Bitcoin Forum

Original Post: https://bitflate.org/post/2020/04/11/the-coronavirus-and-a-deflationary-crisis.html

Nobody could have imagined the Coronavirus crisis. But the scope and damage are enormous. The Black Swan event is here. Nassim Taleb calls it a White Swan, an expected pandemic that will eventually happen. You can buy his book to learn this distinction. Governments and people were caught off guard. The crisis started at the beginning of 2020. A few months later, it has turned the world economy upside down.

The Coronavirus crisis offers important lessons for crypto. It discredits some foolish ideas that we used to believe in.

Bitcoin is not money during a crisis

Bitcoin is supposed to be a Store of Value. Crypto sphere has pitched it as an uncorrelated asset, a safe haven, a hedge, an insurance against a global economic crisis. False! The opposite has happened, at least, in the short-term. People flee to cash. They dumped their positions in equity and Bitcoin. For a few weeks, equity and Bitcoin prices are highly correlated.

During this crisis, Bitcoin volatility increased dramatically. It dropped more than 50% (from 8k to 4k) on March 12, 2020. The lesson here is Bitcoin is not money during a crisis. People need cash to pay for their essential expenses (e.g. rent, food).

It’s time for the crypto community to discard some thesis about Bitcoin.

• Bitcoin is an uncorrelated asset. (It’s not.)
• Bitcoin is a hedge against an economic crisis. (It’s not.)
• Bitcoin volatility will decrease as Bitcoin matures. (It won’t.)

I remain bullish for Bitcoin in the long-term. But I revised my view. Here are my current thoughts.

• Short-term, Bitcoin is a speculative asset.
• Long-term, Bitcoin is a Store of Value.
• Bitcoin is not a medium of exchange.

We are heading into a deflationary crisis

When the US government announced the 2T stimulus package, people flooded Crypto Twitter with the Money Printer Go Brrr meme. This meme quickly died as the crypto sphere quickly realized the scope of the Coronavirus damage. This is no ordinary economic crisis. The US economy has shut down. Consumptions slow to a halt. People briefly spent more money to stock up groceries at the beginning of the shutdown. Consumptions in other categories, like entertainment and travel, are down from 20% to 90%. We see reports of farmers dumping milk and eggs because consumptions have gone down. When demand drops and supply remains the same, price has to drop to encourage people to spend. Commodity prices will drop. Companies will make less money. Then, wages will drop. This is a vicious price decrease cycle. We are heading into a deflationary crisis.

It’s likely that a 2T stimulus package is not enough. The Coronavirus crisis shut down the world economy for months. It probably destroyed a lot more wealth than 2T. We probably need more than 50T stimulus to just get the US economy back to its previous height. There is an immense challenge to distribute the stimulus money fairly. The roadblocks can cause prices to drop for many months. Crypto sphere has expected rampant inflation to make the case for Bitcoin. Policymakers may overshoot and cause rampant inflation. They may become corrupt and distribute money unevenly. Bitcoin is a good hedge against this. But the opposite is happening.

We need an inflationary cryptocurrency

The Coronavirus crisis highlights the importance of inflation. It is the force to drive economic development. Deflation can send an economy into a long-term recession with vicious price decrease cycles. We experienced these issues during the Great Depression during the 1920s. The gold standard exacerbated the Great Depression. We’ve learned many lessons. Some people ignore these lessons to profess their ideology. Deflation is a real threat. Bitcoin does not fix this.

It’s time to discard the idea that Bitcoin is the ideal form of money. It is a good starting point to create a new monetary system. But its deflationary property makes it volatile. It is not suitable as a medium of exchange. We need crypto experiments with inflation.

Bitflate is a cryptocurrency with constant inflation of 7% per year. Its goal is to be a Medium of Exchange.

Totally unbiased source, lmao.

