The Future of Money?

[deisik]

You are kidding, aren't you?

>
If you don't, I'll try to explain. I will talk about goods only but everything is equally applicable to services as well. Let's assume that the amount of money is constant. If the amount of goods increases that would necessarily lead to price deflation, i.e. you will be able to buy more goods with the same amount of money (or a unit of money will buy more goods). If the amount of goods decreases, that would necessarily lead to price inflation, i.e. you will be able to buy less goods with the same amount of money (or a unit of money will buy less goods). Both of these cases will cause imbalances in the economy simply because the changes in the value of money (i.e. how much a unit of money can buy) in real life don't propagate instantaneously through the economy

It seems like we are making the same point here, so I'm not sure the source of disagreement.  You describe above how increased quantity of a good will lead to decrease in it's price as valued in a constant-supply monetary token.  Isn't this how markets are supposed to work?  Supply goes up, demand constant, as we have both been saying..  lower price

Yes, markets are supposed to work this way, and, as I said before, I don't implicitly assume that some central authority is working behind the scenes regulating the prices (though that idea can be useful for better understanding the matter). Your mistake is, and it is fundamental to your misunderstanding, that any increase in production of some good should necessarily be considered as overproduction, which is not so in most cases. In other words, increased production of oranges doesn't always lead to their mechanistic price decline in terms of other goods. And this is exactly the reason why dynamic money base is overall better than constant...

Since we can't say in advance whether an increased production of some good will cause overproduction or growth in total wealth

As BobK71 points out, allowing individuals to add tokens to the system can never work because of practical considerations (massive losses).  Perhaps I am wrong but it seemed that you were claiming that an adjustment to monetary tokens in accordance with production of certain goods could make sense if somehow those practical considerations were solved.  As we are in general agreement on other issues I thought I'd pursue the inquiry and see if I could understand this viewpoint.  If the viewpoint is that prices vs. a monetary unit changing is bad and prices should remain the same no matter how much of a good are present..  well, I still don't see it

Fiat money does just that (if not abused). It is the closest approximation to the concept of money in existence today

[azguard]

In next year to come the US dollar will probably still be the world's reserve currency, some articles that i read in past day or two even predict that bitcoin may not be around at all, which is for me hard to believe. Also some articles speculate that plastic money will be key i dont know how but they didnt refer this to card example was Australia.

Dont think that no matter what happen we can be involved in this we will be only observers in this matter.

[icecube45]

Money existed in one form or another since ancient times, and they will long exist in the future. This is probably one of the most popular and beloved of all the things that just come up with humanity

Yes, the money will still be there because I think money is a payment method that is perfect if done directly. Now there is a digital currency such as bitcoin, and in my opinion it will not replace the money but it will be as an alternative payment other than cash. So that the money will remain and continue to be used in my opinion.

well said for alternative paying but for this it will take time to happen
we can hope for it sooner but i think it will take 10 year at least for this to be reality in any point
but btc popularity will increase in 10 year and this may be key factor for payment and it will come to maybe 50-50 where individuals will choose what kind of payment method will he use

Yes we are here talking of the future, so it is still very long ago. What you say is true people will choose the payment method 50:50. But I'm sure both will remain in use. Digital currency in the future will be used for online payments or maybe it could be for payments between countries to be more effective and efficient. But the money will still be required for payment directly because I think this system is perfect to do transactions directly. So maybe even if the future is digital era but I'm sure the money will not be obsolete.

[juras54]

Bitcoins includ  Lightning Network and run Internet of Things...Now and the Future

[BobK71]

... In other words, increased production of oranges doesn't always lead to their mechanistic price decline in terms of other goods. And this is exactly the reason why dynamic money base is overall better than constant...

I'm sorry, but I don't get the connection here.  Why is 'dynamic money base' better than constant when we don't know if increased production represents overproduction?

I'm hoping your answer is not 'father knows best' -- that the elites should be allowed to increase the money supply 'when there is no overproduction,' by assuming anyone could determine that objectively.

Since we can't say in advance whether an increased production of some good will cause overproduction or growth in total wealth

As BobK71 points out, allowing individuals to add tokens to the system can never work because of practical considerations (massive losses).  Perhaps I am wrong but it seemed that you were claiming that an adjustment to monetary tokens in accordance with production of certain goods could make sense if somehow those practical considerations were solved.  As we are in general agreement on other issues I thought I'd pursue the inquiry and see if I could understand this viewpoint.  If the viewpoint is that prices vs. a monetary unit changing is bad and prices should remain the same no matter how much of a good are present..  well, I still don't see it

Fiat money does just that (if not abused). It is the closest approximation to the concept of money in existence today

What I referred to was a problem of incentives when we give someone the power to create money.  It is a fundamental problem of civilization.  Power corrupts, and the bankers have always enjoyed wealth they couldn't possibly deserve, while the rest of us have had to endure instability, loss of jobs and savings, conflicts and war.

[raven7886]

I personally think that the future of money will electronic, we are today going toward a world where everything is made by internet,we shop we watch we talk we work all through the internet so there is no doubt that one day we will switch to total electronic payment, and in my opinion bitcoin is the best option.

