Serious flaws in Bitcoin monetary policy

[twiifm]

OMG you are a friggin retard.  First you claim to have a MS in Economics and now you can't even get simple shit straight that you can read off of wikipedia.

Keynes got famous because his theories explained the Great Depression.  Things like liquidity trap existed before Keynes that's how he discovered them.  LOL your logic is shite.  Do you think Keynes caused economic problems?

There was no Central Bank in Roman times.  The oldest central bank is the Sveriges Riksbank established in 1668.  Bank of England est. 1694.  

There were plenty of crisis before the Fed appeared.  In fact the Fed was created as a response to Panic of 1907

Even our latest crisis in 2008 was not caused by any Central Bank

That is rude and inappropriate, so you can't debate me objectively, you start to insult me. What a typical loser.  

He didnt explained anything, nor resolved anything, his theories only aggravated the already weakened economies by WW2.

Of course there was no CB in Roman Times, do you think I`m an idiot? They had quaestors who supervised the financial affairs of the government. The point I was making is that they used impure silver coins, they mixed it with more and more iron,nickel and copper up to the point when shortly before the West Rome collapse they had 10% purity coins, sold at 99.999% purity prices. Or in other words theft, like any inflation,which was used to pay off the military expansion of them, just like now. History repeats itself.

Yes there were plenty of crisises, all done by fraudulent cartels who blackmailed the politicians to give them more power or else they bring down the whole systems. You should check your facts mate, starting from your nice civil war of 1861.

You dont seriously think that the civil war was because they cared so much of the southern slaves?  
Only an idiot with 20 IQ would accept that story.

Actually the civil war was fought because the union desperately wanted to give more power to the banking cartels, where they desperately wanted to control the money supply via a central bank of some sort, which the confederation rejected. There were atleast 3 major attepts to make a central bank way before 1907 crisis.

You should seriously check your facts, I`m not american but I know your history better than you do.

Even our latest crisis in 2008 was not caused by any Central Bank

Ok at this point you demonstrated that you live in a fantasy world completely cutoff from reality.

How do you think your 1 trillion dollar Iraq war was financed, from charities?  Of course the CB gave loans to them.

BTW did you knew that there are some serious funds missing from the FED, you bet that had something to do with the crisis.

Money doesnt just pop out of nowhere and then dissapears? Oh wait, it actually does...

Sorry for being rude.  We are not even debating.  You are just ranting about stuff and making weak links to either central banks or Keynes.  Why do you keep changing the subject whenever I debunk your previous post?

You realize that in order for the CB to create money they have to buy bonds from Treasury and sell them on the open market, don't you?  Therefore the money for Iraq war is owed to the private sector.

If you don't know stuff that's forgivable.  But claiming you have a Masters degree in economics and spouting this nonsense is downright fraudulent. 

[1714026465]

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[1714026465]

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[GreenStox]

Sorry for being rude.  We are not even debating.  You are just ranting about stuff and making weak links to either central banks or Keynes.  Why do you keep changing the subject whenever I debunk your previous post?

You realize that in order for the CB to create money they have to buy bonds from Treasury and sell them on the open market, don't you?  Therefore the money for Iraq war is owed to the private sector.

If you don't know stuff that's forgivable.  But claiming you have a Masters degree in economics and spouting this nonsense is downright fraudulent.  

Debunk my post ?   The only thing you do is mock me and deny all my posts without any evidence, not a really good argument isn't it?

Do you realize that the central bank can just print money and buy back the bonds ? Right about now I think 80% of the US bond marked is owned by the FED, some say it's even more from offshore sources.
If there is no demand for the bonds in the secondary markets then they have to hold them, and seriously expose themselves to massive leverage.

Why do you think the FED has a 77:1 leverage if not because of this? They just seriously overextended themselves.

They hide the M3 Supply numbers, etc etc.If people would actually know what the real numbers are, then the debt bubble would have bursted a long time ago...

I do have MS degree, believe it or not, i`m not here to prove myself to you, I`m just trying to educate people and
 "de-brainwash" them, weather you like it or not.

[xmasdobo]

The main problem that you state is already a moot point imo. How in hell Bitcoin isn't elastic? You could live off a single Bitcoin giving its so damn divisible. I dont see the practical problem in the 21 million cap. It's like complaining about gold being limited in earth. A limitation is needed, otherwise you always end up with the current fiat problem.

