Bitcoin as the preferred form of Money? Sparring Debate

[abruchifid]

Peter Schiff and Erik Voorhees holds some interesting debate on the value of crypto-currency. Erik Voorhees is the CEO of shapeshift, Peter Schiff the CEO of  Euro Pacific capital.
Erik argument centers on the merits of bitcoin and can be broken down into four sections
1. Why bitcoin is good money
   a. Scarce
   b. divisible
   c. recognizable
   d. durable
   e. cannot be counterfeited
   f. portable
   g. programmable in a digital age.

2. Why fiat is bad money
    a. Pyramid scheme,created at will
    b. not durable
    c. not scarce
    d. third part trust as foundation of your wealth
    e. not portable

3. Why Gold and other forms of market-based money are insufficient
   a. not scalable
   b. not portable
   c. impractical in a modern economy

4. Why bitcoin will win
   a. decentralized
   b. easy access to financial services

Peter Schiff, acknowledge that fiat was deficient but that bitcoin is not the future
1. Fiats backed (initially with gold), now with government trust.
2. Bitcoin has no intrinsic value.
3. Scarcity is arbitrary fixed
4. Bitcoin is not a reliable store of value. lacks certainty in value.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8R71WGO3qU&t=718s

 
What do you think won?

[ethancer]

Bitcoin is not ready to replace any form of fiat. When it will reach that point, it will just become another form of USD, just maybe without any physical form. Currently it wouldn't be smart to use it, as its too volatile and not regulated, etc.

[cellard]

Bitcoin is not ready to replace any form of fiat. When it will reach that point, it will just become another form of USD, just maybe without any physical form. Currently it wouldn't be smart to use it, as its too volatile and not regulated, etc.

Bitcoin cannot be regulated at any rate in any point in time, that's the whole premise of a decentralized permissionless system. I don't understand how some people are apparently waiting for whatever regulator to hop in and make the price stable.

Bitcoin price will never be as "stable" as fiat because the supply and other parameters cannot be tweaked in order to achieve this (fictional) stability as they do with fiat.

It can be tho as volatile as gold, and that would be enough. We just need more money sitting on the system so it becomes harder to move. The bigger it becomes, the heavier the object, that is the analogy.

And yes, it's easy to win against Peter's old points. Bitcoin is a better gold, gold is useless in the information era.

[vy99]

Bitcoin is not ready to replace any form of fiat. When it will reach that point, it will just become another form of USD, just maybe without any physical form. Currently it wouldn't be smart to use it, as its too volatile and not regulated, etc.

Bitcoin cannot be regulated at any rate in any point in time, that's the whole premise of a decentralized permissionless system. I don't understand how some people are apparently waiting for whatever regulator to hop in and make the price stable.

Bitcoin price will never be as "stable" as fiat because the supply and other parameters cannot be tweaked in order to achieve this (fictional) stability as they do with fiat.

It can be tho as volatile as gold, and that would be enough. We just need more money sitting on the system so it becomes harder to move. The bigger it becomes, the heavier the object, that is the analogy.

And yes, it's easy to win against Peter's old points. Bitcoin is a better gold, gold is useless in the information era.

I think it will eventually stabilize but in the sense that we won't see the wild swings we've been seeing in the last year or so. To shoot up to 20k and go back down to 6k is not natural. Eventually we'll see it become more stable and less swings overall.

[r1s2g3]

I agree the benefits of Bitcoin but still can I use it as form of payment?

This answer will depend upon my geographic location/ country. In any case, I would not want to be in middle of legal trouble for using it, if country laws are against it. No doubt bitcoin payment method is better that's why it has held his place without any advertisement and Central Authority.

But Granting/Accepting  Bitcoin as a currency is a big blow to all the corrupt governments. Even Non Corrupt government will see as encroachment to their power .

Only few progressive government  can accept it.

[franky1]

Erik Voorhees
   a. Scarce
   b. divisible
   e. cannot be counterfeited

sorry but A and B counter-argue each other.
if there is only one mona lisa.. you cannot divide mona lisa. so mona lisa is scarce/rare
but if there are 2.1quadrillion sharable units and if LN patches get their way into mainnet bips. there will be 2.1 quintillion sharable units of bitcoin

e. cannot be counterfeitted... hmm well many people were crying about the bitcoincash drama as a counterfeit. and its easy to fork a chain that uses the same address prefixes. lets not also forget the number of exchanges that syphon out real coins while letting people play around with exchange mysql balances thinking they are trading real coins..oh and the ETF's that make people think they are investing in bitcoin when infact they are just investing in shares of a company.

