One basic marketing tool of people who sell investment funds based in gold, silver, etc. -- or bitcoin -- is to paint an apocalyptic scenario for stocks, bonds, bank savings, real estate, etc. "Repent, the end is near, our fund is the only salvation."
Surely there wil be more financial crises in the world and in the USA, there may be moreinflation, perhaps even hyperinflation But you can be sure the USA will survive (to the disappointment of many people outside it
) and so wll China, Russia, and Europe.
Believe me: I have lived most of my life in a country with high inflation, sometimes hyperinflation, that periodically had to redefine the currency by dropping three zeros. (I still must have somehere coins whose nominal value today is a few pico- or femtodollars.) Inflation and hyperinflation are a big inconvenience, waste a lot of time, make things inefficient and stressful; but people can finda ways to adapt and survive, and the country continues to function without becoming a Mad Max world.
The reason is because money (or bitcoin, or gold) is not real wealth, it is only a token that society will accept and exchange for real wealth. The exchange is so smooth and universal that, for personal or corporate finances, it is justifiable to treat money the same as wealth. But when considering a whole nation, or the world, one must ignore the money and focus only on the real wealth.
No matter how much money the government creates of derstroys, confiscates or gives away, the real weath of the country will not change. Fiddling with the finacial system, the currency, and the money supply can only change the distribution of wealth among the citizens
On the other hand, in economic crises and hyperinflation times, the austerity measures that neocons have convinced nations to use are precisely designed to trasfer wealth from ordinary citizens to the banks and big financial players. If such a crisis comes, can bitcoin (assuming it succeeds) save our wealth from being taken that way? I don't think that will work. For one thing among many, in a crisis most people need to take money out of investment funds and savings in order to survive; so the value of bitcoin is likely to drop, due to diminished demand, rather than increase.
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