Bitcoin Forum

How will Bitcoin stand up to the world amidst the final implosion of all fiat currencies? Will people still have faith in the coin, even though it really isn't backed by anything? Or are precious metals the only answer here?

precious meat for sure

The fiat collapse will likely boost bitcoin.

As for precious metals, I think it's a good idea to have both BTC and metals.

Given the recent crash of gold & silver, now is about a good time to buy more. However, they may dive even more, so, perhaps a bit of "wait & see" would be good now.

For silver, the market to watch is the NYMEX. That's generally where JP Morgan does all its shorting, and where the greatest volatility is - usually, but not always. e.g. We just saw a horrible dive in Hong Kong the other day.

Precious meat, hands down.  My cow will get me a lot farther than a 1 mil of Patriot Funbux once fiat implodes and dies.

I don't know what you're on about. Cows are a fucking Ponzi scheme, i can't even invest in them right now.

Chickens are the future.

No, no, invest in bacon!

Thanks for catching that horrible typo :D

Surely you jest.  Chickens are in such a bubble right now; don't be surprised when you wake up one day and you've lost half the chickens you thought you had.  ;)

We have 3... so one goes and the other loses its rear end.

Have you seen the profile of camels? - such volatility !

Agree! A pity dinosaurs no longer are available :-\

You should invest in birds imo.

Can we please get on topic now?

Snakes are showing great returns right now.

Problem is whichever way you hold them up someone overlays THAT chart and screams, "Bubble!"

Sorry!

Back on-topic, your guess is as good as anybody's.

Anyone holding Bitcoin is taking a gamble, not just on the price but on the whole system.

The two extremes would seem to be:

Scenario A: people flock to physical goods: Bitcoin will be as untrusted as fiat.
Scenario B: people realise that centrally-controlled currencies are flawed and untrustworthy and that a currency albeit a decentralised one is the lesser of two evils.

But people are funny. They don't always do the right thing. Look at VHS and Betamax ;)

TLDR: I don't know.

Bitcoin IS backed by something... proof of work.

You don't believe me? then try and fabricate some bitcoins, you will see that energy must be expended and hardware must be purchased/mantained.

From an informational perspective Bitcoin is identical to gold. Now this is purely from an information theory perspective. If the shit hits the fan and multiple EMPs pepper the globe then of course gold is the best.

But if you're talking about mainstream adoption then quite frankly: they'll do as their damned well told! It seems few people want to think for themselves when it comes to securing their wealth they prefer to let someone else look after their gold.

That's how banking started, the local goldsmith kept the towns gold in his vault giving a paper receipt to his clients. The goldsmiths realised that people started trading in the paper receipts and all the gold stayed in his vaults. Before long the goldsmiths were issuing more receipts than gold, giving receipts to poorpers for loans etc. And so fractional reserve banking was born.

And lately we moved onto fiat, whereby the receipts aren't backed by gold at all! They are JUST paper.

So you see all the problems with fractional reserve/fiat today were allowed by the banks users and stemmed from their own fear of being robbed. The same will happen again and again so long as joe public remain fearful, which will be forever (or at least as long as were alive).

But you are correct, the failure of fiat money is mathematically CERTAIN! It is just a matter of when. What pisses me off is that the schemes originators knew full well that it was destinned to fail. But they couldn't giva a f*ck because they would not be holding the shitty end of the stick!

I say the new money should be the shrunken heads of bankers!

Ah, can't that same argument be applied to fiat? Gottta buy and maintain a printer, ink, and paper.

Also, why is the dollar so ugly and remaining essentially unchanged except recently when they added a bit of colors?

Printing fiat is counterfeiting. You cannot counterfeit bitcoins. This is why bitcoins are more comparable to gold than to fiat.

This.

Even though people get fooled daily by their banks, when fiat collapses, and it will, the media will very likely tell them to buy gold. Whilst the average person will be like "urm, wtf? how can I spend this gold down the pub??"

And anyone want to guess who's currently buying up all the gold? Ready to take the remainder of your paper money after they seize your house and whatever else they can.

Anyone remember that cartoon, Scrooge, the duck, had that huge pool of gold coins that he used to swim in? That's what I totally envision the Rothschilds 'vault' to be like .. hope they all choke.

+1 :D

um mokele mbembe duh

Yes the same argument can be applied, but proof of work is not that great for dollars, if a forger does get hold of the ink and paper etc then they can just print with little expense. Probably knock out quite a few million for a hundred bucks or so. I think overseas forgery operations are problems for fiat currencies of most nations.

Not really provable.   

I rather imagine that an EMP would result in a lot of people who now sit on their fat asses in offices being out doing actual useful work, such as moving loads of grain to cities.  And there'd be massive work to do, going out and testing and repairing all the computer based equipment, as well as fast building plants to produce large transformers.

Those challenges would be met, not by governments but by the people.  Chance is they'd use whatever currency was handy.


Mathematically certain?  Not really, what happens is a substitute currency is put into use by the people.  Over time it becomes accepted that money X is rather better than money Y, and the point is reached where the new "good money" is even accepted by governments, like for traffic tickets.  At that point the old currency is doomed, but usually there are efforts to prolong it's death such as by forcing the people to exchange the "Bolivar" for the new improved "Bolivar Fuerte".

What that substitute currency might be is the question.  In many countries and places, it has been the US dollar.  Certainly it could be another fiat currency, or group of them.  It might be something the UN tries to promulgate.  It might be that several currencies coexist forever.