Peter Schiff, acknowledge that fiat was deficient but that bitcoin is not the future
1. Fiats backed (initially with gold), now with government trust.
2. Bitcoin has no intrinsic value.
3. Scarcity is arbitrary fixed
4. Bitcoin is not a reliable store of value. lacks certainty in value.

1. fiats intrinsic value backing is actually national minimum wage. and laws.. not precisely goverment trust. but more about knowing £10 $10 was about a minimum of 1 hour 20minuts of minial labour
2. bitcoins intrinsic value is mainly the mining costs.. if you quantify it.. same as gold.. if it only cost $1 to mine it. th value would be far less
  what peter could have said is bitcoin has not tangible value... unlike gold
3.agreed as explained above in point A-B
4.nothing on the planet has a certainty of value. but if you brush away the hype/spculative PRICE of ATH and concentrate on the ATL(all time low) of a lengthy period. you can then (as pointed out in point 1) see that there is an underlying intrinsic value made up by the cost of obtaining it. because people are not stupid to sell it at a loss. price and value are 2 separate things

[so98nn]

Peter Schiff and Erik Voorhees holds some interesting debate on the value of crypto-currency. Erik Voorhees is the CEO of shapeshift, Peter Schiff the CEO of  Euro Pacific capital.
Erik argument centers on the merits of bitcoin and can be broken down into four sections
1. Why bitcoin is good money
   a. Scarce
   b. divisible
   c. recognizable
   d. durable
   e. cannot be counterfeited
   f. portable
   g. programmable in a digital age.

2. Why fiat is bad money
    a. Pyramid scheme,created at will
    b. not durable
    c. not scarce
    d. third part trust as foundation of your wealth
    e. not portable

3. Why Gold and other forms of market-based money are insufficient
   a. not scalable
   b. not portable
   c. impractical in a modern economy

4. Why bitcoin will win
   a. decentralized
   b. easy access to financial services

Peter Schiff, acknowledge that fiat was deficient but that bitcoin is not the future
1. Fiats backed (initially with gold), now with government trust.
2. Bitcoin has no intrinsic value.
3. Scarcity is arbitrary fixed
4. Bitcoin is not a reliable store of value. lacks certainty in value.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8R71WGO3qU&t=718s

 
What do you think won?

It is interesting to see that there is a whole new support towards bitcoin replacing fiat, although the possibility of this happening entirely seems pretty bleak in the present, the ever expanding support towards BTC is highly beneficial for the investors.

[dothebeats]

4. Why bitcoin will win
   a. decentralized
   b. easy access to financial services

a. Bitcoin's decentralization is often a great edge considering that intermediaries are removed and you don't need to trust anyone to handle your money for you, just miners processing your transactions just to get your payment going around the network. While this sounds easy, many people are still overwhelmed by bitcoin's decentralized nature for clinging too much on fiat for the most part of their lives.
b. I don't think so. Central Banks of different nations are trying to regulate bitcoin as hard as they could, with some countries (India and Iran) going to the extremes by prohibiting banks from meddling with bitcoin-related transactions.

Peter Schiff, acknowledge that fiat was deficient but that bitcoin is not the future
1. Fiats backed (initially with gold), now with government trust.
2. Bitcoin has no intrinsic value.
3. Scarcity is arbitrary fixed
4. Bitcoin is not a reliable store of value. lacks certainty in value.

1. Not really government's trust but rather the public's trust to the government. People believe the government too much and so the government can just create money literally out of nowhere and convince people that it's actually worth something. Not even backed by gold in this day and age.
2. As franky1 has pointed out, perhaps you could count the miners' machines and infrastructures as the ones backing bitcoin up, having its intrinsic value tied with it.
3. Is 21-M an 'arbitrary' number if it's stated in the whitepaper? Bitcoin is divisible into smaller units, so I don't think there'd be a problem in there.
4. While this is true, fiat is in a way, an unreliable store of value prone to hyperinflation if a country's economy goes insane (Zimbabwe and Venezuela are fine examples) and is beyond repair.

