Bitcoin Forum

http://letstalkbitcoin.com/bitcoin-simply-cannot-replace-fiat/#.UpmkkcRpmEw

Yes or no? What do you think?

Replace the word bitcoin and fiat in that article with cars and horses, fax machine and letters, tv and live entertainment, computers and pen & paper, smartphone and ehh whatever ...  By now it should sink in.

The only way bitcoin will take over fiat if those little countrys start using it and other countrys catch on

Well it will remain as an alternative to fiat, since 25% of the adult population of world is Illiterate. They can't even read numbers, how would they handle virtual wallets.

Nice article there btw John.

haha , wrong

see even if bitcoin can't some crypto will fill the gap, between store of wealth crypto and daily small buy crypto.


Eg see emunie EMU.
http://forum.emunie.com/ (http://forum.emunie.com/)

People used money long before they invented writing.
It wasn't fiat money, not even gold, but rather other mediums of exchange, such as neck-lets and shells.

In Africa smartphones are now more abundant than electricity.
I wouldn't worry too much about Bitcoin adoption in regards to the 3rd world. If anything, they'll benefit from it the most, as a way to evade their ruthless dictatorships.

I went to their site and none of the pages will load.

Am I obsolete or are they still in start up or what?




edit- I have other issues with btc for sure but the OP article is just stupid... as mentioned things like "fiat will stay because everybody is used to it" are anachronisms for morons. Everything is changing and if you can't see that your opinion is not persuasive in my book. Aside, I've lived on almost entirely digital USD for ~5 years now, only ever use cash to tip for service. 99% of USD is already digital, only difference being a couple dozen jagoffs who own it can donate themselves 85 billion a month for nothing and call it capitalism with a straight face.

Fiat will die, but most of the legacy payment infrastructure will survive, at least for a few years. For most people, the transition to Bitcoin will be effortless, or nearly so, because banks will start offering all of their services in Bitcoin (for a fee), the most important services being storage and debit cards for use at points of sale.

I think it can never replace fiat. I only hope one day it will live in peace together with other payment methods. I see cryptocurrency like some NFC chip, or bankcard.

In the end, the only reason fiat works is that it is coercive. Government requires taxes paid in legal tender, and that is how banks control government and serf alike.

Government will have to accept BTC for the whole thing to cycle properly. Though they accepted slikroads quickly enough and if the banks take it up the gov will too I imagine.

Bitcoin does not need or want to replace fiat.

Personally I want the Bitcoin to turn into a universal currency, but it's just it doesn't seem possible.

It will. But, It will take some time. Give it 100 years.

Undoubtedly, they should have been able to count and thus had to write their calculations somewhere. So serious doubts arise as to whether they had been using money before they invented some primitive form of writing...

I wouldn't say so. Governments do require taxes to be paid in legal tender, but before that you have to earn this legal tender somehow to pay those taxes with. So, in the first place, we have the public sector of the economy where governments themselves pay in this legal tender, and what is important here, pay before they collect taxes. This proves that the reasons fiat works have rather economic roots...

I say no more than 10.

Bitcoin cannot completely replace all fiat but crypto currency can .

1 ALL fiats eventually die this is well known to any who actually study fiat history

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

2 Even the long standing ones ( UK pound) lose 99% of their value

3 Bitcoin, the ground breaker, may have a similar lifespan or even shorter if new better cryptos are created or evolve.

4 There are a number of issues with bitcoin which have serious consequences in the future.
The major one that I can see is the LOSS of coins which can NEVER be replaced ( lost addresses due to death of owner (sudden or otherwise) which if compared to fiat runs at about 0.5-1% per annum. This suggests that once the 21M have all been mined there will already be a loss of 25%. going forward that amount will reduce by a further 25% every 50 years.

The standard answer to that is, ok those with coins get an increase in value due to the reduction in supply, and in any case we can just increase the decimal place. However this is patently unfair to new owners and may well have unwanted  inflationary effects. Ultimately that will not be tolerated by Governments and the masses.

A crypto with a mechanism to identify and replace the lost coins to maintain the equilibrium will probably be more acceptable and successful in world wide adoption.

But most probably bitcoin still has a long way to run before it is challenged by another crypto

Badly written, short-sighted article.

"Fiat rules the world because it's what people are used to."
No, fiat rules the world because the modern capitalist world has agreed on a system of constant inflation for its money system.

