What prevents Bitcoin going fiat?

[Luno]

The discussion about the steep learning curve for people getting into Bitcoin have fostered spinoffs like Cassious coins, prepaid cards, Bitcoin checkes and diffferent types of debitcards, to let people adopt Bitcoin more easily.  This makes the use of Bitcoins more recognizable to people like their everyday paper money. This however is counter productive to the "educational" element of a pure digital currency. If you buy a prepaid card (i.e. the Walmart type) you don't have to care about the p2p part. Hell you put your trust in the issuer not keeping copies of your cards private key, not the network. If the card are giving you troubles, you can claim your money back. Hell you can just trade your prepaid card itself for goods.

In effect you will have made Bitcoin a fiat currency putting the issuer in the role of bank and government.
The blockchain can be completely static. P2P still shared but only a list of static wallets and their amounts, no miners required.

How is this not going to be a problem? Bitcoin is also a tool to educate yourself and others. Pushing for world acceptance through spinoffs is great but also have a good chance of derailing the idea of a currency as a web of trust between people!

Your comments please

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[Stephen Gornick]

How is this not going to be a problem?

Take e-mail for example.  Some people use gmail (hosted messaging).   Some people run their own SMTP host, as their needs are different.  Others use hybrid -- imap hosting with a desktop application client, a mobile app, and also via the web interface.      Others use Outlook and MS Exchange mail server. 

There are even niche services that will send all your e-mail to you by fax. 

But all of them talk the same protocol underneath to send and receive messages.

Bitcoin is a protocol, for money.

As long as a party is willing to accept your item of value, that item continues working as a currency.  If there was the risk of a prepaid card not holding its value, it won't be accepted.

[Etlase2]

I think more what you're worried about is fractional reserve banking rather than "fiat" which means "by decree" or essentially by force of government. If bitcoin or another currency is to take over the world currency, some kind of paper or plastic currency must exist to fill the need for purely cash transactions. "Trusted issuers" could issue paper bills with public key serial numbers on them so that people could check to see if these issuers were practicing FRB and keep them in check, though this would rely on people to actually check with some frequency, and there'd need to be some way to see that more than one bill shared a public key (something like www.wheresgoerge.com).

I highly doubt this would result in the block chain being completely static though as the convenience of electronic currency is very, very high.

[muyuu]

Massive non-sequitur from the title of the post to the contents of it.

As for Bitcoin going fiat: the network prevents it.

Can a fiat currency be made based off bitcoin or an analogous system? sure it can.

[Luno]

Great Etlase2, That's what i'm talking about. I know it's nonsense to talk about the purpose of a currency, but what appealed to me about Bitcoin in the first place was the ideology of a P2P currency. Big private money might decide not to run to an exchange to buy coins, Neither invest in mining gear. They might try to monopolize Bitcoin as a payment issuer or controller through a higher level payment system. Bitcoin can still be the underlying protocol, but no longer the currency people touch. The analogy with email is in some sense right, but webmail do not need smpt or any of the older somewhat tamper-safe protocols any more. You could provide a crappy java webmail interface with ease of use as a selling point, and people would not care that they risk old messages being edited by you or others. In the 80'ies people did not consider an email as trustworthy as a signed letter or a written confirmation, so a lot of thought was put in to the protocol at many levels to prevent forgery. Now people use webmail or Facebook walls and trust Zuckerberg not to erase or change anything. So the ease of use and adoptation has made the idea a global success but the underlying trustworthiness has been forgotten. The same can happen to Bitcoin, worldwide adoptation can turn it into something else, less safe from manipulation, easier to control.

[Etlase2]

Well it's up to the people to educate themselves and prevent such things from happening. A tough task, but the people of society need to learn to stop relying on what media and government and big corporations feed them. Hopefully cryptocurrencies can provide enough upset to the general order of things and be the catalyst to make people begin to realize there's more to what's going on than black or white, red or blue.