There's so much wrong with this article, but in short - Bitcoin fundeamentals didn't change, you can call it a store of value if you want, others might call it a currency a commodity or whatever, but the whole beauty of Bitcoin is that it doesn't care, it's a decentralized systems and people are free to use it however they wish. Bitcoin is whatever you wants it to be.

As for deflation, Bitcoin is not getting widely adopted, so it's irrelevant if it itself is deflationary or inflationary, as it has zero macro-economical impact.

Some Coronavirus lessons costed us too much. Bitcoin believers have been saying that this crypto has a big potential to become a medium of exchange, in fact, we experienced panic selling phenomena. It's so sad :'(

This looks like an alternate cryptocurrency discussion.

By the way, why is Bitcoin not money during a crisis? Bitcoin can still be spent, used to buy stuff, whether we are wading through the economy smoothly or we are experiencing economic hardship.

We have already seen how the inflating fiat experiment is not doing good. Here comes Bitcoin with a fixed supply. You are criticizing both. And eventually came up with a half-fiat half-Bitcoin digital stablecoin which has a combination of halving and inflation. It appears a hybrid joke to me.

Bitcoin AFAIK is a medium of exchange, indubitably the main medium of exchange is fiat/money; but bitcoin can also be used to buy goods and pay for services and is also accepted by sellers. Too much is being made of this corona virus pandemic, stop exaggerating it's effect on bitcoin, people still use bitcoin the way they did before the pandemic and now even use it to make donations to support families in this lockdown.
This article is just an advertisement for your shitcoin, but all of the article was still about Bitcoin, ironical :D

It's all very complicated, but you said something very interesting and I couldn't pay much attention afterwards, so will need to re read. You said that people are selling Bitcoins to pay their rent. Thoughts like that cripple mean, because again, taking action on whether to buy or sell is complicated. I feel like an utter noob.

It is not the gold system that exacerbates depression, but it is the greed of the capitalists that ultimately makes banks issue fiat money on the basis of gold reserves owned by banks and the practice of interest-bearing debt that worsens great depression because money is not used as money to smooth the economy but as an asset so it is the vulnerable act of speculation.

The ideological struggle was quite interesting in the 1930s when Adam Smith's classic economic recipe was considered a failure and allowed the market to move wildly without control, the world turned to alternatives. From the ring of global capitalism, a reformer figure like J.M. Keynes offered a new idea, the Government must intervene and stimulate the economy if it does not want the condition of depression to get worse. His advice was heard by many leaders from the western world, including the US. Keynes just wants capitalism not to go bankrupt, only to undergo a slight modification. The greatness of capitalism deserves a thumbs up, crisis and capitalism like siblings. Crisis is not to aggravate and bring down capitalism instead new methods for extending the life of capitalism have emerged, as Keynes tried.

Many say that the main weakness is the limited amount of gold is even quite rare so that it can threaten a country's gold supply. As a precious metal and a non-renewable resource, limited gold reserves will be difficult to keep up with world economic growth. In addition, the value of gold is high enough to be used as a standard exchange rate and payment instrument that is valid in people's daily lives. This high value makes it difficult to service transactions that are of less value than the value of gold.

The crisis does not always lead to inflation but also deflation because the contributing factor is sluggish purchasing power so that demand does not move up. the impact of deflation is very bad and can last for a very long time. For example, Hong Kong, which experienced a period of deflation in 2002 and until now has not been able to repair the impact of the deflation. Japan, which experienced a long period of deflation since the early 1990s, is still trying to restore its economic growth.

Why do you think that bitcoin's potential of becoming a medium of exchange is shattered? There is no panic sell happening right at this moment? I don't know for how long you are associated with crypto market, but we have seen far more severe panic selling of cryptos in the past! The current scene is not panic selling, it's called profit booking. Try to track the price movement of bitcoin for 2 weeks, my statement will start making sense!