"Bitcoin is technology based"
As is fiat in the 21st century. The foreign exchange market, credit card machines, ATMs, and personal banking all require an Internet connection to function.

"Bitcoin is complex"
Fiat is complex. Most people just don't think about the constantly fluctuating exchange rates, inflation, and the fact that governments routinely print money out of thin air. Because they don't need to think about it. If bitcoin becomes a valid form of currency, banks will hide all the technical details from end-users (while taking a cut, of course), just as they do with fiat dollars.

"Volatility and finances"
Every new form of currency is extremely volatile in its early years. The price will stabilize in the future.


There are several valid reasons why bitcoin may fail in replacing fiat currency (I think the massive global capitalist infrastructure profiting from and violently enforcing itself isn't going to go down fighting), but this article doesn't bring up any of them.

http://bitcoinrichlist.com/top500

Using the top 500 address list there are a number of wallets with no activity since 2010 and 2011. The probability that these are LOST addresses is high as is the value.

Anyone want to work out the % of coins involved?

I hope so - it's greedy of me, but that means more value for the coins that are still in circulation.

You can count with your fingers, and with sticks. Ole numeric methods used exactly that.
You can have a numeric system without an alphabet.

And anyway, the main point here is not about how ancient civilization did their counting.
I'll argue that modern illiterate people can and do definitely grasp the concept of accounting.
They do it daily with fiat money, I don't see any reason they should find it difficult with Bitcoin.

Presently governments borrow the legal tender from the central bank to operate. And I am guessing you have never tried to go off the grid. If you own land, you have to pay taxes on it, in legal tender. If all of your money is in btc form, you have to sell enough each year to at least pay your taxes in fiat. If you rent, your landlord pays the taxes. If nobody pays the taxes the gov seizes the land and sells it to someone who will.

Coercive by nature. All citizens must partake in legal tender games or live in shopping carts/jails. About 20% of GDP is collected in taxes each year. I won't venture a linear comparison to btc to tax sale conversion as it's a nonlinear world in its current state, but ideally you would have rapid fungibility to the degree the gov will take it as currency (which again they seemed to have no problem doing with silk road).

You describe the system which is already on the run and in full steam. This doesn't answer the question which is hidden in my post. I didn't actually expect that I would have to ask it directly. So, where would people get money from to pay the taxes when the system has just started?

They get it from the system that will be full steam. The banks simply issue loans at interest, and do so with money they print from nothing. That is fractional lending. They start with nothing, you borrow money at interest, they give you money they invented. That is why a bank ledger shows outstanding loans as an asset, and money in the vault as a liability. Exactly opposite the way a borrower sees it. A bank wants no money in the bank, all money in your hands paying them interest 24/7. Compounding effect assures that they will always make more, the public will always grow poorer. Or why I hate this system.

(The strikeout text is just a suggestion, drop that shit from your communicating and you will make more friends and get laid more often)

So your assumption is that I'm forced to borrow money from the bank to pay taxes when the system is started? What did I get wrong? It seems that you actually ignored my question. I have previously given you a textbook answer how that happens, i.e. through the public sector. Government pays people it hires, those buy goods from the private sector, the private sector pays wages, so everyone gets money to pay taxes, and there is no direct coercion from the state to use its currency...

I understand that you hate the current financial system, just don't let this blind hatred render you impotent

Clearly you are not a property owner or there would be no discussion of whether tax payments are coercive.

Yes, government pays out currency they borrow from the bank, at interest. Simultaneously the bank makes loans to the public at interest. No, you are not forced to borrow money. You can alternatively perform labor  or services for somebody who chooses to borrow it from the bank, and get paid in their borrowed money, and pay your landlord, who will use it to pay taxes, which will return to the bank as government debt payments. Or you can live in a shopping cart/jail. All money returns to the bank.



Probably the crux of a lot of delusions. College is great but... real life is a different game.

Taxes are coercive (and yes, I'm a property owner and just yesterday paid for it), but this doesn't prove that it is just taxes that make people use the currency government issues (the reasons I set forth earlier). And I know about the role the public sector plays in the economy not only from textbooks (I was on public service), and actually I see no substantial contradiction between what is written there and real life...