[achow102]

I personally think that the future of money will electronic, we are today going toward a world where everything is made by internet,we shop we watch we talk we work all through the internet so there is no doubt that one day we will switch to total electronic payment, and in my opinion bitcoin is the best option.

Yes, Bitcoin is a good option, but it will not allow the government. So we're more likely to use e-money, but it will be a fiat currency

[Shenzou]

There is no doubt that the future of money that we use is going to be digital , as the world changes and the internet takes over in every way , it is no suprise that everything we do we do it digital , it has been for years now that people use their credit cards to shop over the internet but that is not safe which created a problem that is solved by the bitcoin and i think people still don't realize that. 

[cjmoles]

The aspect I like most about bitcoin is that it is not controlled by any government or one specific political philosophy....It is an all inclusive platform and doesn't exclude people from participating in the network....I'm not worried about the elites manipulating bitcoin because Pandora's box has already been opened here and it can't be stopped now....It puts the control back into the hands of the people who actually own the money....banks must hate bitcoin!

[error08]

It was like one of those AH-HA moments of dectective novels, where everything comes together and it all makes sense, all of a sudden.

I've always imagined that gold, silver and/or Bitcoin will go up astronomically if and when bad enough news forces the major countries to devalue national currencies against these non-state monies in one way or another.

From the global elites' point of view, it seems there is a more desirable way to stabilize national currencies, if it comes to that.  Why not use Bitcoin's blockchain technology to create a new cryptocurrency, say, 'ImfCoin,' where most coins have already been secretly mined by the IMF, and make that the global reserve currency?

Imfcoins would be issued to each country to use as reserves for backing its national currency.  The whole system would be similar to the gold and dollar based systems over the last century and a half.  Using a new blockchain (rather than gold, silver or Bitcoin) would avoid the embarrasment of having to set a very high price of one or more of these non-state monies to achieve stability.

I will discuss detailed 'justifications' in a later post, but everything from economics to politics seems to check out on this plan.  There is also a precedent.  John Maynard Keynes proposed his Bretton Woods alternative as an IMF-issued reserve currency called Bancor.  The Americans who were in favor of a dollar-based system won the debate.  (As I've discussed, there is a problem of faith in a fiat currency issued by an entity with no national economy and army behind it.  But the limited issuance imposed by the blockchain should solve this problem.)

Maybe this is why Bitcoin was legitimized by the global elites, and why it has been holding very steady or going up slowly or fast since it reached the $250 level a couple of years ago.  The elites need to build trust in this totally new money in order to spread faith in the blockchain as money.

If this happens, gold, silver and Bitcoin will lose a lot of value, in the same way that silver lost out when all major countries went exclusively on gold in the 1870s.  But until then, Bitcoin should basically be a one-way bet.

Bitcoin is not just the new gold.  Its technology allows creating *a* new gold by the authorities.  Assuming a new gold will be trusted by the markets (being armed by a combination of state power and unified elite propaganda,) the question remains, if the elites can create a new gold today, why can't they take on another gold later, and abandon this gold, when they have created too much currency and debt for this gold to support?  Unfortunately, the public may not wise up to this issue until at least one or two new IMF altcoins have been created, and each phase of international money seems to last many decades.

The reason this story reads like a detective novel, rather than a scientific study, is that the system is inherently based on deception.  Savers must operate on a fundamentally uncertain terrain because the elites are able to use a combination of state power and lack of public awareness to benefit from manipulating the market in money.  I wish I had come to this idea earlier, but we're only human.

[Added 12/13/2016]
There IS one major obstacle to this plan, from the elites' point of view.  Countries would have to be united behind the IMF's general agenda for this to work.  For the foreseeable future, this will be difficult, not only because big countries Russia and China are rebelling against the Western alliance, but most countries also (correctly) perceive that the US and the West have too much power in the IMF.  (I made this point in one of the replies, some days after the initial post.)

Too far, does not make sense, it's just your imagine.
You've mentioned one obstacle from many others.
Bitcoin would have it own fans and market, separated from central banks and fiat money.

[Bitmate]

The aspect I like most about bitcoin is that it is not controlled by any government or one specific political philosophy....It is an all inclusive platform and doesn't exclude people from participating in the network....I'm not worried about the elites manipulating bitcoin because Pandora's box has already been opened here and it can't be stopped now....It puts the control back into the hands of the people who actually own the money....banks must hate bitcoin!

If the block confirmation time is long long, many people will not use bitcoin.

[funkenstein]

The aspect I like most about bitcoin is that it is not controlled by any government or one specific political philosophy....It is an all inclusive platform and doesn't exclude people from participating in the network....I'm not worried about the elites manipulating bitcoin because Pandora's box has already been opened here and it can't be stopped now....It puts the control back into the hands of the people who actually own the money....banks must hate bitcoin!

If the block confirmation time is long long, many people will not use bitcoin.

It's worth noting here that the block confirmation time for a privately issued no-cost currency (fiat) is infinite. 

There are no public confirmations ever.  And yet, people still use them. Go figure.