Why do people trust fiat money?

[tokeweed]

oh and since you think you and your btc can make it without the 'system' why dont you give up all the stuff you bought with fiat, give up your job that pays you fiat and try living on your btc.

let's see if you're not sucking men for fiat in a couple of months.

So, if you can buy anything with bitcoin you will give up the fiat? Look at bitmit.net and see what you can buy there

I don't think the option of consumption is the deciding factor, in fact many merchants accept bitcoin, but people still don't use them, maybe they are afraid that one day government will invervene and shut it down (although technically it is not possible)

can i buy a piece of land with btc?  oh hey i want to go to hawaii, i need a plane ticket. should i use my credit card or btc?  oh wait no airline accepts btc. duh.

[johnyj]

oh and since you think you and your btc can make it without the 'system' why dont you give up all the stuff you bought with fiat, give up your job that pays you fiat and try living on your btc.

let's see if you're not sucking men for fiat in a couple of months.

So, if you can buy anything with bitcoin you will give up the fiat? Look at bitmit.net and see what you can buy there

I don't think the option of consumption is the deciding factor, in fact many merchants accept bitcoin, but people still don't use them, maybe they are afraid that one day government will invervene and shut it down (although technically it is not possible)

can i buy a piece of land with btc?  oh hey i want to go to hawaii, i need a plane ticket. should i use my credit card or btc?  oh wait no airline accepts btc. duh.

Of course not everything on the planet, just like no chinese airline accept USD payment, you have to exchange to CNY first

[Operatr]

People trust fiat because it is all we have ever known as an exchange medium.

Generally most never thought to question where their money comes from, or how the fractional reserve system even works. All we know is "go to work, get paid" is where money comes from.

Those that do however know the secrets of the FED and their global ponzi scheme, see a serious problem there...

[johnyj]

Another reason is that people get fiat money as a form of income: salary, insurance, sales, social security, pension etc... it is connected to the whole government controlled system, and it has been inflated into every corner due to endless supply

[tokeweed]

oh and since you think you and your btc can make it without the 'system' why dont you give up all the stuff you bought with fiat, give up your job that pays you fiat and try living on your btc.

let's see if you're not sucking men for fiat in a couple of months.

So, if you can buy anything with bitcoin you will give up the fiat? Look at bitmit.net and see what you can buy there

I don't think the option of consumption is the deciding factor, in fact many merchants accept bitcoin, but people still don't use them, maybe they are afraid that one day government will invervene and shut it down (although technically it is not possible)

can i buy a piece of land with btc?  oh hey i want to go to hawaii, i need a plane ticket. should i use my credit card or btc?  oh wait no airline accepts btc. duh.

Of course not everything on the planet, just like no chinese airline accept USD payment, you have to exchange to CNY first

until i can get hookers for btc, i will convert all my savings to btc. but now?  btc aint got shit. maybe in the future it will.

[polarhei]

Who feed people? Normally the States.

[johnyj]

I still think that people's consensus about fiat money's value will change sooner or later. It is just a consensus, not a real cost or backed by some valueables, it can change over night

Before, government can create a lot of jobs and send money to those worker's hand as salary, the fiat money circulated well. But now they are no longer able to provide more jobs and more salaries, people will seek their own means of income, then bitcoin income have many benefits, they only need fiat when they need to pay tax

[J603]

I can't buy food with bitcoins.
I can't pay rent with bitcoins.
I can't buy gas with bitcoins.

These are the big three reasons.

Currently bitcoins can only purchase luxuries, not necessities. And before someone brings up Bitmit, I am not waiting days for my food to be delivered.

[johnyj]

I can't buy food with bitcoins.
I can't pay rent with bitcoins.
I can't buy gas with bitcoins.

These are the big three reasons.

Currently bitcoins can only purchase luxuries, not necessities. And before someone brings up Bitmit, I am not waiting days for my food to be delivered.

So you think people trust fiat money because they can use it to buy food/rent/gas? How about Euro then, you can't use it to buy these things in US either

[p2pbucks]

fiat money is backed by gov & economic . btc is still young now , ppl need time to understand it .

[alp]

This is a very interesting quesion since when people sell bitcoin for USD, it means they trust USD more than bitcoin

So why do people trust in fiat money, which is created out of nothing by the central banks?

Is it because they have no knowledge about money creation, or because their ignorance about the financial, or their respect/fear about the government enforcement?