Your opinion seems to be skewed by your life experiences

Well, you can go see real world examples currently underway in both India and Venezuela where the government will arrest you for not using their currencies. I don't know what more to say on that point. Is there a hypothetical dreamland where coercion is not the main tool? I suppose. The government could create all of the money, in the US it was designed to, but the banks did not like that. See Andrew Jacksn, Abe Lincoln, and Jekyll Island for further. And really I don't like it either, as again it is time to move forward and not backwards...and hope we are.




I certainly hope so, else I would still be shitting in my diapers.

Re: Bitcoin simply cannot replace fiat


 What one currency (Bitcoin) to replace around 200 countries currencies?

 Well some are dreaming that will be the case.


 It doesn't seem realistic though.




 On the Other Hand:


 Debt based fiat and fractional reserve banking is a giant, still almost secret scam. The worst scam in all modern history in fact. And the gravest crime in modern history.

 Governments need Crypto as much as people and business needs them too.


 Only the dawn of electricity could hope to compare to this Crypo-Currency Revolution! This has the potential to be that big or even much, much bigger going forward centuries from now. Maybe even bigger than the entire Industrial Revolution is how big this Monetary Revolution may be ultimately, centuries from now for mankind. So far no one talks of that by myself in private mail. But I believe it's very likely to be true.


But I fail to see how Bitcoin captures the entire global populations embrace when regular people can now mine alt currencies for a fraction of the cost of mining Bitcoin. In fact most are priced out of asic mining now, which is required for Bitcoin from here on.


 So no, I don't suppose that Only Bitcoin can succeed replacing all fiat. But Bitcoin may well be the King of Crypto for a long time, maybe.


 It Depends...It's now up to the marketplace to decide and some don't like that either. All because they want power and control over what gets accepted and what doesn't. Their acting as badly as banksters and governments here. This is the very 1st time I stated any of this paragraph too, but that's what is quickly becoming clear in my mind from this last month of what I already termed the Birthing of Crypto-Currencies in the global marketplace. (birthing - the point of their first real mass acceptance is November 2013).



 Decentralization is the Future. That's fact. But it wont be easy. Nor without battles. But it's begun. And it's not stopping either.


 Crypto-Currency is the Future too. Decentralized Crypto-Currency Currencies, which no Banksters nor any Governments control their issue, nor their inflation/deflation rates. Indeed Crypto is vastly superior to what we suffer from today. Of course some wont like that. Well they had their fun. Their rein is about up. They best make plans. The Peoples have Spoken. The message is clear. Crypto it is.



Caveat emptor - let the buyer beware!

Governments could take to coercion or even direct violence (it would be just stupid not to try all available means if such a need arises), but this is something any sane government should take to only as a means of last resort. It is in government's best interests to stick to economic pathways to reach its aims whenever possible, and issuance and introduction of a new currency belongs right here. Taxes can be important for such an aim only if economic routes fail. There are states with robust currency systems which have very low taxes if ever...

Should I take it as a confirmation that shitting in your diapers would mean an unbiased view on life?

Forgot to ask last post, did you just buy property with btc profits? Just curious, not pertinent to the discussion.

There is a lot of shorthand here and I'm going to cut to the point to stay on topic or try anyway. I would like to see broadly less need for government. I don't view most governments as sane given the current state of humanity. I see them as self-interested primarily, their raison d'etre being to serve the people but that being not their current agenda. I'm fairly ignorant on how btc would interface in a global system that was fully unfettered by national agendas. I can see how governments would adopt altcoins, 99% of my fiat is already digital and the banks have wanted to go cashless for a long time (bluetooth was partnered with US banks early on to try and implement it but fell a little short). If governments did accept bitcoins for the coercive side of the economy (taxes, fees & fines), yes that would be a massive incentive to stop using fiat entirely. So long as any legal tender is coercive, then no, nothing else can fully replace it unless the government is replaced instead. Both can coexist in the meanwhile though, certainly.

The more important number is what percent of the world has a smart phone.  Or will have a smart phone.

That's all that will be needed.

I remember some news from a tribe in africa that an organization gave them 200 tablets or something for free as an experiment.
The tribe people was illiterate and knew no english. Some months later they 've hacked the tablets already and they were teaching each other english.

There is nothing more far from truth than this!

If governments decided to accept bitcoins for taxes and all that stuff on par with fiat, people would still be paying with fiat whenever possible while hoarding bitcoins in their wallets. Just another example of Gresham's law in action, i.e. bad inflating money (dollars or whatever) driving good deflating money (Bitcoin) out of circulation...