[twiifm]

Sorry for being rude.  We are not even debating.  You are just ranting about stuff and making weak links to either central banks or Keynes.  Why do you keep changing the subject whenever I debunk your previous post?

You realize that in order for the CB to create money they have to buy bonds from Treasury and sell them on the open market, don't you?  Therefore the money for Iraq war is owed to the private sector.

If you don't know stuff that's forgivable.  But claiming you have a Masters degree in economics and spouting this nonsense is downright fraudulent.  

Debunk my post ?   The only thing you do is mock me and deny all my posts without any evidence, not a really good argument isn't it?

Do you realize that the central bank can just print money and buy back the bonds ? Right about now I think 80% of the US bond marked is owned by the FED, some say it's even more from offshore sources.
If there is no demand for the bonds in the secondary markets then they have to hold them, and seriously expose themselves to massive leverage.

Why do you think the FED has a 77:1 leverage if not because of this? They just seriously overextended themselves.

They hide the M3 Supply numbers, etc etc.If people would actually know what the real numbers are, then the debt bubble would have bursted a long time ago...

I do have MS degree, believe it or not, i`m not here to prove myself to you, I`m just trying to educate people and
 "de-brainwash" them, weather you like it or not.

Yeah they buy back the bonds when they want lower long term interest rates.  Still doesnt mean the war was funded by Fed lending money to Treasury.  Myth about govt lending money to itself debunked

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/kids/what/what_borrow.htm

Who cares how much leverage they have?  They have printing press.  

Personally, I think QE is a failure because it's based on the myth of the multiplier.  I'm not here to defend the Fed or govt if that's what you think.  I just think you got it wrong about how banking works and what Keysianism is. I think the brainwashed people here are the libertarians and anarcho capitalist.  You might wanna de brainwash them

What was your MS thesis?  

[twiifm]

The main problem that you state is already a moot point imo. How in hell Bitcoin isn't elastic? You could live off a single Bitcoin giving its so damn divisible. I dont see the practical problem in the 21 million cap. It's like complaining about gold being limited in earth. A limitation is needed, otherwise you always end up with the current fiat problem.

You could live off $200 cause it's divisible down to nano pennies?   

[R2D221]

The main problem that you state is already a moot point imo. How in hell Bitcoin isn't elastic? You could live off a single Bitcoin giving its so damn divisible. I dont see the practical problem in the 21 million cap. It's like complaining about gold being limited in earth. A limitation is needed, otherwise you always end up with the current fiat problem.

You could live off $200 cause it's divisible down to nano pennies?   

$200 aren't divisible down to nano pennies. That's the problem with fiat.

[twiifm]

The main problem that you state is already a moot point imo. How in hell Bitcoin isn't elastic? You could live off a single Bitcoin giving its so damn divisible. I dont see the practical problem in the 21 million cap. It's like complaining about gold being limited in earth. A limitation is needed, otherwise you always end up with the current fiat problem.

You could live off $200 cause it's divisible down to nano pennies?   

$200 aren't divisible down to nano pennies. That's the problem with fiat.

LOL that's what you think is wrong with the statement?  Some guy thinks you could live on 1 Bitcoin.  Try living off $200 so stupid

You can divide anything infinitely in digital.  Doesn't mean that you should

[odolvlobo]

The main problem that you state is already a moot point imo. How in hell Bitcoin isn't elastic? You could live off a single Bitcoin giving its so damn divisible. I dont see the practical problem in the 21 million cap. It's like complaining about gold being limited in earth. A limitation is needed, otherwise you always end up with the current fiat problem.

"Elastic" means that the price doesn't change much as the supply or demand changes. One ideal for a currency is for the value to remain constant (a.k.a. stable). A non-elastic currency has a difficult time doing that because the supply cannot be easily adjusted in response to changing demand. Bitcoin is fairly non-elastic because the total supply is fixed.

Note that the OP assumes that a central bank has the ability to correctly adjust supply to match demand. History has shown that to be false -- all those failed currencies, and inflation has been a major problem in the U.S. ever since the Fed was formed.

[Istanbul34]

Introducing the Monetary System of NXT which solved this issue;

A "transactional currency" is a "store of value" that is also used as a "transactional token" (aka You must have it to issue txs on the system).  Part of the reason it is a "store of value" is because it has value derived from being utilized as a "transactional token".  The other part is because it is limited in supply.  There are only 1 billion NXT.