You ignored a good point in this crisis, which is that it was a health crisis and led to the freezing of supply and demand and thus made the imbalance in the equation. This crisis has not escaped all sectors, and therefore it is wrong to evaluate Bitcoin based on a problem facing all sectors in the world.
What happened in the month of March is panic from a lot of the population, therefore all the decisions that were taken are not predictable and therefore it is wrong to measure them.
Over time, Bitcoin will prove whether it is a safe haven in the long term or a store against volatility or is it just a tool of speculation.

Bitcoin IS money during a crisis, it is also store of value, these things are not really different from each other as long as you want to use it that way. Just to give an example gold is accepted all around the world, if you own gold and you want to sell it, you can carry it to any country you want (there are limits allowed, you can't carry 100 kg of it, but lets say a bracelet made out of pure gold) and obviously you can sell it there and spend the money, while you are also having something store of value until you sell it.

Same goes for bitcoin, you can spend it all around the world, in almost every nation there is at least one place that takes bitcoin, while you are also keeping the store of value as well. Being money and being store of value is not really independent from each other.

While there is an incredible and growing amount of censorship in social media, in this site, advocating views that are critical of bitcoin are clearly tolerated.

I don't know if it that is a good or a bad thing.

On the one side, I consider it to be a good thing, because I fundamentally object to censorship and to silencing opposing views. On the other side, it is annoying that when I express views that support bitcoin in mainstream sites, my views will get censored, but when other people do the opposite here, they will not get censored. Therefore, it also feels a bit unfair ...

I've seen this argument all over the place in the last few weeks, and it's just wrong. I've responded in a few different threads, and I will again (very briefly) here.

Bitcoin is not a safe haven asset yet. It has the potential to be the absolute best safe haven asset, as we all know and have discussed many times before... but for the moment the crypto markets are relatively young, volumes are low compared with traditional markets, which leads to volatility, which is self-perpetuating. Bitcoin at the moment is a high-risk high-reward gamble. But that will change as crypto matures and intersects with the mainstream, and as volumes increase. This is not the end state, we are likely years away from that. Don't confuse what bitcoin is now with what it will become.

I agree that it would come for bitcoin to be a safe haven but I doubt your term using absolute as safe haven. If we are going to argue which safe haven could be the absolute safe haven then it would be gold, no statement needed further. Crypto is volatile yet it has the potential to be a safe haven, in what heaven reason? because of the price resistance but this resistance is still uncertain which is coming from unknown people in decentralized network.

I agree with the article, but I have to say that the long-term is not 5 years anymore. It is, at least, 10 years.

Bitcoin is not a medium of exchange. No merchant accepts it. It was accepted to buy houses and cars for some time, but this changed when the StF ratio got busted last year. Today it is just a speculative asset, part of the fiat casino.

With this virus many people become panic in a matter including crypto where they will sell more than hold, I think they are not strong against crypto whereas this is what I cared in a crisis where all prices are down then can buy more to save for a long time .

We all know that the corona virus has caused everything and therefore I will always accept what happens in the future for me in a crisis like this there is no panic but the most important thing is to be able to withstand the temptation of any news because it can also affect your mentality .

There will be nothing real in this crypto market. If blockchain technology is great, this market will not be empty of real technology investors. In this market, the majority of the sharks are sharks and they continue to fomo until the fry are trapped and sucked out of money. Although bitcoin has an excellent deflationary mechanism, who will use it in commodity purchases? There is no one but the mafia in the gang. So don't trust anything in this market, we should only care about profit.

It can function as one, as long as there will be people willing to accept it for goods and services. People telling bitcoin isn't money because it is only meant to be a store of value do not look beyond the possibilities for bitcoin, clearly.


To be fair, people fled to cash a few weeks back, and after they have bought their supplies, the stimulus fund most Americans received were already dumped into some other investments, gadgets and other cool stuff that they don't really need this time. People are also buying bitcoin and gold as a hedge! Why would they resort to cash when they clearly know that it's going to devalue within the next few years anyway?