I don't know how much you've studied the underlying potential economics of bitcoins, but imo you might be eerily close to what happens in regards to higher level payment systems not because it's inevitable, but because the cost of running bitcoin goes down the fewer people/corporations that run it, making it ripe for a monopoly or something close to one. It's one part of the reason behind my proposal for Decrits, a cryptocurrency that works in a completely different way. Part of the objective is to make sure that running the network is never out of the reach of an everyday person. Bitcoin doesn't care, really. If that piques your interest feel free to check the link in my sig.

[TTBit]

If bitcoin goes fiat by choice in the marketplace, there is no problem. Government fiat currencies are forced upon the population.

[Luno]

I got into Bitcoin last fall to educate myself on economics. Living in Europe I kept wondering how short term gains and high risk stakes again and again could get banks and other kind of big business in trouble, they should know better. At the same time governments across Europe including my own, excelled in showing how little control and understanding of the situation they had. I went to business high school in the late 80'ies. Reading about Adam Smith and Marslow made my stomach turn (Marslow was not an economist, he warned about the trap of unhappiness  18'th century factoryworkers ended up in being both workers and consumers to the same factories. In my textbooks his points was turned around to defend this kind of class society stating there was such a thing as x- and y-people, the latter being content with being told what to do and provided with food and shelter.)   It was at the height of the YUPPIE culture. "Wall street" the movie was not praised because of it's warnings amongst my class mates, rather it was seen as an educational film on how to get rich fast. Rather disillusioned I threw myself at electronics engineering, which I have never regretted.


I looked at Scryptcoin and yes I believe that without inflation it's impossible to raise capital for anything as hoarding always will be less risky than investing and consumption in society will suffer. However it has it's own inbuilt cyclic failure. Which only war and abundant resources can mediate, both of which are harder to get,  and get by with, in a globalized economy. My OP was a rather simple question in the same sentiment as people asking if big mining pools are a threat.

I see Bitcoin as a tool to eliminate the man in the middle like what music sharing did for the artists eliminating the need for CD's and their industry. Some labels have adopted and are trying to assimilate free file sharing and commercialize it.
Bitcoin can also act as a safety net in times of economic turmoil and the P2P'ness of bitcoin is important to emphasize. Free money as in free people!

If Bitcoin can be a world currency? It's not my concern i'd rather not, at that point it will only be a brand as things are now. The uptrend we are in right now is kind of distracting but nevertheless the one thing Bitcoin needs to grow. Bitcoin is an educational tool to teach yourself and society about what money in general is. Spread the word, not only the bling. If more people know the concept of decentralized currency people would demand more transparency and not so easily let them self be mislead by promises of growth (quite a popular word in the mouths of european politicians) and other magical catchphrases. Bitcoin is a liberator.

We can blame the state of the world economics on the banks our politicians but equally also on our self, i.e. human nature. Outsmarting the system is a human trait not necessarily the fault of a currency. We need the smartest people in the parliament and not in the financial institutions.

[nevafuse]

In effect you will have made Bitcoin a fiat currency putting the issuer in the role of bank and government.

As you propose, people could create a currency originally tied to bitcoin & eventually break off just like dollars/euros did w/ gold.  The biggest difference is the trade offs made.  There were a lot of pros of using dollars over gold even after it was no longer backed by gold.  Gold is heavy, can't be transferred via check or credit card, etc.  Now look at bitcoins.  What are the benefits of going w/ physical coins or prepaid cards over bitcoin (assuming bitcoin is as popular as dollars/euros)?  None that I can think of.

[ElectricMucus]

This is an prime example of a concern troll.

[Luno]

2346 posts and now 2347... who's a troll

[Melbustus]

In effect you will have made Bitcoin a fiat currency putting the issuer in the role of bank and government.

