Dirty Fiat Money

[BitcoinAshley]

Lol @ people who think FIAT is a good investment.

So what I see here is someone telling me I shouldn't save my own bitcoin/gold/silver for retirement, I should convert it to FIAT and let it depreciate 1.5% per year until I retire (remember, OFFICIAL gov't inflation figures, like in argentina  ) or invest it in a third party like a stock (Lehman Bros or Bear Stearns, for instance) or the social security system (sponsored by a government that is FINANCIALLY INSOLVENT AND APPROACHING BANKRUPTCY)

I cannot BELIEVE I am hearing this.

Most of this thread reads like occupy wall st. crap or people who don't understand the mechanics of money.

Wait, wait, so one of you tell me this: Do you believe the official government inflation figures, and base your evaluation of the USD's investment risk on that?

What else, oh yeah, people think investments are bad because they gain value without you contributing to society actively...
How stupid is this? Ok, so I put my FIAT into some sort of retirement scheme which is apparently the only way to save money without being an evil capitalist. So it gets some ridiculous amount like 3% interest per year - meanwhile, real inflation might be something like 10-15% so I am actually losing quite a bit by the time I retire. But by your official gov't figures, I am making 1.5% per year and that's ok, but if I invest in bitcoin and make 1000% per year for a few years until it reaches saturation and levels out, I am an evil cpaitalist?

What if my retirement fund invests in something like apple stock when it is worth barely nothing, then I see 800% ROI and I am set for retirement? IS that OK because I am being a good girl and buyign into your fiat scheme where the potential for tiny profit is OK but the potential for big profit is bad if it's not by accident, because I am not physically contributing to society?

This whole thread is a bucket of hogwash. Take your Paul Krugman Ben Bernanke socialist fiat occupy wall st. theories elsewhere, bitcoin is too good for you
If you want to be a slave to the federal reserve, do it, just don't try to sell me cockamamey theories about my contribution to society and how all money should be inflationary cuz deflation = bad cuz paul krugman said people don't spend deflationary money (gold silver and bitcoins are three excellent counter examples.) and how I should invest fiat into a financially insolvent government's social security scheme and watch it lose money and not be adjusted for real inflation and in the meantime used to kill little kids in pakistan with ObamaDrones.

[chmod755]

But by your official gov't figures, I am making 1.5% per year and that's ok, but if I invest in bitcoin and make 1000% per year for a few years until it reaches saturation and levels out, I am an evil cpaitalist?

No, you're just gambling in that case (similiar to a shareholder of a company or someone who plays the lottery) - unless you're also providing a service or product for bitcoin.

What if my retirement fund invests in something like apple stock when it is worth barely nothing, then I see 800% ROI and I am set for retirement? IS that OK because I am being a good girl and buyign into your fiat scheme where the potential for tiny profit is OK but the potential for big profit is bad if it's not by accident, because I am not physically contributing to society?

No, a good girl makes me a sandwich and brings me beer when I really need it.

[BitcoinAshley]

No, you're just gambling in that case (similiar to a shareholder of a company or someone who plays the lottery) - unless you're also providing a service or product for bitcoin.

According to the Occupy Wall St. Bears, anyone with that % profit is an evil capitalist ponzi market manipulator and doesn't care about bitcoin. If I invest in a low-yield government scheme with an insolvent counterparty, as was suggested by someone else in this thread, or a 'stable' stock in a too-big-to-fail government-approved behemoth, and end up losing money due to rampant inflation or REAL market manipulation, I'd consider that gambling with retirement just as much as investing 10% of a portfolio into bitcoins is.

No, a good girl makes me a sandwich and brings me beer when I really need it.

In the context of this thread, a "good girl" is someone who prefers inflationary fiat over deflationary currencies/stores of value, and fails to recognize the pressing issues regarding its not-so-pretty future. Also, it helps to hold the opinion that a 1.5% yield is 'responsible and good' but a 1500% yield is "evil, capitalist, irresponsible, not contributing to society.' This is why judgement language is not only semantically invalid (in the field of applied general semantics) but has absolutely no place in the worlds of finance, investment, monetary economics, etc. 