As a national currency, bitcoin would perform poorly, being a currency with a limited amount and with no chance of being controlled fully by any governments. Due to this, the government can't create new bitcoins out of thin air to satisfy the economic needs of their country. While performing poorly as a national currency, it can still excel as an independent one due to it transcending borders without having the need to trade to your local fiat every time you need to make a purchase.

[stompix]

Erik Voorhees
   a. Scarce
   b. divisible
   e. cannot be counterfeited

sorry but A and B counter-argue each other.
if there is only one mona lisa.. you cannot divide mona lisa. so mona lisa is scarce/rare
but if there are 2.1quadrillion sharable units and if LN patches get their way into mainnet bips. there will be 2.1 quintillion sharable units of bitcoin

Gold is also considered scarce but you can theoretically divide each gram to x 10^21 atoms.
Does this make gold abundant?

Same would be for diamonds, and even for the True Cross.

To shoot up to 20k and go back down to 6k is not natural. Eventually we'll see it become more stable and less swings overall.

Yeah, I've been hearing that from 2013....and probably it was the same during 2012.
The main cause is the amount of BTC held in the hands of a few individuals, and that, unfortunately, hasn't changed a bit. To negate a dump of 1000 coins in 2013 (summer) you needed 200 000$, now you need 8 million....

4. While this is true, fiat is in a way, an unreliable store of value prone to hyperinflation if a country's economy goes insane (Zimbabwe and Venezuela are fine examples) and is beyond repair.

As a national currency, bitcoin would perform poorly, being a currency with a limited amount and with no chance of being controlled fully by any governments. Due to this, the government can't create new bitcoins out of thin air to satisfy the economic needs of their country. While performing poorly as a national currency, it can still excel as an independent one due to it transcending borders without having the need to trade to your local fiat every time you need to make a purchase.

So you're saying BTC would not be able to save Venezuela?  

[Kertmu]

Why is the Bitcoin decentralized if there are whales in which tens of thousands of bitcoins are concentrated?

And why is there no pricing, where is it attributed to pluses or minuses?

[Gaurav11kb]

Why is the Bitcoin decentralized if there are whales in which tens of thousands of bitcoins are concentrated?

And why is there no pricing, where is it attributed to pluses or minuses?

Whales have tens of thousands of Bitcoin because they grabbed the opportunity and bought more BTC when price was not very high Bitcoin was not very famous. They HODLed it for long time and that's why they can control(manipulate) the market. As soon as more countries will show interest in crypto, more people will try to buy Bitcoin and maybe then it would be uniformly distributed and numbers of Whales would decrease.

People having tens of thousands of Bitcoin doesn't make it centralized. Decentralized means that no one can stop its circulation except for those who hold it in their wallets. No Govt can control it.

[yvuj101]

Why is the Bitcoin decentralized if there are whales in which tens of thousands of bitcoins are concentrated?

And why is there no pricing, where is it attributed to pluses or minuses?

Whales have tens of thousands of Bitcoin because they grabbed the opportunity and bought more BTC when price was not very high Bitcoin was not very famous. They HODLed it for long time and that's why they can control(manipulate) the market. As soon as more countries will show interest in crypto, more people will try to buy Bitcoin and maybe then it would be uniformly distributed and numbers of Whales would decrease.

People having tens of thousands of Bitcoin doesn't make it centralized. Decentralized means that no one can stop its circulation except for those who hold it in their wallets. No Govt can control it.

Yeah I agree with these bitcoin is another income and preferable for everyone who's going to take some risk also an opportunity to work in a most reasonable manner.

[joshuarose]

maybe you are right, and honestly bitcoin is digital money and has many advantages and limited bitcoin supply,

[Pursuer]

What do you think won?

in my opinion it is not about winning or losing. the argument is all that matters. you always need to see both sides of the argument and take their points under consideration.
bitcoin is not this perfect thing to come in and replace everything while people abandon all their fiats, banks, and government rushing to use bitcoin. and fiat is not this perfect thing without any corruption and lots of other downsides.
the perfect system does not even exist!

what we have is an imperfect bitcoin with a lot of benefits that were mentioned and the imperfect fiat system with benefits of its own. when you want the benefits of bitcoin, you should always have the option to use this decentralized currency freely. that's what won!