It is my opinion that BCNext's intention was to reestablish the original ideals of the Bitcoin movement with NXT.  Bitcoin was originally intended to be a decentralized economy, but it turned into a centralized store of value.  BCNext knew people would hoard NXT because of its value as a "transactional token" on the platform.  This hoarding of NXT would cause a deflationary cycle to occur in the NXT economy if all purchases had to be made in NXT.  No one would buy anything because if they held their NXT, they would be able to purchase more later.  This would cause the NXT system to cease being a payment platform and become simply a "store of value" like BTC.  As you can tell from BTC's history, most people who own BTC don't spend BTC on purchases and if they do, they quickly re-purchase more BTC to replace what they spent.  BTC is NOT a payment platform, but a "store of value" ONLY.  NXT as a system was designed to be BOTH a "store of value" system (utilizing NXT as the "store of value") and a payment platform utilizing MS currencies.

I don't believe the MS was envisioned by BCNext as a way for people to make BTC clones or other "store of value" type currencies.  I believe he wanted it to be used in two different ways.  The first being gateways coming online and allowing people to use their national or local currencies on NXT.  The second being the creation of "social credit systems".  Imo, the reason "anti-deflation" was included in the "Transparent Forging/Economic Clusters" section was because "social credit systems" are "anti-deflationary economic clusters".

https://bitbucket.org/JeanLucPicard/nxt/issue/205/monetary-system-documenation

So, What is the value of NXT?



http://nxter.org/the-value-of-10-nxts/

[bidji29]

I proposed some change to the monetary system of NXT platform. (if you don't know about it : http://nxt.org/about/monetary-system/ . It's basically PoW for repartition of coin when PoS secure the network)

It would solve your "second problem". --> Difficulty never go down so no inflation if price is already too low

We need adaptative difficulty and minting cap for mintable currency.

The monetary system is great.
But the mintable part was not part of the plan and so it was added later and I have to say it's very limited and clunky.
Coin are not viable because the difficulty curve is totally linear. You can mint as much coin as you want if you have the hashrate, no competition between minter.
There is absolutely no protection against big surge in hashrate (like ASICS with bitcoin). And ASICS will fataly come one day or the other.


Mintable coin are currently a success in term of activity and fee generated but it will not continue if nothing is done.

To be viable long-term, coin need adaptative difficulty and minting cap !



What is Minting cap : It stop totally the minting once a cap is reached. The minting can continue once at a certain block. For exemple a limit of 10'000 coin / 5000 block
If 10'000 are minted in 2000 blocks, minting is stopped for 3000 blocks


What is Adaptative difficulty : Based on the number of block to reach the limit, difficulty is adjusted proportionally for the next chunk. (like in traditional PoW)
The exeption is  : Difficulty only need to increase. If the cap is not reach, difficulty do not need to decrease because minting is not neccesary to coin survival. Monetary system coin still work perfectly if no coin are minted. This way there is no inflation when the cost of mining is superior to the cost of the coin. And that's a huge advantage compared to traditional PoW.

[CDBAILEY]

Completely agree with Greenstox. In fact I has just joined to post the same realisation.

I want Bitcoin to succeed, I want to invest in it, but it is inherently economically flawed as a large scale currency replacement.

While I see the potential for Bitcoin to reach even $1,000,000 in value looking at market share projections. It is wishful thinking over reality because those projections can never come to pass.

Bitcoin is designed to appreciate. Yes sure there's is inflation currently in place through mining control, but everyone knows there is a limit to supply. So everyone knows that as demand increases through adoption, then the price will always increase.

That's when reality hits, in that people wont spend a rapidly appreciating asset which will be a massive barrier to capturing market share.
Lets be honest, say you want to buy a TV, you could A) spend $400 worth of your Bitcoin even though it may be worth $1000 the following year.
Or B) you could spend $400 from your dollar account knowing that due to controlled inflation it would be worth say $395 the following year in real terms.
So anyone sensible would do B and hold onto their BTC, and this is the reason I cannot see it taking off no matter how much we want it to.


Bitcoin will just destined to be a series of bubbles until all confidence is lost.


