Oil company sells bonds to raise cash, hedging exposure @$80pb. Now if the price drops below $80pb the company is insured but who picks up the loss? Sure, the original bank who took on the risk but they've also sold part of it on down the line. It may be a Swedish pension fund, a Chinese investment company, an Italian managed fund etc, a Saudi SWF.
Smaller, poorer
US taxpayers is who. Wasn't AIG the No.1 player in CDS insurance? Insurance is such a profitable business when you can stick your losses on someone else.
But it's possible that in this scenario people go only to cash, or collectibles or gold and shun bitcoin. Who knows? But Bitcoin is certainly out there, not wildly popular but on the conscious fringe of society; a global immutable, trustless, decentralised ledger "secured" by a digital token. Fair play if you want to talk down its chances, but it is at least worth having a small stake; the risk / reward ratio is high.
If it can keep its act together, than yes. Its worth a flutter. But I dont see a global meltdown being the 'big event' for bitcoin. More a gradual acceptance that builds until it hits its 'tipping point'. Ofcourse, after someone figures out a way to allow ordinary citizens to use it without needing to understand it.
My point is that losses are accrued worldwide, not US centric. Sure AIG was a big player and small pension funds and local municipalities were burnt after GS threatened Armageddon if they didn't get their money back.
But, you might be a Swedish citizen but your pension fund may have allocated part of their portfolio to junk bonds and so you suffer the loss despite having no idea of the oil company or junk bonds. You probably wouldn't know what % of your money is allocated where. The poster i was replying to was dismissing that people would sell stocks, fiat or bonds to invest in bitcoin; I was saying in the event of another crisis, risk is so connected and global that assets without counterparty risk would be the safer, and maybe only, option (and if it is a sovereign default, a number of fiats - cash - could fail).
From that you're left with gold, and now bitcoin. Obviously, that's a 'big bang' scenario and Bitcoin may not yet be able to handle it. I don't see bitcoin acceptance being a trickle, I think if it is to take hold, eventually it'll be a stampede.
Perhaps if we start to see a rising bitcoin price without a) an overt trigger and b) continued poor press, then it might signal something is up? I don't know how something like that would play out if people sensed a melt down ahead. It's obviously not happening now, bitcoin is being slugged under bear pressure amongst other things, I'm not professing to have it all figured out
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