A good girl doesn't bring you sandwich and beer, a good girl brings you a hot potato - right out of the 450 degree oven - and puts it right in your bare hands. When you swear and throw it across the room, she explains that it is the metaphorical hot potato of fiat currency - you don't get to choose your poison i.e. nice cuddly 3% inflation - it starts at 3% and the official figures are reluctant to budge but once real inflation is 30+ percent the Argentinian peso becomes like a hot potato and you have to get rid of it the second you get it - inflation is just theft in disguise, and promotes rampant consumerism spend-spend-spend mentality. Deflation encourages a responsible balance of saving and spending.

[Wuji]

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 live off of your millions you made from all that wise investing?  Well that is my plan and it has been working in my family for generations.  Some choose a nice bridge to live under.

[Wuji]

Fiat is a poor investment but, it isn't some big bad scary thing that will lose enormous value any time soon either.  While we do have a national debt of trillions there are different theories that contradict each other on how bad that is.  Most of the sky is falling types claim a debt/GDP ratio over 100% which the USA is near is OMFGBBQ end of the world we are all going to die.  Well Japan is at over 200% and the sky hasn't fallen there so far.

Unlike Cyprus, Greece and Spain, the USA and Japan control their Fiat and can make more money.  This could cause future hyper inflation but, since 1973 it has not and we have had manageable inflation.  My favorite line is when people say we are going bankrupt.  This is beyond ignorant as a country than can print more money can not go bankrupt.

Yes long term debt is bad however look at the size of our economy.  It is still enormous and China is no where near caught up.  Their survival depends on Americans buying their goods.  They have no interest at this point in harming our economy and destroying their source of income.  Long term things don't look great however, one huge boom can change all that.  After WW2 we had over 100% debt/GDP ratio and we paid it down in 20 years.  Macro economics is very complicated and most "economists" I have talked to are theorists and glorified bullshit artists.  We (all Fiat based counties) are in uncharted territory and anyone who claims to have answers is a theory smoke blowing bag of hot air.

[chmod755]

According to the Occupy Wall St. Bears, anyone with that % profit is an evil capitalist ponzi market manipulator and doesn't care about bitcoin. If I invest in a low-yield government scheme with an insolvent counterparty, as was suggested by someone else in this thread, or a 'stable' stock in a too-big-to-fail government-approved behemoth, and end up losing money due to rampant inflation or REAL market manipulation, I'd consider that gambling with retirement just as much as investing 10% of a portfolio into bitcoins is.

Having any type of money is a gamble - because money only represents the things we really want (a house, car, food, water, etc.). The question is: do you believe in the asset you have? e.g. Would you work for Bitcoin if someone wanted to pay you with it instead of government money?

In the context of this thread, a "good girl" is someone who prefers inflationary fiat over deflationary currencies/stores of value, and fails to recognize the pressing issues regarding its not-so-pretty future. Also, it helps to hold the opinion that a 1.5% yield is 'responsible and good' but a 1500% yield is "evil, capitalist, irresponsible, not contributing to society.' This is why judgement language is not only semantically invalid (in the field of applied general semantics) but has absolutely no place in the worlds of finance, investment, monetary economics, etc. 

A good girl doesn't bring you sandwich and beer, a good girl brings you a hot potato - right out of the 450 degree oven - and puts it right in your bare hands. When you swear and throw it across the room, she explains that it is the metaphorical hot potato of fiat currency - you don't get to choose your poison i.e. nice cuddly 3% inflation - it starts at 3% and the official figures are reluctant to budge but once real inflation is 30+ percent the Argentinian peso becomes like a hot potato and you have to get rid of it the second you get it - inflation is just theft in disguise, and promotes rampant consumerism spend-spend-spend mentality. Deflation encourages a responsible balance of saving and spending.

Do you prefer it as an "investment" just to sell it for government money again or do you prefer it to pay and to get paid?

[alexh]

Bitcoin is for longterm, or making bank when it was $200+.

[BluesBrother]

Sure you're welcome to your opinion to just take it easy.
Gold has since its market exposure been a worse "investment"/reserve than USD fiat currency until it started rocketing at 2001+.
And I have no idea why it did rocket.

So yeah gold has an intrinsic value as a precious metal but its value is way over that by now.


Well if you don't want them to run the show stop voting for them, get involved and vote your dad up the party machine.
Heck start a democratic or republican club that pledges to support the candidate with least donations! Just for the fun of it

What is your opinion as to why central banks hold gold, you refuse to answer that, I suspect you can't without destabilising your premise.

I told you it's a currency reserve.

[John Self]

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?

So fucking true.

[BluesBrother]

baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah i like cake

[Kazu]

@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.

