Dirty Fiat Money

[jcd]

You can sleep well knowing you have it: It does not lose 80% of its value over three days.

When you have $100 in your wallet, you know how much it will buy you on Amazon. You can invest it into land, real estate, gold, silver, bitcoin whenever you want.

Why would anyone want to hold Bitcoins when they are in a multi-month bear market?

[Elwar]

$100! That can buy you a decent car.

Oh wait...it used to be able to buy a car.

Now you can buy a coffee at Starbucks.

[BluesBrother]

That's the problem you all have though. Although inflation isn't the natural state of fiat currency even if it has been corrupted to this your purpose should not be to accumulate wealth purely by having wealth. You're not supposed to keep 100 dollars under your bed for 50 years hoping it grows to 5000 or even remains the same.

What you used to produce when you were payed 50 dollars is now produced for 5 dollars in a more efficient economy.

[ruski]

What you used to produce when you were payed 50 dollars is now produced for 5 dollars in a more efficient economy.

Wages were lower. Now, that same thing is still produced for $5, however you pay $200 for it.

[wopwop]

Or you could hold Bitcoin for two short years and have 20000% percent gains over dirty fiat money (not adjusted for fiat inflation).

(Past performance does not guarantee future results.)

Why do I want dirty fiat money again?

to pay your debts

[BluesBrother]

That's the problem you all have though. Although inflation isn't the natural state of fiat currency even if it has been corrupted to this your purpose should not be to accumulate wealth purely by having wealth. You're not supposed to keep 100 dollars under your bed for 50 years hoping it grows to 5000 or even remains the same.

What you used to produce when you were payed 50 dollars is now produced for 5 dollars in a more efficient economy.

So what happens when you get to old to earn a living?

You have state pension/private pension investments into the actual economy.
Or you have a social security system in setup in which a new generation takes care of the old.
It can even be into state papers that barely pay an interest above inflation but are thus extremely safe.

[BluesBrother]

Of course.
As you always had, either your family or your business (but this time you're mostly a capitalist and you control a business indirectly).

What you're asking is highly immoral.
You're asking for your wealth to grow without contributing anything, even an investment in the economy.
Clealy this is not good/fair for those who are contributing to society  (i.e. woking).

Instead you should indeed depend on others (hopefully you have while working helped out your parents or you fellow citizens) or be active in the market and thus invest in those who still work (if you want a more individualistic approach)

Thus by storing money in gold or bitcoins for the purpose of an investment you are not only being immoral but hurting the economy since you are withdrawing liquidity from the market. Having gold as a reserve has some moddest value to the economy in case a fiat currency is horribly miss-managed but that's far from the point. Nations and corporations who have it as a reserve do not have it as a investment and they have alot of other currencies to.

[Kazu]

Of course.
As you always had, either your family or your business (but this time you're mostly a capitalist and you control a business indirectly).

What you're asking is highly immoral. You're asking for your wealth to grow without contributing anything, even an investment in the economy.

No we are asking for it to stay the same. Growth is just a side-effect. There wouldn't be any bitcoin banks (because borrowing Bitcoins is not profitable, since borrowing should be discouraged, not encouraged) so the amount you'd get from bitcoin once its been adopted would be the same or lower than what a bank promises today.

Clealy this is not good/fair for those who are contributing to society  (i.e. woking).

No, they earn money. The only people that lose money are (a) the people who lose their wallets, who contribute to the "interest" of everyone else using bitcoins (b) the people that spend more money than they earn and (c) the people that risked their money in some venture and lost it.

Which is exactly should be.

Instead you should indeed depend on others (hopefully you have while working helped out your parents or you fellow citizens)

Why exactly? (1) This encourages retiring as early as possible which is dumb for obvious reasons and (2) your retirement money should be dependent on what YOU earn while your working, not what the later generation is earning while they are working. If people WANT to pool their funds or contribute a portion of their wages to what is essentially an insurance fund then so be it, but there is no need to FORCE people to contribute it and pay the managers (i.e, banksters).

or be active in the market and thus invest in those who still work (if you want a more individualistic approach)

There is absolutely no reason why one cannot invest bitcoins.