The lesson here is that all asset class irregardless of which category they belong to are affected by such a crisis. No one expected the virus to blow out of proportion and get this big, hence the panic when the numbers began to rise on their own yards. Also, most countries encouraged landlords to suspend rent for the time being until everything settles, so people only need to worry about food for the most part.


It became a speculative asset since it hit exchanges, and will always remain to be one.


Again, dependent on the situation.


It's not as if the US is the only country severely hit by this virus. The whole world's burning down into its economic core but we're still getting by. This situation would likely ease within the next few months as we are getting closer and closer to finding an actual drug that can inhibit the effects on the virus on human body systems. There are promising ones appearing already, and heck, even the Philippine president volunteered its nation to be a nation of lab rats with Japan's drug cocktail! Nations will come up with ideas to keep the economy up and running without sacrificing the health and welfare of its citizens, I'm sure. We just have to make-do before everything returns to normal. It's a painful and hurtful time, but it is what it is.

Bitcoin for people who simply Hold. There are people who benefit from it on the exchange platforms. Some have ventured to accept it as a means of payment. Other people receive it as their only means of income and it is a reality. There are so many benefits that have been given today to  Bitcoin that the precise moment will come that will surprise us.

On volatility, I've seen hypotheses on how it will go down as Bitcoin matures.

- More hodlers, less volatility. This is not true. Speculators still drive its price. Bitcoin can still drop 50% in a day when speculators dump.
- More traditional market adoption, less volatility. Assume many funds hold 1% in bitcoins, does it reduce volatility? I think it would drive up Bitcoin's price. But it won't reduce volatility. Speculators still drive its price.
- More payment adoption, less volatility. We won't get here. Low volatility is required for payment adoption. People don't want to accept a currency whose value can drop significantly within a few days.

Bitcoin has reached a significant market cap. The industry has hundreds of billions of dollars now. Volatility is still here. Will it ever go away or is it inherently a property of Bitcoin? I think volatility is a property of Bitcoin due to the 21m cap.

Yes it already made sense for me . I don't see any rush in sell off contributing to bitcoin drop. In fact, this is not a in drop rather a market wave which I believe will continue until halving come soon which is what will direct the price.

I accept as true with you that regardless of the state of the planet Bitcoin won't drop it'll haven't any impact on Bitcoin but it'll continue at its slowest pace many of us initially sold their bitcoin due to this crisis but now most are holding on. Even big traders aren't selling they assert bitcoin prices are likely to rise by the top of the year if the crisis is overcome.

Actually there were people who did imagine the Corona virus crisis , when the SARS - 2 was discovered a group of scientists wanted a loan to be approved so that they can create a vaccine against the Corona Viruses in advance for future but unfortunately their funding never came , it was deemed unnecessary.
So all of this could have been avoided is countries could focus on healthcare instead of their ministers or even building a wall .
Bitcoins is ofcourse connected to the economy but at the same time it is stabilized due to the fact that it is not one country who is investing in it , so it is like people supporting people together.
Also I think it is good that whales have not decided to act in a situation like this because it would create a lot of problems for other small investors.
Unfortunately people have to sell Bitcoins and the price will drop eventually if the quarantine is to be extended.
We actually have 2 choices , either people will die of the Corona virus or because of no economy stability , no job , no nothing because of extended quarantine.

Good points. Its a systemic issue, due to the ponzi scheme nature of how bitcoin was introduced to the public.
Those who joined in the first 2-4 years drive the price for all the others who came later. That's why you have cliques like the WO thread, where its members are always laughing, even when the price have fallen 60% in a matter of days. The crashes wont affect them.

There seems to be no way to solve this, as any new coin introduced leads to a ponzi scheme, the first holders defining the price for the ones who came after them. Thus these coins become speculative assets, and fail the initial purpose which was to be used for payments.

Fiat also have this nature, people just dont see it. The institution which prints fiat money, the central bank, define its value for those who buy it. The difference is that the institution is impersonal, so people are less aware of the manipulation, but it is still there.