No, I bought it long before Bitcoin ever started... Having regrets that you failed to grab at this opportunity in time and did not get rich for doing nothing?

But it was you who said that your skewed by life experiences opinion helped you stop shitting in your diapers! I did nothing but reversed your logic a little...

This is the equivalent of starting your argument with, "Well..."


We clearly see where the argument against the horseless wagon went: out one hole and into another.

No need to replace fiat unless there is a hyper fiat inflation and render it totally useless. Fiat is for spending, bitcoin is for saving, no overlap

Probably I would be if I weren't still pissed off at Steve Jobs for not giving me my credit for inventing the ipod. Thought I'd at least get a deathbed confession. Such is life. We all miss a thousand opportunities a day, were I in this thing I would be pretty sketched out, opaque exchanges with long exit queues are not my cup of tea. But 'doing nothing' is terribly inaccurate, Banks printing themselves $85 billion a month, because they wrote themselves a law that says they can, that is much closer to nothing. People took risk, which isn't nothing, and spent time, which also isn't nothing, free markets drive capital where it already wants to go. No shame in profits. As for Gresham's Law you're probably right, with the open question that should apply to all economic theory at this point...are we moving forward or backward. The internet has already killed a swathe of "laws". I'll reserve judgment until I am better informed.

I know, it's called an inventor's premium (or something like that), so no remorse either (I was not among the first early adopters). But for ordinary folks it looks like something along those lines really. You could have mined thousands of Bitcoins using crapware which would have made you a millionaire today. That's what people would think...

Gresham's Law withstood centuries if not millennia. The Frogs will confirm, if you know what I mean. I don't think it is among that swathe of "laws" which Internet has already killed or will ever kill. It's rooted deep down inside human nature, and I doubt it strongly Internet (or anything for that matter) will ever be able to change that...

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/05/robert-wenzel/whats-ahead-for-bitcoin/

When they first kill you, then... well, then there will be no "then"...

I am in 100% agreement with the author and his premise.

BTC is best left as an underground currency to be used by those who will become the new financial elite.

My $.02.

;)

Have you people heard about the news from Alderney?

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4903fc9a-591f-11e3-a7cb-00144feabdc0.html\

If this experiment is successful, then BTC CAN replace fiat!

An independent company will provide the Bitcoins. If the price plunged, neither Alderney nor the Royal Mint would lose anything.
 
The company would put the Bitcoins in an escrow account at an agreed price.
 
Meanwhile, the Royal Mint would take customers’ orders for its minted Bitcoins and receive money from those coin sales.
 
The virtual Bitcoins backing the physical coins would be held in digital storage facilities by Alderney.
 
The Mint would issue the commemorative Bitcoin, paying for the value of the gold content itself. Alderney would receive royalties from sales of the coins.
 
Coins could be redeemed for sterling at any point in Alderney for the price of a Bitcoin on that day.
All we can do at this point is sit back in wonder and amusement as we hit the pinnacle of monetary confusion, whereby the UK Royal Mint, willing to take full advantage of retail confusion, will mix hard, soft and digital currency, and produce a product... that is locked away on an island that belongs to the UK.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-01/uk-royal-mint-working-plans-issue-gold-backed-physical-bitcoins
-----------

Hahahhahahhaahhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahaha.

Sorry that sounds like the worst of all worlds to my untrained ear.

How would one become financial elite but be underground?

The power is not bestowed, it is taken, in most cases by force. Those who will become the new financial elite would have to somehow get rid of the old one in the first place. The old one will indeed resist this in every way possible and try to nip in the bud anything threatening their power. These things have been very well known since Pharaohs and Ancient Rome...

Name 5 of the 10 largest shareholders of the Federal Reserve

Hint

#1 Satoshi Naka.....  (actually probably not. You're on your own.)