Thus by storing money in gold or bitcoins for the purpose of an investment you are not only being immoral but hurting the economy since you are withdrawing liquidity from the market.

What? I'm withdrawing liquidity from the market? I just provided the other side of the trade to somebody who just wanted to sell bitcoins. Thus I am ADDING liquidity.

Having gold as a reserve has some moddest value to the economy in case a fiat currency is horribly miss-managed but that's far from the point. Nations and corporations who have it as a reserve do not have it as a investment and they have alot of other currencies to.

What type of a corporation would have a gold reserve that isn't an investment. Like, honestly.
Nations that have a gold reserve... Well, I'm not sure what you would call that, but I suppose an investment describes their motives roughly. They are investing money now in order to be able to manipulate prices in the future.

[BluesBrother]

First you say that you are the type of person who would want Bitcoins to stay the same and then that investing in them isn't a bad idea.
Who wants an investment to stay the same?

Make up your mind.
Either your are the visionary who wants a new, free currecy and service or you are the person who sees bitcoins as an investment.
You're not adding liquidity to the market, you are witholding it. As if you were to put your money under your madrass, except that would be stupid in addition to bad for the economy.

Corporations and nations have gold as a reserve currency and they spread the risk around with other currencies.
They want the opposite of any change; stability.
If anything they want their home/base currency to rise compared to others.

So in most  cases for example Switzerland would want the Suisse Franc to rise in comparison to the USD, Euro and even gold.
But they have the USD, Euro  and gold in reserve in case of their currency starts to fall.


Although this isn't completely true neither.
In fact on a macro-economic scale large corporations and nations sometimes want inflation.
For example (to my great dismay) Switzerland dumped its currency a few years ago because it was getting to strong.
I'm sure it was performing near gold levels.

And yes, we all try to boost our economic situation a little bit but I spread currency mostly for liquidity and security not for investment.

[HappyBitCoinUser]

[HappyBitCoinUser]

Due to inflation, financial haircuts, and all the other crazy stuff going on, whats the point of saving anymore?

[yucca]

Fiat may seem stable to you now, as does any snowpack until the avalanche happens, the numbers don't lie:

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

The cold hard truth is that ALL fiat money experiments have ALL failed throughout history.

[Kazu]

First you say that you are the type of person who would want Bitcoins to stay the same and then that investing in them isn't a bad idea.

Read please.
(1) I said investing WITH bitcoins isn't a bad idea. Investing in a stable currency actually works better than investing with an inflationary currency. (2) Bitcoins are currently an investment not because they will be treated that way forever, but because they haven't gained the market cap they will if they are successful and thus each individual bitcoin will grow in value.

Make up your mind.
Either your are the visionary who wants a new, free currecy and service or you are the person who sees bitcoins as an investment.

Or, you can be both?
Buy bitcoins early, wait for them to become a new, free currency that is accepted by all, and profit. (Profit not by selling them for USD, but profit by getting 100 BTC now for a lot cheaper in terms of goods and services than you would in the future.

You're not adding liquidity to the market, you are witholding it. As if you were to put your money under your madrass, except that would be stupid in addition to bad for the economy.

Its a free market, I can do what I like. If I buy bitcoins now, I am providing the liquidity the seller needs to sell his bitcoins. If I hold my bitcoins, presumably I am not being an idiot and holding them for a reason, i.e, that they are undervalued. If I hold something that is undervalued, I help it reach its correct value sooner, thus helping the market. Thats sort of the whole reason markets exist.

Corporations and nations have gold as a reserve currency and they spread the risk around with other currencies.

They think gold will be worth more than their currency in the future -> investment. You think they would buy gold if they thought it would be worth LESS in the future?

They want the opposite of any change; stability.
If anything they want their home/base currency to rise compared to others.

Which is why they should be using bitcoin.

