat is be required for all country. and bitcoin can be make bank transaction easy. people don't have carrying money in phisic, but just install wallet in their smartphone and fill the balance with bitcoin. and then if they want to buy something, they just buy with bitcoin, but that store can accepted payment in bitcoin or fiat. i was dream for this, so i don't have carrying money in phisic, just paid with my bitcoin balance and then finished  ;D

As long as there are governments, there will be currencies they control. They can demand taxes in that currency and nail you to the wall if you don't. Maybe there'll come a time when people have to resort to localfiat to obtain the money from their bitcoins to pay them but they're not going anywhere.

If there really wasn't fiat, there would have to be some type of commonly agreed unit of value otherwise the world wouldn't function.

I guess some tangible asset like gold or silver or platinum. But if there is no fiat or currency similar to fiat, then what will be the use of bitcoin as well.

You are talking about a money free world where the barter system exists. Then I think bitcoin will also have no use.

This is a hard questoin and its impossible to happen that there is no fiat.. but if there is no fiat we compare the btc value in other things like gold we will base in grams how many grams of gold for btc..

You just need a measure of value. It can be anything - an iPhone, Big Mac or grams of gold.
People have been trading and using money long before there was fiat currency, in fact long before there were any governments.

if there was no fiat bitcoin would be valued within itself. people would just use btc to quote prices and stuff instead of bringing fiat into the trade.

This was exactly what the answer I was looking for. But when there is no fiat there would be no "1 BTC = $600". How could we determine how much BTC there really is in one cow? How does the market decide? 

But how do we determine how many satoshis we pay for each gram of gold? Who decides? How do we decide?

You already said the answer. Either it is gold or any other precious stones. That is the way they trade from the past and they see that this is stones is the way to make a faster trade. I think anything that glows in a person eyes is the one that is most precious to him at that time.

I thinks if there no Fiat it will the value of it depends on gold , couse this is the real currency use by the past. So it will defend now in gold what is the price of bitcoin is .

In my opinion if fiat would disappeared then  the value of bitcoin  disappeared too since it depends its price on the currencies  as of now. If bitcoin would be the main stream then we should create a new value  that does not depend on the current fiat as of now but  im thinking that its very very impossible to happen since fiat plays a big role  in our economy and no one could replace it to its place.

if there were no fiat, we would be living in the stone ages (and other ages that i can't remember the names) when trades were being done with exchange of goods with goods. like giving a dinosaur skin in exchange of fire and there is always a value to things and that unit of measurement for that value is called fiat :D

The Stone Age didn't end for the lack of stones, so the Fiat Age won't end for the lack of paper. If we apply this logic in reverse (yeah, I know it is a bit counterintuitive and requires effort for some), while there is paper, there is always room for fiat!

And while there are stones around, there is always someone living in the Stone Age

:D Well said! But I think Herbert2020 just wanted to point out that the invention money was an improvement over the traditional barter system. However the first forms of money were not fiat money, it was sound, full embodied money.

Fiat money is an invention of modern times. In fact the creation of modern fiat money is partly based on a shortage of silver supply to mint silver coins. In addition it was motivated by allowing governments to fraudulently expand their budgets to finance wars for example.

With Bitcoin, we experience the return of sound money, without the drawbacks that physical full embodied money has in terms of obtaining enough precious metals to mint it. The practically unlimited divisibility of Bitcoin makes it possible to always have enough currency units to run the economy without compromising the value of the monetary units.

ya.ya.yo!

Fiat currencies will be in use at least 100 years and more. There are many countries in the world, where computers are something exclusive, like India, Nepal etc. Plus there are also many people, who like to use fiat paper money, especially in Europe. And in fact BTC users are small group from all world people, who use money.  ;) 

The infinite divisibility of Bitcoin is essentially the same as the unrestricted fiat supply in regards to its effects on wealth inequality and the exacerbation of this inequality. Alternately stated, it empowers the rich to get yet richer and gain more wealth by making the poor yet poorer. In fact, Bitcoin does this even better than fiat...

Or would do if it were to become a mainstream currency like the US dollar

I am from Nepal and what you said is quite true, here people still fear to use online banking system so they first goto ATM and withdraw fund and deposit it to other persons bank account or meet them and give them cash. Instead of this they can easily use their online banking system to send fund directly to others bank account. And even we have local payment method, but lots of people even don't know what hell is payment gateway. So it will be really hard to increase adoption over bitcoin and i am quite sure there are many other country where situation is just like here.

Bitcoin price is unpredictable, anything could happen. Heck, precious metals can be used in place of fiat.

