you do realise that bitcoin is not full reserve either, right?
there is not $6billion in bank notes set aside to cover all 13mill bitcoins at todays price.
the bitcoin valuation is only based on maybe 10k-100k coins sat on market orders on different exchanges. far far far far less total then 13million.
thus if everyone wanted to cashout at the same time.. they would all not get over $400 each. FIAT banking is the same.
with all the FIAT on banks databases, there is not enough bank notes to cover this.. there are only about 10% of bank notes vs database bank dollars.
there are not bank notes to cover all 171,000 tonnes of gold so if everyone wanted to cash out their gold, they would not get a fair return either
ill leave you to theorise those facts and tell me of one single currency / asset valuation that does have a fixed backing that wont collapse if everyone sold out at the same time
Not sure what you are getting at here, bitcoin is absolutely "full reserve". What does full/fractional reserves have to do with the ability to sell 100% of an asset for the market cap?
i can sell you 100% of a bank note and a bank note is 100% of a bank note. using bitcoins from the QT client is giving 100% of a bitcoin as 100% of a bitcoin.
but exchanges.. mtgox has proven that while everyone believed that they were playing with actual bitcoins on the exchange.. karpales was secretly letting people play with 'fake bitcoins' which he only kept maybe 10% in a reserve (hot wallet). but thats only explaining a small insignificant fraction of what i am truly saying.
bitcoin (all 13million of them) are not worth over $400 each, there is not enough to cover each bitcoin with a matching dollar. bitcoin is NOT backed by $6billion sat in storage.
bank balances are not backed by a matching amount of bank notes sat in storage
gold is not backed by a matching amount of bank notes sat in storage.
so if you work it out lets say only 1mill bitcoins are on a exchange orderboard at one time to give a 'valuation' of $400 then that means that there must be well under $30 of actual bank balances to cater to all 13mill (400/13=actual bank balace/total bitcoins in existance)
now we all know that bank notes are roughly only 10% of bank balances.
thus if EVERYONE cashed out bitcoin and wanted an actual BANK NOTE, then that works out as only having enough bank notes (10% of bank balance for each bitcoin to be fairly exchanged at 3x $1 bank notes or less.
imagine it this way. if everyone had lets say $50k life savings in their bank account. and everyone wanted to convert to bank notes. there would only be enough bank notes to give people $5k in bank notes each.
thus bitcoins true bank note value is 3 dollar bills
this is why bitcoin is classed as 'speculated' and the value is 'volatile' because there is not $6bill of $1bank notes to cover the market cap valuation.
inshort. not every bitcoin on an exchange has an actual matched bitcoin held in a hot wallet to back it
*3. so to avoid bitcoin fractional banking to make 'interest' and 'profit' dont trade on exchanges
*1. and dont play the fiat fractional banking game by cashing out to FIAT and then to bank notes
*2. as the value of your bitcoin sell will leave you with far far less then you think (if everyone done it at the same time)
the best way to avoid fractional reserve tricks is to barter peer-to-peer with actual holdings and no middlemen gambling in the middle
i say to allow you to get your thinking cap on about the theory of this (as said in my last post)
and its linked to another discussion of someone trying to quantify bitcoins true dollar value.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=599794*1 this is why the community ultimately wants ALL exchanges to publicly display both hot and cold wallets to eradicate bitcoin fraction reserves
*2 this is why banks have ATM limits and daily withdrawal to bank loan limits at the bank teller desk. because they dont have enough bank notes to cover all balances.
*3 this is why mtgox and other exchanges limit bitcoin daily withdrawals, because they dont have enough bitcoin to cover all balances.