P.S I would love to be wrong

[CDBAILEY]

Consumer driven spending economies are based around the fact that deflationary currency is a bad thing because it deters spending (slightly).
If Bitcoin is to succeed it needs to become a Consumer driven spending economy. But Bitcoin is destined to be deflationary, and that coupled with the other option of spending inflationary fiat instead, will mean that sensible people will never spend BTC.

So in my example do you really think most people will do A rather than B?? because if BTC is to succeed this is what needs to happen.

In your analogy, those who spend spend spend in a growing economy are the sheep that represent the 99% that push every economy to a bubble. Those who invest fare better until the bubble bursts and debt is made cheap to save the sheep from oblivion.
This is how capitalism works, it is fuelled by consumer debt and designed to suck money from sheep debt while never allowing the sheep to die.

If you spend your BTC amidst rapid price appreciation, and spent less as it falls, you will always lose money in relative terms.

But I am inclined to invest in the next bubble because I'm willing to bet that most people won't realise this and spend BTC regardless.
That and my ££ is going nowhere at the moment so I may as well take a punt on humanities stupidity.

[CDBAILEY]

The only thing I do see there is less inclination to save and maybe that's where economists are getting the idea that inflation is good, when folks had gradually accumulated savings and saw their value dropping fast through one of the boom/bust periods they emptied them out and haven't had any reason to replenish them since. I'm certain I've seen that happen in my lifetime, savings where important 20 years ago but now its all loans.

And this reinforces my point. Currently in the world of fiat we see the folly of saving, so we are taking on cheap debt to enable us to spend more (or some of us look for inflation beating investment opportunities). Business loves this and encourages it because we will buy more of whatever they are trying to sell.
Bitcoin needs big business to adopt and encourage BTC, and while many argue that low transaction costs provide enough incentive, what they really need is volume of spenders.
But BTC's increasing demand:supply will encourage us to save not spend, so companies won't be able to sell their products to us in BTC when people have the option of using £.
Then companies will drop BTC and pop!

[CDBAILEY]

I don't believe that is a fact though, the 99% go mad spending when they have more value in their pocket regardless of whether that's more units of fiat or greater value of BTC.

Exactly, if I see that by not transacting today I will have more value in my pocket tomorrow then I'd be stupid to transact.
In fact I'd never transact unless I had to or I really really wanted to buy something.
When that happens I'd think "if only there was another way to get that thing I really want without me having to spend my increasingly valuable BTC...oh wait there's those £'s I have knocking around that are not doing anything for me. Happy days! I can keep my cake and eat my newly purchased cake"

Irrefutable I'm afraid.

[CDBAILEY]

....
Dont you think that having less stupid buy behavior and buy only what we really need is a bad thing long term?

Because some think it's unsustainable to grow for ever, and consume allways more.

If we buy what we really need, and stop living on loans, it could be a good thing for me.

(my english is crappy, I know )

Your English isn't bad at all there an I agree 100%, blind consumerism has gone way beyond what's reasonable and is a massive waste of resources. This was posted yesterday, might be of interest to you:
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/politics/ecbig/gdp.htm

Agree you're English isn't bad at all. We British are often the worst
I completely agree that spending beyond your means is a bad thing, and I for one never do so.
But unfortunately if we spend less with BTC (however sensibly) in favour of saving for future gains, the Amazons of this world will never switch from the fiat that we spend so freely.

As Stan says, maybe the only way that BTC can really compete with fiat in terms of consumer usage, is if there are products that can only be purchased in BTC, and then BTC can operate in a niche market.
The thing is, someone sooner or later would tap into that market with fiat and we will then inevitably stop using BTC.

The sad truth is that fiat currencies are more adaptable to market conditions so will always win. Survival of the fittest innit.

[GreenStox]

Yeah they buy back the bonds when they want lower long term interest rates.  Still doesnt mean the war was funded by Fed lending money to Treasury.  Myth about govt lending money to itself debunked

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/kids/what/what_borrow.htm

Who cares how much leverage they have?  They have printing press.  

Personally, I think QE is a failure because it's based on the myth of the multiplier.  I'm not here to defend the Fed or govt if that's what you think.  I just think you got it wrong about how banking works and what Keysianism is. I think the brainwashed people here are the libertarians and anarcho capitalist.  You might wanna de brainwash them

What was your MS thesis?  