So in most  cases for example Switzerland would want the Suisse Franc to rise in comparison to the USD, Euro and even gold.

May I introduce you to what is known as the currency wars?

You have yet to provide one reason why Bitcoin is, as you say, "immoral." Unless you think it is immoral to try and make money, there is absolutely nothing immoral about bitcoin. Why? Because bitcoin, does the following:
-Provides a currency with a fixed (or close to fixed) supply.
-Provides security for this currency making it close to impossible for anybody to tamper with or even monitor unless you are either (a) stupid or (b) give your permission.
-Provides the ability for you to transfer this asset to anyone else in a manner that cannot be reversed.

There is simply no way this can be viewed in a negative light, aside from playing the "dictatorships are good" card, i.e, "The king is divine and as such knows better than everyone else so he controls you for your own good."

[johnyj]

This is the century of over production, we don't need more investment, we just need a store of value to store all those excessive production. Unfortunately today's debt based fiat money can not work as such a store of value, the more you save in fiat currency, the more debt you will incur in the system. People are in urgent need of some medium of saving which can not be inflated by central banks or execessive production power

That is bitcoin

[BluesBrother]

Fiat may seem stable to you now, as does any snowpack until the avalanche happens, the numbers don't lie:

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

The cold hard truth is that ALL fiat money experiments have ALL failed throughout history.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/Inflaci%C3%B3_utan_1946.jpg/220px-Inflaci%C3%B3_utan_1946.jpg

No they haven't. All non-fiat experiments have "failed" as they are not applied anymore.
Almost no fiat-experiments have failed unless those economies also failed. In fact I'll go out on a limp and say that fiat currency (which frankly includes bitcoins, even if its "deflationary" or "non-inflationary" is dominating the currency use by 99.8%).

[BluesBrother]

@Kazu

Of course you can do as you wish. I am just trying to explain to you what effects I think "investing" in bitcoins is going to have as opposed to actively using it as a currency.

It makes very little sense to use a volitale currency as a form of investment currency for other investments. The only use of bitcoins in this regard is tax-evasion and even then there are better ways but fine; I do not object to the use of bitcoins as a way to invest in other things. On the contrary.
So if I missunderstood you there I beg your pardon.

Still it seems you refuse to abandon defending bitcoins as a sound investment in terms of macro-economic implications.

Generally speaking you do not want a currency like Bitcoins used as an intermediate currency for investment precisely because of drops like these which carry an additional risk to your investment strategy. You have absolutely nothing to lose on using USD and converting them into statepapers or investing into long-term interest funds while waiting for a new bull-investment as opposed to doing the same with bitcoins.

[nebulus]

Fiat's boring...

[ChanceCoats123]

Why are you on a bitcoin forum if you would rather have your money value controlled by a few pigs with their hands in everyone's pockets? Let me remind you that the point of bitcoin is not as an investment or even a store of wealth. It is a currency created to avoid unfair and wrongful capital control.

[BluesBrother]

Why are you on a bitcoin forum if you would rather have your money value controlled by a few pigs with their hands in everyone's pockets? Let me remind you that the point of bitcoin is not as an investment or even a store of wealth. It is a currency created to avoid unfair and wrongful capital control.

I joined here because I was doing research for a possible university paper that now might go into an other direction than bitcoins.
I'm generally interested in bitcoins, why are you bothered by dissenting opinion?

Every post I've made on this issue highlights and is more or less supportive of the concept you mention above as an idea.
It is the concept of using the coins as an investment that I am negative to. How come you aren't if as you say the point of the coins was to be used as fluid currency?

[ChanceCoats123]

I'm just confused by your supposed support of an uncontrolled current when you so blatantly support broken fiat spending?

I'm not against investing in btc because it's part of how a currency works. You have money in your bank account don't you? If you say yes, then you can't possibly say holding bitcoins is bad. The increase in value is only a side effect of increased adoption and market presence. I guess my point is that investments and holding are an essential part of a working currency because they show support and build a user base of willing users.