(edit- feel free to use google, phone a friend, call the Fed...anything you like. 10 BTC if you can name 5 of them.)

http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm

http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/current/
9. Statement of Condition of Each Federal Reserve Bank, November 27, 2013

shows each regional reserve bank, but you probably mean the end shareholders, which are the member banks below:

http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/lbr/current/default.htm
(in millions, so #1 would be $1.947794e+12 USD, for example)
JPMORGAN CHASE BK NA/JPMORGAN CHASE & CO    1    852218    COLUMBUS, OH    NAT    1,947,794
BANK OF AMER NA/BANK OF AMER CORP    2    480228    CHARLOTTE, NC    NAT    1,429,737
CITIBANK NA/CITIGROUP    3    476810    SIOUX FALLS, SD    NAT    1,319,359
WELLS FARGO BK NA/WELLS FARGO & CO    4    451965    SIOUX FALLS, SD    NAT    1,284,538
U S BK NA/U S BC    5    504713    CINCINNATI, OH    NAT    349,333

Don't have enough time to parse the foreign banks below but I'm not seeing any in the major allies over 349,333 million USD.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/iba/201303/bycntry.htm
Structure Data for the U.S. Offices of Foreign Banking Organizations

Holding corporations, offshore accounts; offshore from USA anyway in countries which do not respect US currency laws (And there are a few!), VPS through TOR, anonymous debiet cards, cash transactions for crypto................................

Shall I go on?

You don't go to the club and buy hose rounds, thereby drawing attention to yourself.

You can buy Armani suits but cut out the labels.

You don't need a USD $3 million mansion; you only need a nice place to live.

As athe business agent for a corporation; any corporation you can reeceive a hefty salary, pay taxes on that and yet reap a gazillion corporate benefits.

Tax evasion?

Maybe but how much of your money to you want to send to a government to fight illegal wars?

Money laundering?

Any transaction the US government doesn't like can be called "money laundering".

The government has broken the social contract so in my opinion, whatever you do to protect yourself from that fiolation is fine by me!

Beleive me, there are ways to be very, very wealthy and completely off the radar.

My $.02.

;)

Yes that makes it all less opaque doesn't it.

So to answer the question, you incorporate as Bitcoinbehemoth Monstrosity NA, write covenants into your charter, hold the preferred stock with voting rights in the family vault, float a billion shares to the masses to stuff in their pension funds, completely diffusing any illusion of control over the entity, and hire a few lobbyists to buy the current government stooges and make sure they don't rock your boat.

If that was your objective, I mean.

Seems transparent and question-answered to me, unless 1) those 5 aren't the largest shareholders/member banks and there are actually foreign banks with more, and I just need to parse the bycntry.htm list more closely 2) your definition of "shareholders" isn't the Fed's definition of shareholders, and you want to get even more granular and meant to ask "Name 5 of the 10 largest depositors into the Federal Reserve shareholder/member banks?" Which is a question that only the government could legally both ask and answer itself about. If I were one of those people, I wouldn't want anyone to fucking know, government or no government.


1BUTRZ85L1JuoX5y2XRjxJaYcjcMLhPJcY

Don't offer up bounties if you're not going to pay.

Names of institutions are not names of people. If you gave your handle to someone else I would be having this conversation with someine else now and have no idea.

That was not the topic. I am well aware for the structure of the Fed. If you want to spilt hairs there is no fed. It is the collective vault of its member companies. Who have of late sent their representatives to their board meetings to decide the best way to help everyone is to print themselves $85 cash every month, and keep it all for themselves, and pay themselves interest on their reserves.

Working out well for them.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/WRESBAL/

But no you did not answer my question.

I'd welch anyways that's a lot of money for a trivia question.

To hazard a guess, assuming they didn't sell out, the largest shareholders will be the descendants/heirs of all the founders of each one of those 5 banks above, including all the banks they partnered/merged with.

Family money and genealogy isn't some vast conspiracy.

Lame.

It was Rothschild / Rockerfeller  et al

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-federal-reserve-cartel-the-eight-families

http://land.netonecom.net/tlp/ref/federal_reserve.shtml

http://www.2012.com.au/Federal_Reserve.html

Some names

) Lord Jacob de Rothschild.
2) Son Nathaniel.
3) Baron John de Rothschild, who recently said they’re working towards global governance. (NOTE: The Rothschild Dynasty is worth some 500 Trillion dollars. Just about half the world’s wealth)
4) Sir Evelyn de Rothschild.
5) David Rockefeller, Sr. who’s son Nick, while making him an offer for Nevada Governorship, told film director Aaron Russo (now deceased ) about 9/11 in advance. (Refuse a Rockefeller order, and you may end up dead). (NOTE: The Rockefeller dynasty controls over 100 Trillion dollars)
6) Nathan Warburg, whose family, was not only instrumental in creating the treasonous Federal Reserve, but along

I make no claims of a conspiracy. Just facts.