A large majority of commodities are infinitely more useful when you compare it to fiat money, and a barter system would still have more actual value and usefulness moved than the current fiat economy, however in a more inefficient manner. Anything that fiat money can be used to buy is more valuable than the fiat money itself, in a technical sense.

This idea...so we back to 100 years from now like barter but in this case we still use money, digital currency Bitcoins. Also if there is no fiat maybe BTC will dead? but if it will be based on gold is also good idea well yes Bitcoin still dependent on fiat right now, but maybe if Satoshi and Bitcoin Developer back to make its own coin based on gold Bitcoin can out from this zone *dependent on fiat*.

Bitcoin wouldn't be dead from a lack fo fiat, but it would definitely require having been a thing before fiat currencies went and fully gripped the world. While it is possible to make it so that Bitcoin can have a defined value and be pegged to the value of specific commodities, it is still current bound by the USD/BTC trading value.

keep in mind that, Fiat is a currency and bitcoin is also a currency.
Now I want to ask that how you find the value of your fiat? do you need to find the value of your fiat each time? the answer is no. because fiat is your own currency and you base its value with the goods you buy with them and bitcoin is a new currency and not our local currency and we do not use it for buying in our local market that is why it is hard for us to find its value with the goods we buy so we compare it with our local fiat.

I think that a very big value of bitcoin is its acceptance on the internet and the infrastructure that was developed for it.
Bitcoin became a payment method in a lot of online shops, companys work with bitcoins, even some banks support it.
There is a real trust level that developed during the last years, and that is worth a lot.

It is a good question. But taking into account that there are lots of different altcoins and bitcoin is the pioneer and the most valuable one, perhaps if fiat disappears bitcoin would become the main parameter to determine the value of all other altcoins.

I think you don't understand the question, or either you didn't explained it well enough. Very easy, fiat is no more, what makes Bitcoin valuable then? Simple, Gold will be the standard to give everything else (including Bitcoin) value. Gold is the back-up currency in the world.

If we reverse your logic, then we are prompted to ask the next question, namely, is it fiat that gives Bitcoin value? I guess the answer to this question is a decisive "no". Thereby, it is neither gold nor fiat that gives value to Bitcoin...

I would be greatly surprised to see anyone challenge that point

i really dont think so in my opinion it might be around only for 20 years or so and not any more

Gold has been used as currency for so many years, I would be seriously surprised if it wouldn't be the main thing everything in the world is tied to in such scenario. Let me ask you a question, what gives Bitcoin value as it is right now? The effort miners need to do in order to get 1 Bitcoin minted?

And so what? This doesn't in the least imply that things obtain their value from it by any possible means. I am greatly amazed that someone can actually think so (that gold is the source of all value out there). Bitcoin right now is one of the best vehicles for speculation available for broad, mostly (financially) uneducated masses of general public. That's the primary source of Bitcoin value at the moment (coupled with its outstanding and sometimes devastating volatility)...

As you can see, gold has nothing to do with its value since these are Bitcoin intrinsic properties (namely, volatility and availability)

I didn't say that Gold is the source of all value right now. I was pointing that at the extreme scenario of when there is no fiat. That aside, you still didn't answer my question of what you think gives Bitcoin value right now.

Do you guys realize that for 99% time of human race existence any kind of FIAT was unknown concept?
Humans were living in small groups, barter was the prime model of exchange goods.
For 97.000 years of human evolution annual gross per capita was no higher than $100.

Recent 250 years brought huge changes - Industrial revolution between 1760 and 1840 changed everything.
GPC rose to more than $200 and in recent years exploded to $6600 (world's average) GPC.

Do you honestly think that FIAT is that amazing now that we can't exist without it?

Ok, I have read some people answered that BTC would get its base value from gold if there was no fiat. So what does that mean? Will each satoshi be backed by a fixed amount of gold? Will it be the Gold Standard all over again.

Therefore again I will ask, "If there was no gold where will BTC base its value?"

I quote the relevant part of my post below (I simply don't understand how you could miss it). In short, it is availability (accessibility) and volatility of Bitcoin (two main sources that give Bitcoin value)


Did you expect something else?

i dont think so, it might be used for a while but in 100 years we will definitely have some kind of a crypto instead and the life will be way easier then

If there is no fiat currency, Bitcoin would have named as fiat currency and the paper currency would be evolved later and everyone will compare rate of paper currency to Bitcoin
Bitcoin price may compared with some physical product that may include gold, silver, grains, etc... We can't guess which one product will be compared with Bitcoin for Price.

Interesting thought, how did you come up with such imagination.