Well for me, Bitcoin is a digital currency has its own value. It can be stored or spend it the way the owner wanted. In times of crisis like this pandemic where there is global economic recession a big impact on monetary value is obvious and that is deflation. Since Bitcoin has its own value in currency therefore Bitcoin value is still affected by deflation. However, after this recession, --once the economy recovered then Bitcoin value will go up again.

There are several reasons why bitcoin is (potentially) better than gold as a safe haven asset. This has been discussed many times, but as one example, bitcoin has a fixed maximum supply, gold doesn't. You can't say once all the gold in the world is mined then that is the maximum, as we will probably be mining asteroids for precious metals before too long.

it's debatable whether a fixed supply is superior to predictably low and market-controlled inflation---what gold has. fixed supply may end up making bitcoins appreciate more than gold, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's superior as the money underlying an economy.

i've been hearing about the specter of asteroid mining my whole life. i'll believe that when i see it.

During financial crisis there usually 'bloods on the streets' which means that people will loose their investment due to panic.

Well, deflationary and inflationary tendencies are what create profit in the market. So, its good to hold on to what you've until the coronavirus pandemic is over.

The idea of inflationary cryptocurrency is completely stupid. If you really wanna promote cryptocurrency as a medium of exchange then stable coins are best (aren't they?). Why would someone accept payment in the currency whose value is sure to fall over time due to continuously increasing supply. Me as a vendor would never like to deal in such currency.

Secondly, the fall in Bitcoin's value doesn't fully-proof that all the investors discarded the idea of 'Bitcoin as a hedge against economic crisis'. In my views, only weak hands left market because since the day Bitcoin fell to $3800, its price is rising continuously. But what's more important is the volume. The average weekly Market Volume has risen by approximately 15% since the mighty fall which clearly shows more money is flowing into Bitcoin these days.

Finally, don't post such promotional articles in the shadow of quality discussion. If you really wanna promote a coin, simply post in the relevant section rather than posting propagandize articles. 

I'll concede the point, it likely is many years away. Similar to commercial fusion reactors in that sense.

But I do think we'll see it once the economics make it worthwhile. Things are moving in that direction. Easily mineable precious metals here are diminishing, and this will drive up cost of extraction. At the same time we are now seeing commercial involvement in the space industry, with some quite rapid development. The potential rewards from asteroids are - sorry - astronomical. Once the cost of getting at them and returning to Earth ceases to be prohibitive, then asteroid mining becomes inevitable. But yes, likely some way away yet.

a lot has happened on March 12, 2020, which caused the value of bitcoin to fall quite deep, I think the general reason for the decline in the value of bitcoin due to the current crisis due to Covid-19 is in a state of emergency, they are forced to sell to meet urgent economic needs,

only if you still have a sufficient stocks . a stock of food and some cash to sustain you for a longer time or until the corona pandemic is over but this isnt the situation that happens to the most of us which leads to sometimes pull out our assets and exchange it for cash.   deflation and inflation creates a profit ? well that could be right if only there is no major issue like corona because people can be calm and think properly .

First of all, I don't believe in the deflationary crisis as every one is discussing in the mainstream I hope everyone would have seen the funny cartoon video made on this topic what is deflating in the real terms for the retail users? nothing in fact the real users are facing inflation with the increased prices of food items and because of the demand and supply so this is just the government numbers finally the people will be paying more than what they afford previous year for the same commodity or services

That is probably just the effects of short term supply chain disruptions, which are causing localized retail shortages and price hikes. That doesn't really mean general inflation. I haven't noticed higher prices where I live but some items (like paper products and disinfectants) have been harder to find.

After watching the carnage in crude oil, I pulled up monthly charts for US-produced commodities like corn, soybeans, sugar, copper, and cotton. They are looking scary, on the edge of breaking below decades-long support levels. A collapse of these commodity markets would further confirm the US economy is entering a depression.