1. Printing currency is illegal
2. Banks have an exemption to this law
3. Any debt based currency will have more debt than money, therefore
4. The creditors will always be owed more than there is, therefore,
5. Most people will always be indebted (i.e. poor) and
6. Those with the printing exemption will never be indebted (i.e. rich)

No conspiracy. Just a fucked system that was fine 500 years ago but it can go now. I don't really care who they are. I do know they will do anything to keep their exemption, and have managed quite well to do so, which is not surprising given the nature of the exemption. But I do think that if they had a name and a face, people would be more inclined to ask what is so special about them to have this exemption. So they hide behind stone pillars and bricks and call it an institution. But it's just people with laws written to entitle them. Undoubtedly "family  money", but really family laws. All the money in the FR system went away in '08, they held a negative reserve balance. So they made new rules, and created new money, which is the chart above.

I'd like to be able to do that too but I am not permitted to. Though bitcoin... close.

You are a wise man Grasshopper.

My $.02.

;)

Just saying :)

On another thread this was calculated at 463k coins in 115 wallets in the top 500 which is 3.8% of 12M coins potentially dead/lost

Bitcoin will not replace fiat or gold or anything else whatsoever although is has the potential to disrupt markets like that of international remmitances.

Bitcoin is worth more than gold already, apparently. :-)

Actually no because gold's price is per kg or gram or ounce and you can't weigh bitcoins anyway  :P

Compare the $13 billion market cap of BTC to the estimated total net worth of all the gold ever mined on earth (some 200,000 tonnes, worth $9 trillion).

Ok what will happen if do that comparison? Something that will actually make sense?
The comparison of the price of 1 bitcoin with the price of 1 ounce of gold is meant for pr buzz reasons and holds no other value whatsoever.

The takeaway from that should be that when BTC captures even more of the value that is currently held in other commodities, such as gold, that BTC will continue to increase in value. Which are easier to store & transport...bitcoins or gold bars & coins? Which are easier to use for commerce directly? Bitcoin only has a tiny fraction of the total value held in other commodities, and has the capability of becoming far more useful. So, of the two, an oz of gold seems rather overpriced to me now and a bitcoin seems like an astounding bargain even at current prices.

Though technically I have no objection to what you just said (less bitcoins per capita driving prices up and all that), but I still have a kind of anxiety, or rather uneasy consideration, which is not emotional in nature (I don't have that much to lose and already profited handsomely), that Bitcoin should soon crash into the ground even if people are trying to withhold it. I would call that Bitcoin singularity (the end of this) when a constantly increasing price comes along with an ever increasing volatility and yet lower volume is causing still more extreme changes of price. A feeling that something is terribly wrong with Bitcoin...

Bitcoin won't replace fiat but crypto-currency certainly will.  It's a better form of money, hands down.  I suspect we'll see many different cryptos utilized all over the world.  Just like we have many different government fiats around the world.  

The thinking that banks or countries will buy Bitcoin to use as currency, is really absurd.  They'll just create their own.  I think some people forget the code is open sourced and there is no benefit to banks, governments or even the Paypal/Amazons of the world, buying a crypto just to make current holders richer, when they can just create a new one and make themselves rich.  

Are we talking global replacement of fiat

if we are I cannot see the 4 billion people who are poor and do not have a smart phone or pc being able to use a crypto currency

Not in the near future. But how can you be so sure that by AD 2100, not everyone will have access to internet?

Also, if BTC becomes mainstream, third party companies will spring up (just like today's banks) who will make the transactions easier.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/07/itu-6-8b-mobile-subs-by-end-of-2013-nearly-as-many-people-as-there-are-on-earth-2-7b-on-any-kind-of-internet/


we are all here now.

IMV, Bitcoin/CC  is only necessary because of the existence of fiat legal tender. If the government didn't hold a monopoly on money I wouldn't put so much hope into CC. If we had private competing currencies there'd be little need for CC, tho, of course, it could still be very useful and perhaps still quite profitable.

In short, I don't particular want BTC to replace fiat, I just want non governmental currencies.

"replacing fiat" is a lofty idea, one that bitcoin doesn't need to attain to at all in order to be successful. The "currency" aspect of Bitcoin maybe the most exciting thing to talk about but it's Bitcoin the "protocol" where the real action is.

