Bitcoin Forum

Many people seem to treat Bitcoin like silver or gold, that if the USD were to collapse, their wealth would be safe in bitcoin.

Metals and Bitcoin:
1. Derives value from rarity and difficulty to obtain more.

Metals:
1. Value universally understood (99/100 people will accept gold after a collapse, 1/100 will accept bitcoin).
2. Does not require a network to trade.

Bitcoins:
1. If stored correctly, impossible for thieves to steal, or governments to sieze.
2. No complex measurements to verify authenticity, purity, and volume.

Bitcoin may have some advantages over gold, but it also has some fundamental disadvantages (such as requiring a network to trade). For this reason, I would not be comfortable relying on Bitcoin for an economic collapse. What does everyone else think?

short answer - of course it will. the world doesn't revolve around america.

Failure of US$ does not equate to failure of the internet.

I agree that the US is not the center of the world, however the international currency of the world is USD.

If the USD were to collapse (which it won't) a lot of very scary stuff will happen in a lot of places where the USD is the main currency (mainly the US). Probably as bad as what happened around Katrina or worse. I think most of the local IT infrastructure in the US would not hold up. It's pretty hard to trade BTC without access to the blockchain.

As for the rest of the world I am not sure what would happen (assuming local currencies don't crash). I am assuming most parts of the internet will stay up.

But it does, sadly. Lots of places use the USD as a standard in a way. Oil is priced in it worldwide.

What makes you think that?

Isn't that starting to change? I mean I've read that some countries are starting to do exchanges in other currencies than USD and just flat out start avoiding it.

Isn't that slowly changing to Euro's?

Maybe you all would like to trade in chinese currency, controlled by the communist party in china?

I do think the crisis is far from over but I don't think it will tear down the whole USD. A lot of market crashes happened already in recent history (since the twenties) and the USD is still standing strong. People need currencies and currently the whole western infrastructure is built on top of the USD.


I really don't know why that would be so much worse? Atleast they don't try to hide the torturing, media oppression, stasi like mass surveillance and true war objectives.

EDIT: Maybe there is some confusion about whether we are talking about the same country. Here is an article (http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/united-states/130607/what-if-journalists-covered-us-like-they-cover-world) on the country "US" I am talking about.

It looked like it might be a decade ago but economic problems in Europe, that seems less likely to happen anytime soon.

If there was an umbilical cord between the U.S. dollar and bitcoin, it's been cut a long time ago. Since the beginning of the year, we've seen bitcoin's value rise hugely against all the world currencies. The U.S. dollar didn't changed much.

The Euro is in jeopardy of surviving much less becoming the world's reserve currency.  If anything, they may switch to a basket of currencies instead of just the USD but there is zero chance the Euro takes over unilaterally.

I hope that usd and euro fail together ... I will trade my btc with gold coins ... I will be rich

There's no orderly way for the USD and Euro to fail.  It's not like they fail overnight and the next day you're sipping mai tai's on a beach because you made a good call.  If they fail there will be widespread anarchy and possibly WWIII.  The largest economy AND military isn't going to just go down quietly.

Then again, apparently a large majority of the world's internet traffic flows through the USA, which also gives the American government the ability to spy on all that information.

http://hosted2.ap.org/OHCOL/07e34bb59e064cedb7e2776e8db4b4f7/Article_2013-07-02-Global%20Surveillance/id-cab10369412d451aa37c9321848cd950

oh wow. where have you been living?  under a rock???

the usd falls, america will make sure it will take everyone with it.

USD has strengthen quite a bit.

Anyone who has been holding metal or other currencies (or bitcoin) suffer quite a blow back.
 

You must be an American.

Major Fiat currencies cannot "fail"...
Because they are the only way to pay taxes and stay out of jail...
So every Fiat Currency has a fundamental value >> Tax Base...
(We are not talking about Banana Republics here).

This USD "fails" nonsense is floated by people...
Who have never filed a Tax Return or held a meaningful job in society.

Seeing most government officials with bloated paid and mostly do nothing but process paper. I don't necessary agree those who filed tax return held a meaningful job.

Now that I think about it, many jobs in the west are pretty meaningless since most exists for the sole reason to comply with government rules and regulation (accountant, lawyer, government employee and etc etc..) Do bankers in its current form serve society in a meaningful way?

Major currency can fail. History is repeated with major empire debasing their currency before the final collapse. The final blow to the coffin may not be the implosion of the economic. But if a small band of barbarian can take down Rome (in the case of US, a small group of people take down an entire building in the world financial center or a disaster causing the state to paralysis, or a few companies causing the world finance system to melt down or a few teenagers causing school/city to panic), this implies the government/company/society is infested with incompetent and greedy people who do nothing but take pay check.

I welcome anyone to offer counter argument.

The being you mentioned, is for everyone. However bitcoin only has one thing, trust and bounded number to ensure safe.

What is your argument that bitcoin has trust? and bounded number ensure safety?

My guess is that you don't understand what a banker is.

Yes, bankers certainly serve society in meaningful ways. Ask anyone who has a mortage and didn't have to save up a 100% deposit to buy a house, to buy a car, to start a business. Ask the farmer who is able hedge his weather-related risk. Ask anyone whose house was robbed and who didn't lose his life savings because his money was in a bank (ie the original purpose of a bank, which is remarkably similar to keeping btc in cold storage today).

Ultimately, if bitcoin is to be successful, institutions will exist that duplicate all of these features for consumers. If you want to have the opportunity to earn interest on your btc holdings, someone (they're called bankers) must exist to manage the lending of that money to generate that interest, at a very basic level. Bankers provide services far beyond that, of course, but that's one of the basic functions.

I'm not a giant fan of the modern banking industry, don't get me wrong. I think the Goldmans, Morgans, etc need to be reigned in drastically, and it needs to be done via government regulation, because they're money-hungry psychos who are out of control on the institutional level. But that doesn't mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Wishful thinking.  '08 was a nice chance to reign them in as in let them all BK but didn't happen since everyone chickened out but at least we got bitcoin.  You want more bank regulation LOL you mean before '08 there wasn't enough?