Bitcoin Forum

The Eurozone is barely holding up. The US shall suffer the same fate inevitably. Our debts to the The Federal Reserve oligarchy of bankers will inevitably become unpayable.  All of the world's collateral and citizenry will be sold for a low price. The debt representing (fiat currency) will become worth zilch.

People will beg for a means of exchange they can trust. Hard assets won't be liquid enough for the digital age.

The solution to these economic desires will be in the spotlight:

Bitcoin.

Yes, but only to the extent that people find value in joining the community. Bitcoin is an "opt in" barter currency good only in a presently small community (much like the use of "Tems" in that small Greece town). So it becomes a matter of extolling the benefits and inviting others to join the community. Naturally, a financial collapse will motivate people to look for alternatives and, hopefully, bitcoin will come up on their radar.

Another driver for bitcoin is the increasing clampdown on financial privacy - especially the hassles of dealing with banks.

The collapse of phiat phunny money castle of cards will make us philty rich.
Divide all the world's assets + income by 21 millions to guess how much.

I actually beleive the fiat economy is alot stronger than you think, we are more likely to see people trade in silver and gold than we are to see widespread bitcoin adoption. The system would also collapse with hundreds of millions of users trying to flock to it at once...

You serious? Silver and gold coins in the age of internet? Maybe if communication infrastructure collapses... If that happens, 99% of people are fucked in every case.


I'll bet it wouldn't. But of course it is impossible to know. There are numerous possible solutions to the scalability issues.

While distributed systems often are easier to scale than centralised systems, they to still run into problems... A doubling of the user base every day would probably be one huge cause of problems for the Bitcoin network... As I said, if you are worried about a collapse or economic problems... Stay away from bitcoin!

A few might adopt, but sadly, until bitcoin is more popular, I could see just economic collapse leading to wars instead of new currency adoption.

true. and unfortunate as wars are, i guess it makes sense that if there is a war/are wars, there will also be capital controls, and bitcoin's popularity as an underground way to move money will increase?

It's an interesting time.  The question of Bitcoin versus gold or silver or even barter or credit-currencies as an alternative to eroding fiat currencies is an important one.  And the answer, so far, seems to depend on scale.  At the largest scale, we see countries like China, India, Iran, and even Japan abandoning the Dollar as an intermediary in trade, in favor of either barter or gold.  On a national scale, the only sensible options are Bitcoin or silver, due to the typical transaction sizes and distances involved.  And at the neighborhood-level, there is really only either barter or local credit currency, perhaps copper at some point in the future.

So, in order for Bitcoin to become the de-facto alternative to fiat, it must become the superior choice for both international and local trade, in addition to long-distance interpersonal trade.  Unfortunately, that is a tall order.  Bitcoin smartphone adoption is abysmal.  Dedicated devices are non-existent.  The demographic challenges for Bitcoin adoption at most local markets are substantial.  On the other end, the $60 million dollar Bitcoin economy is not yet capable of supporting trade of, say the absolute smallest $5 million dollar tanker of crude oil, even if governments were likely to adopt it.

Damn you, znort! I wanted to go there first.

~Bruno~

If they have no access to gold and silver, but they do have access to a smartphone bitcoin wallet, the choices are clear. They can even make a local bitcoin bank if they want.