You need to understand that anything that doesn't have a unit value of "1" can be an investment, and that unit value of "1" is entirely up to somebody's perception to determine. People in Japan are "investing" in the US Dollar. What is an "investment" now, should it become widely accepted as that unit of "1", will no longer be an investment, and thus suitable for being an investment currency in 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. 

You were the one that said that if people use bitcoins they are detracting from society because they are not investing. So 

Of course I consider Bitcoins a sound investment, that is why I own them.

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.

What? If you are using Bitcoins as an intermediate currency, then by definition you are not exposed to any risk of fluctuation. That is why Bitpay is a thing. All "startup" currencies by definition will have fluctuations in price relative to all other currencies. This is something that will (hopefully) decrease over time

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.

This is assuming that USD will always be more stable than Bitcoin. The USD, by definition, is unsustainable. The very way in which it is created ensures it cannot be sustainable in the long term. Bitcoin can be stable. It isn't necessarily stable, but if bitcoin were "sticky" it would be a lot more stable than the USD.

[yucca]

Sure you're welcome to your opinion to just take it easy.
Gold has since its market exposure been a worse "investment"/reserve than USD fiat currency until it started rocketing at 2001+.
And I have no idea why it did rocket.

So yeah gold has an intrinsic value as a precious metal but its value is way over that by now.


Well if you don't want them to run the show stop voting for them, get involved and vote your dad up the party machine.
Heck start a democratic or republican club that pledges to support the candidate with least donations! Just for the fun of it

What is your opinion as to why central banks hold gold, you refuse to answer that, I suspect you can't without destabilising your premise.

I told you it's a currency reserve.

A currency reserve?

You do realise that the US$ is no longer backed by gold?

And that gold is not classed as a currency?

Please elaborate...

[Richy_T]

...or by the family, or by their investments, or by charity.

Family and charity may be unreliable. Investments are probably OK but if investments are not a good choice, should you not be able to hold your money in currency and not have it robbed by inflation bandits?

[Bitmeat]

...or by the family, or by their investments, or by charity.

Family and charity may be unreliable. Investments are probably OK but if investments are not a good choice, should you not be able to hold your money in currency and not have it robbed by inflation bandits?

No you should not be able to. You should either save it (let the bank invest it), or invest it yourself in a very diversified portfolio. If you hide it under the mattress or in gold silver or bitcoins, you deserve to lose it since you're basically making a bet that society is gonna fail, yet too dumb to realize all these items will also be worthless in that case.

Having a very small portion of your net worth in bitcoins or precious metals is reasonable, as long as you're prepared to lose it all. Anyone who bought-to-hold or sold bitcoin in the last 4 months has done nothing to contribute to the future of bitcoin, sorry but its true.

[Richy_T]

...or by the family, or by their investments, or by charity.

Family and charity may be unreliable. Investments are probably OK but if investments are not a good choice, should you not be able to hold your money in currency and not have it robbed by inflation bandits?

No you should not be able to. You should either save it (let the bank invest it), or invest it yourself in a very diversified portfolio. If you hide it under the mattress or in gold silver or bitcoins, you deserve to lose it since you're basically making a bet that society is gonna fail, yet too dumb to realize all these items will also be worthless in that case.

Having a very small portion of your net worth in bitcoins or precious metals is reasonable, as long as you're prepared to lose it all. Anyone who bought-to-hold or sold bitcoin in the last 4 months has done nothing to contribute to the future of bitcoin, sorry but its true.

Money is delayed fulfillment for work or services performed. By deliberately devaluing that, your are stealing from that effort. Did you consider that by not immediately spending that money, you are allowing the economy to grow in a healthy way by allowing resources that you would otherwise be claiming, perhaps wastefully, to be used in more productive ways.

[ruski]

Money is delayed fulfillment for work or services performed. By deliberately devaluing that, your are stealing from that effort. Did you consider that by not immediately spending that money, you are allowing the economy to grow in a healthy way by allowing resources that you would otherwise be claiming, perhaps wastefully, to be used in more productive ways.

I'm sorry, are you saying whatever this guy spends his money on will be wasted? If nobody spent money the economy would implode in a matter of minutes.

[yucca]

If nobody spent money the economy would implode in a matter of minutes.

Yes, that is true of a a debt based economy, quite scary really.

A debt based economy can only survive with ever increasing expenditure, and so we see resources wasted and asses too fat.

If you want to know the math explained simply then check out this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqvKjsIxT_8