As you propose, people could create a currency originally tied to bitcoin & eventually break off just like dollars/euros did w/ gold.  The biggest difference is the trade offs made.  There were a lot of pros of using dollars over gold even after it was no longer backed by gold.  Gold is heavy, can't be transferred via check or credit card, etc.  Now look at bitcoins.  What are the benefits of going w/ physical coins or prepaid cards over bitcoin (assuming bitcoin is as popular as dollars/euros)?  None that I can think of.

Yeah, this is a good point... There's no reason why a currency initially backed by bitcoin but eventually broken off from it wouldn't develop. FRB too. But with bitcoin, it's lots easier to transact with the actual underlying currency, so more people would tend to do so, which limits the extent to which the "fiat" side of things is likely to get leveraged.

I still think it would happen.....just not to the degree it has with dollars.

[Luno]

thank's for the inputs. Bitcoin can be many things, also serving conflicting interests.

[Seal]

One aspect is its current market capitalisation. $100mill is considered very very small. We need to wait a little while for it to hopefully grow to something more meaningful before its even thought of to be used alongside fiat.

[Monkey1]

I think that thye next big film that features a 'geeky' topic or such a character could make reference to Bitcoin and that would expose it to the masses.  That would probably imnspire another bubble like last year!

[Dansker]

How is this not going to be a problem?

Take e-mail for example.  Some people use gmail (hosted messaging).   Some people run their own SMTP host, as their needs are different.  Others use hybrid -- imap hosting with a desktop application client, a mobile app, and also via the web interface.      Others use Outlook and MS Exchange mail server. 

There are even niche services that will send all your e-mail to you by fax. 

But all of them talk the same protocol underneath to send and receive messages.

Bitcoin is a protocol, for money.

As long as a party is willing to accept your item of value, that item continues working as a currency.  If there was the risk of a prepaid card not holding its value, it won't be accepted.

This is a great explanation, thanks!

[Vandroiy]

Said it before, and will say it again:

Bitcoin is a backing currency. That's what it's most suitable for. If someone makes proxies, you have to trust the guy, and if too much value piles up, you demand the actual BTC transaction.

With that, it will never be like EUR or USD, where someone just blows the money supply into sky-heights.

[Mageant]

The main cases I think where "Fiat" for Bitcoin (ie. Bitcoins in "bank accounts") would make sense is for microtransactions and instant transactions.
We already sort of have this with Mt.Gox codes for example.

[mobodick]

The discussion about the steep learning curve for people getting into Bitcoin have fostered spinoffs like Cassious coins, prepaid cards, Bitcoin checkes and diffferent types of debitcards, to let people adopt Bitcoin more easily.  This makes the use of Bitcoins more recognizable to people like their everyday paper money. This however is counter productive to the "educational" element of a pure digital currency. If you buy a prepaid card (i.e. the Walmart type) you don't have to care about the p2p part. Hell you put your trust in the issuer not keeping copies of your cards private key, not the network. If the card are giving you troubles, you can claim your money back. Hell you can just trade your prepaid card itself for goods.

In effect you will have made Bitcoin a fiat currency putting the issuer in the role of bank and government.
The blockchain can be completely static. P2P still shared but only a list of static wallets and their amounts, no miners required.

How is this not going to be a problem? Bitcoin is also a tool to educate yourself and others. Pushing for world acceptance through spinoffs is great but also have a good chance of derailing the idea of a currency as a web of trust between people!

Your comments please

I don't think you understand bitcoin very well (or at all, actually).
If you would freeze the blockchain then no transactions of bitcoin would be possible.
If you were then to trade wallets then you would need a new and separate system from bitcoins.
It would be the most effective way of not needing bitcoins.

The moment the blockchain is frozen is the moment bitcoin is not needed anymore.
Right now, bitcoin is part free, part fiat.
What you effectively talk about is changing bitcoin to pure fiat by completely removing the bitcoin component. Woohoo..

[Realpra]

If bitcoin goes fiat by choice in the marketplace, there is no problem. Government fiat currencies are forced upon the population.

+1

The stupid and lazy will always find ways to punish themselves needlessly.