Bitcoin isn't best decribed as a currency at all really, a better discription might be "fluid commodity" 

"bitcoin for fiat , is like MP3 for CD .. "

  ~Max Keiser

bitcoin does work thats it none uses it to buy things with the value goes up and down you could not set a constant rate so obviosly if you have to use it to send money either your going to win or loose its not static its fluctuant its not meant to be a fiat its made to do hashing work for processing information so why try to mislead people into thinking its a fiat.  Are you for real or not be real to others and you will be real to yourself.  Dont think speak from the heart its the best.

While i agree with what you said, i was talking about comparing bitcoins with ounces of gold. The comparison is meaningless. There is no point on comparing bitcoins with ounces or grams or kilograms or whatever... If you want to compare 1 out of 21m bitcoins with 1/21000000 of the total weight of gold in earth then ok. It will make much more sense.

Value as such is meaningless, for there is no such thing as objective value in itself and by itself. It exists only in our heads, and our conceptions about it differ at any given time (that's what makes exchange of goods possible). Whether you like or not, people will compare the price of a bitcoin with that of an ounce of gold because it is the subjective value that matters...

Actually no they will not. Some people will use it as a pr buzz but most of us understand that means nothing. Of course retards will compare it but it can't be helped anyway.

Value isn't meaningless. It's who gives it value, and whether it is supported that is relevant.

Apparently bitcoin has no support whatsoever, and it is represented in it's volatility index. You need "collective" acceptance.

Toilet paper has good value, it has a relatively constant and stable value. Every year, year round, it only rises in price a small amount.

In short, I would agree bitcoin can't "replace" fiat.

With that said, who says both can't co-exist. I think they certainly both can and will and both will have it's own set of uses and strengths/weaknesses.

Cryptocurrency was never intended to replace fiat.

So many have missed the point of the whole thing...................................

What does one do?

One buys them the books and they eat the covers...................................

My $.02.

;)

And ultimately it all boils down to what you, and me, and everyone else think about it. This is what "relevant" in the end. So I have to repeat in case you didn't get my point, value as such taken by itself is meaningless because it simply doesn't exist beyond human mind and its perception...

There is no reason why bitcoin, or some other digital currency, couldn't replace fiat currencies.  The comment "Fiat rules the world because it’s what people are used to" doesn't hold water.  Ancient cultures used to use sea shells for money and that didn't last.  Just about everything changes given enough time.

An independent company will provide the Bitcoins. If the price plunged, neither Alderney nor the Royal Mint would lose anything.

Yes b!z I agree that Bitcoin Simply Cannot Replace Fiat especially due to the fact bitcoin is only worth until people are willing to accept it as payment. Bitcoin is based on technology once people lose its faith in it than simply it will worth nil. Whereas fiat is backed by the state so really I don’t believe fiat will be unacceptable any time soon but can’t say about bitcoin.

Bitcoin won't be replacing anything in China in the foreseeable future.
The government quickly nipped that one in the bud.

I am, along with my associates, working on a solution to that one.

I'll keep the community posted.

:)

Quote from the article:
"I agree that Bitcoin is intrinsically valuable, and useful (for purposes such as online payments and provably fair gaming), but the chances of it taking over the fiat world are pretty much non-existent."

Not too long ago this kind of article was saying "Bitcoin has NO intrinsic value".  Now they've had to pull back from that since it is being used to buy stuff (starting with pizza).  In the future they will also have to pull back from saying the chances of Bitcoin taking over fiat is non-existent.

lol Does anyone here in their right minds actually think fiat will ever be replaced?

Fiat is the sole control mechanism that governments use to keep their citizens in check.  Military/govn't spy programs..you name it...all boils down to fiat and its power.  Banks and governments are synonymous.    You're going to have to overthrow your government in order to ever have fiat replaced by a virtual currency.  The only, and I mean only way that would happen is if the government itself eliminated fiat, established their own virtual currency, and banned all other alt-currencies.  

Use your brain people, this is simply just an alternative form of future payment, just like paypal and western union were and still are.

Have you found a way to circumvent the government regulations? If so, why can't you post a few words about it?

Modern fiat currencies are already over 90% virtual. I know this is very likely not your point exactly, but one of the strongest features of a fiat currency before any backed up currencies (or limited in supply by some external factors like bitcoin, for that matter) is that it potentially allows effectively and even handsomely solve some problems inherent to the latter. First of all, I refer here to the problem of disincentivizing production which fiat currencies easily get rid of...

I agree, they can work independent or with each other.  Crypto Currencies do not need to replace fiat.