One accept fiat money is because all the other merchant also accept fiat money as a payment medium, once this tradition established, it seldom changes

But this is only one reason, another reason might be that they regard fiat money as a safenet, backed by the government. Look at the FDIC rules, it just want to calm people from withdrawing their savings from banks and it worked very well

I think some kind of insurance should be built around bitcoin, to give people more confidence to handle the bitcoin. Saying this is backed by mathematics and network just scared most of them

I trust fiat because my entire life I have been able to spend it almost anywhere.  That's all that matters for currency.  Can you spend it today and in the future?

People have evolutionary reasons to not just randomly try new things with no track record.  That's why gradual changes are so prevalent and it's tough to introduce revolutionary ideas.  Society and people through trial and error find a lot of things that work, and it doesn't matter if they understand why it works or not.  People tend to get angrier around red things, for example.  They don't need to understand it.  It just served us well for a while.  There are societal customs that don't make sense, but people aren't about to change them or even question them.

Now there are times when superior ideas do come about and take a while to catch on.  Usually it takes some set of early adopters to test it out and prove it works, then more get on board.  This is the case with almost any new idea that ever happens.  And a lot of the time, the better ideas win out.

So trusting fiat will work until it doesn't.  No one needs to know why Bitcoin is superior.  Only the early adopters do.  The rest will follow along once they see it works and see some tangible ways.  They don't need to know how it works any different than knowing how an internal combustion engine works when they drive their car or how structural engineering works when they drive across bridges.  They see lots of cars driving down the street and across bridges and figure that's good enough.

[alp]

I can't buy food with bitcoins.
I can't pay rent with bitcoins.
I can't buy gas with bitcoins.

These are the big three reasons.

Currently bitcoins can only purchase luxuries, not necessities. And before someone brings up Bitmit, I am not waiting days for my food to be delivered.

So you think people trust fiat money because they can use it to buy food/rent/gas? How about Euro then, you can't use it to buy these things in US either

You can buy those things, just in Europe.

[ElectricMucus]

I can't buy food with bitcoins.
I can't pay rent with bitcoins.
I can't buy gas with bitcoins.

These are the big three reasons.

Currently bitcoins can only purchase luxuries, not necessities. And before someone brings up Bitmit, I am not waiting days for my food to be delivered.

So you think people trust fiat money because they can use it to buy food/rent/gas? How about Euro then, you can't use it to buy these things in US either

You can buy those things, just in Europe.

Doesn't every walmart have a currency exchange?

[CasinoBit]

Because people are preached that fiat money and banking is safe from childhood and that the country will bail out the banks should they reach a state of crisis and piss away the savings of millions of people.

[albyva]

 Money is a Tool used to Facilitate Trade.


This means it doesn't matter what people use as money (Paper, Gold, Bitcoins) because
at the end of the day the most important thing is "trade" of Goods and Services. That
is where value and wealth are derived, not in the money used to complete the transaction.

[J603]

I can't buy food with bitcoins.
I can't pay rent with bitcoins.
I can't buy gas with bitcoins.

These are the big three reasons.

Currently bitcoins can only purchase luxuries, not necessities. And before someone brings up Bitmit, I am not waiting days for my food to be delivered.

So you think people trust fiat money because they can use it to buy food/rent/gas? How about Euro then, you can't use it to buy these things in US either

That's why I don't have Euros here in the US... However if I went to Europe I could pay for gas, rent, and food with Euros. I can't pay for those anywhere with bitcoin.

Also, I believe the topic says "Why do people trust in fiat money?" not "Why do people trust in Euros?" or "Why do people trust in USD?" It is implied that when someone says "fiat" they are talking about the government issued legal tender, ie; what people actually use. There is no country where fiat is not accepted because it is the official, legal tender of a country.

[Adrian-x]

Doesn't every walmart have a currency exchange?

You can barley call it a currency exchange if it doesn't accept XBT 

[Garr255]

If everyone everywhere transacted in Bitcoin, I'd happily never touch fiat again. Sadly this won't be the case in my lifetime, but we can try to get there!

[alberthrocks]

Fiat is trustable, whereas Bitcoin is subject to the lovely scheme of pump-and-dump, courtesy of people out there carrying quite a few BTC.
Not to say that the lovely USD isn't subject to that, but Bitcoin tends to have that kind of mentality...

[johnyj]

Money is a Tool used to Facilitate Trade.


This means it doesn't matter what people use as money (Paper, Gold, Bitcoins) because
at the end of the day the most important thing is "trade" of Goods and Services. That
is where value and wealth are derived, not in the money used to complete the transaction.

Do you believe this?