That's one route to lower CPI but it will destroy all hopes of a V-shaped recovery. Goodbye 1987, hello 1929. :-\

When the whole world is in a crisis, it looks like nobody is in crisis, that is what we are living in right now. When there is a problem in UK that only affects UK prices, when there is one in France it affects France, when there is one all over the world at the same time no matter how much you print or not matter how much you give loans, zero interest whatever you do, it will not affect your nation that horribly because comparatively other nations are doing the same thing as well.

When one nation does bad and the other one does even worse, its not as bad as you might think, its horrible when one nation is doing alright while the other one crashes, that is where you see the difference because you have hard time purchasing from other nations when you are the only one doing bad.

It has nothing to do with Covid-19. It has been caused by Bitmex and the btc futures and its liquidation engine, They were even forced to put the site on maintenance to let the market breathe. I don't know why it hasn't been talked in the forum but the price could have gone down even more.

They justified the maintenance claiming it was to stop a DDOS but it's a big lie.

7% per year? Really? This cryptocurrency in 10 years can become garbage, because after 10 years, the amount of this cryptocurrency will increase by 96% of the original one, and I personally don’t see the point of investing in such a cryptocurrency, because. money will constantly depreciate.

Not sure if anyone else has said this, but I'd just like to say something: You know that when you provide a source on here it's not typically because you've just copy and pasted exactly what the article is. It's TYPICALLY used when you take a few ideas or you summarize the ideas of someone else.

Good article though, even if the source is someone who is just trying to ADVERTISE THEIR OWN COIN. Important thing to point out. Don't know if you noticed that.

I was actually saying the same sort of thing in P&S by the way. I was talking about how no one is spending money right now and b/c of that when the fed / congress goes through all of the monetary policy stuff that they're planning the inflation rate is going to stay within 2-3 percent as it typically does. We don't have a lot of data on this, but for the last stimulus package -- 2009 (Obamas stimulus package) -- inflation was in that same range even with the Fed doing what they're doing now.

Indeed, there have now been many signs of the occurrence of the great depression in many countries, such as a decrease in consumer spending. Massive share sales, a decline in production to predict banks will experience systemic failure. All that remains is for the country's leaders to address this problem and choose a solution. For Americans who have faced great depression, they already have the formula even with a great depression they can become a superpower country now.

Corona is a test of the independence of a country. What does it mean to be independent if it cannot be sovereign and often tossed around with global situations. Want to follow what America has suggested through the IMF or copy what America has done to turn disaster into a miracle with an economist at war.

We must start thinking about what makes the world economy not resistant to depression, this is proof that the current economic understanding is non-sense whose practice does not solve the problems of the existing world economy that is rich getting richer and the poor not coming out of the poverty zone. Is the formula distributed by the IMF effective?

Therefore we should copy the example of what big countries do, not do what they say.

All macroeconomic problems start with the practice of banks that issue debt securities and take interest which causes speculative actions and the economy does not develop in the real sector.

The whole idea of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is that they have totally different characteristics from fiat currencies.
As Bitcoin is resistant to inflation this means that people are not going to lose the value of their money at all.
What would be the case of creating an inflationary cryptocurrency? It won't provide any positive impact to the market - at least at the current period of time.

You can dislike market manipulation and corruption. But you cannot worship deflation and say it's a cure for the disease. People will see how deflation wreaking havoc to economies. Inflation has its own role. Why not use a crypto with fixed inflation? It offers the same liberation as Bitcoin, just different economics and use case. The game is fair.

So it was just a coincidence that all markets collapsed at the same time on March 12th? :D

Arthur shut Bitmex down because Bitmex was about to explode into insolvency and socialized losses. They had no bid side liquidity and were several hundred dollars diverged from spot exchanges.

That doesn't indicate Bitmex caused the crash, not by a long shot. I'm amazed at the quickness with which people buy into that theory. The crash was caused by an abnormally high inflow of BTC to spot exchanges leading up to March 12th, (https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/plustoken-scam-bitcoin-price) which was probably caused by collapsing global markets: