Bitcoin Forum

I believe that we will be seeing an economic collapse by the year 2020 for reasons totally unrelated to cryptocurrencies. By then Bitcoin will have grown quite a bit and be much more noticable in the economic community. A lot of smart people will be making a lot of money, while those who weren't so careful will be seeing their dollars rapidly losing value.

People with large pensions, large bond holders, and/or large fiat assets will not be very happy. They will be in denial about the value of Bitcoin technology or so jealous and hateful about early adopters that they refuse to invest or hedge in cryptocurrency.

There will then come a point where government programs like pensions, social security, welfare, and food stamps become next to worthless. When the food stamps meant for a family of four for an entire month will only buy enough food for a single day for one person. When people who come from several generations of welfare and who have never worked a day in their lives suddenly see the gravy train end. When governments and courts discover that the cost of extracting people's private and hidden bitcoins start exceeding their value. When the rich discover a perfect way to hide wealth that can be easily sent or carried across borders. All sorts of social contracts that were supported by the threat of government violence will start to unravel.

It is at this point some politician could say "We had everything under control, but Bitcoin destroyed the economy. Blame them for your troubles".

There could be a huge backlash. I have no doubt that cryptocurrencies will survive, but I wonder if we might be seeing the biggest civil war ever imagined. It won't be region vs. region, but bitcoin_rich vs. bitcoin_poor.

Despite all of this, I am still optimistic. There will be islands of sanity around the world. 3rd world countries where everyone is use to hustling to survive will probably not see any backlash. Bitcoin will be mostly a positive for them and adopted more slowly. I think it will be countries with a lot of welfare and excessive government that will be the worse affected.

I am ready to disappear into another country for a while if necessary.

So how many of you think that cryptotechnology will be blamed if we have an economic collapse?

Do you have plans if it does and things get ugly?

Are your passports up to date?

Your prediction can happen or not, it's not exact science and many things can change over time depend of political decisions, new financial rules etc.
Your scenario is worst possible but I still think that such global financial collapse can be avoided, if right decisions will be made in time.
Even if your (worst possible) scenario happen, still some countries (BRICS) with a lot resources will be less affected and maybe some other currency may replace dollar as global currency for trade.
Bitcoin can stay as main alternative currency for longer time that we wish because nobody can control Bitcoin and this is something world politicians and bank officers don't like much :)

I don't recall any civil wars or widespread beatings/executions when people found out their neighbors immediately sold their Zimbabwean dollars for USD. I don't see why widespread BTC preference over failing national currencies would be any different.

I think that's not going happen, expect every people in a country use BTC as main currency


I think that's true, nobody would use BTC only as currency
Bitcoin will stay as second/third alternate currency

If this happens, expect heavy taxes on bitcoin transactions. :D
The government would work hard to remove the pseudonymity behind bitcoin addresses.

I think an economic collapse would be good for bitcoin
a system with no control by the governments would be really good in that situation

Definitely. People will blame the well off and everyone else but themselves.

The interesting question will be, will there be another next generation coin that can replace bitcoin or will bitcoin continue to rein supreme.

I dont think so, and i dont see how Bitcoin can save us from that crisis anyway. Its an improvement but not the solution.

People are really really really dumb.. really dumb, the gov will spin it that it is some our fault everything crashed.  Remeber people are really stupid and believe what ever the fancy TV tells them.

Only the young generation willing to go out and protest. The older one usually know how futile the situation is and choose to stay at home and watch tv.

No.

No; moneyprinting would be blamed, most people know about it. Possibly, those in power will arrange a big war to reset the financial system, and to have something to blame.

1929 was the fault of the Fed. What a coincidence, WW2 came just at the right time...

We're talking about America here. This isn't Zimbabwe.

Now, back to the OP,

I can see some of those things happening. The civil war would probably be unlikely, or at least not on a really large scale.

If we have to, we could all flock to a 3rd-world country and live among the locals, explaining Bitcoin to them and the like. (Or, we can finally fund the freaking Bitcoin island idea.)

I won't be surprised if Bitcoin gets blamed for the collapse, or at least is claimed to have had a major role in the collapse. People are stupid. They listen to whatever Fox or whoever tells them, as long as it's a fancy source. Regardless, it would be hilarious watching the news fumble over themselves trying to explain why it hurt the economy.

Do I have plans? I guess. Hide away in a forest close to where I live for a few weeks, watching what the rest of the community is doing. If everyone seems to be going to a single spot, or at least a condensed number of spots, make a beeline to the airport and join them. Or I'd leave as things start going bad.

Yours is a dark scenario, but I wouldn't call it the worst-case scenario. A all-out nuclear war on BTC owners would be the worst-case scenario.

An economoic collapse I have to agree could be good for bitcoin however with an economic collapse and something like bitcoin becoming the main use wouldn't the governments then just try even more to tax and turn bitcoin into what they wanted it to be? I could be a good idea but really bad if the government got their hands on it and their laws where pushed through.

People in the 3rd world do not really care about bitcoin. Day to day job are constant struggle not only against government but local thug.

No, I don't think so! The coming economic collapse is usually caused by the flaw of financial system. People tends to create much more products and services and try to make as much return as possible before realising the created products and services is exceeding the demand. Therefore, business go to bankrupt. BTC just pays the role as medium of exchanging goods and services. It is not the fault of economic collapse.

Politicians do not need a reason. They need an excuse. So they might as well blame bitcoin for any economic deterioration,

Sounds legit. 2020 is a solid number too. I'm already planning to move to another country. East, not west.

no, it's the contrary bitcoin is the savior of the economy, bitcoin is a good refuge for your money

Bitcoin is still not at this stage.
It may be in 10, 20 years but right now it's still very early stage of Bitcoin.
In fact, nobody can predict what will happen with Bitcoin in the future.
bitcoin can become, as you say, the savior of the economy, but also can become financial lost, so don't invest more than you can afford to loose.