They buy the bonds if nobody else does. Why would the treasury issue bonds if nobody need them, is because they desperately need funds to do this or that, and if you cant force it into the population or external investors then the FED is the only one that can buy it.

In my country, they pay the pensions from deficit money, so if the bond market were to collapse here, you would see many grandpas on the streets protesting...

QE is not a failure, its just a tool, it depends on how is used, again I pointed out, if the QE is used to pay wreckless spending of the government, then its badly used. If it's just used to control the price then it's goodly used.
But QE seems like a well of infinite money, and can be easily abused, so its a very delicate tool.

I am a libertarian.

My MS thesis was about the relationship between price volatility and market liquidity in the financial markets, so this is kind of my forte. I`ve studied the flexibility of the monetary base for quite along time.

"Elastic" means that the price doesn't change much as the supply or demand changes. One ideal for a currency is for the value to remain constant (a.k.a. stable). A non-elastic currency has a difficult time doing that because the supply cannot be easily adjusted in response to changing demand. Bitcoin is fairly non-elastic because the total supply is fixed.

Note that the OP assumes that a central bank has the ability to correctly adjust supply to match demand. History has shown that to be false -- all those failed currencies, and inflation has been a major problem in the U.S. ever since the Fed was formed.

Who said that the institution of the CB is correct?

It's not the QE's fault that it was used badly, QE was needed because the whole fractional reserve banking, which I don't support. Perhaps a 1:1.25 Leverage at most, but definitely not a 1:77 leverage as now is used by the FED.

Leverage can sometimes be good to boost the speed of innovation, by giving out more money, with extra risk. Of course this should only be used with competence, only competent banks should be able to use leverage.  I think a rating agency is needed which would rate Banks, and only A tier banks could use leverage based on their performance.

Otherwise with 1:1 Leverage, you would not have huge inflation, it would always be under 1%, which is tiny and tolerable.

QE would be hardly needed, however, if there is an liquidity crisis, then it's needed, so you can't just throw it away.

[GreenStox]

Yes I saw you guys above making good points about being a consumer based currency. You are right, because if people were to use bitcoins for commerce, then by default the value of it would appreciate, as the value of the goods and services would flow into Bitcoin.

The problem now is that they just buy bitcoin and then even if they buy good with it, the jerks merchants quickly converts it back into fiat.Which will just pump out all of its value back into fiat and help the USD grow.

The only industry that is growing is perhaps the gambling industry and bitcoin based investments, but this is a very small percentage, the others either sell it through merchants or hoarding it, and doing nothing with it.

So at the moment there is not much you can do with it.

However when the USD collapses that would be a different story.

You can already see barter going on with bitcoin on a peer-to-peer basis at localbitcoins and similar places, so if the global enomy would be devastated, which it will (i dont know hold long the FED can hold a 77:1 leverage on its balance sheet without popping), then people would lose confidence in everything centrally controled, and would again return to small community trading, where BTC is perfect.

Yea some of you can come up with the argument that without electricity and internet BTC is worth nothing, well not so fast.
You can easily create "paper bitcoin". How to create a 1BTC worth paper bitcoin?

Easy just write the address down on a paper which contains 1 BTC, then write on the other side the private key, and put another black paper on the private key to hide it and glue it down, so that it can be see only if it is removed.

See, you can easily create an offline paper bitcoin note in 5 minutes which can be traded in a non-internet community.
You can use a mobile phone to verify if that address contains BTC or not, and can be easily used to barter

Like this:


Of course you need to hide the private key initially, but it can work

[CDBAILEY]

Thank you for the link (still reading it)

I agree that it's specifications won't help bitcoin to be adopted TOP-DOWN, but I can see it gaining control bottom-up, because bottom will be fedup with the actual system going nowhere, and will want to control their money, keeping fiat to pay taxes and governments

Fiat as wallet money, Bitcoin as saving account during transition to a full Bitcoin world

If this happens, services will be sold for BTC, goods between bottom guys in direct decentralyzed open markets, and if the bottom adopt, fiat will fall, and the top will go where is the money.

We should try to push BTC Bottom UP (and it's already happening like that)

(Hope I'm not dreaming)  

Bottom up is certainly right. It will never happen top down because commerce wont support it without a market to tap into.
The only way that market will be created is if people spend their BTC rather than save it.
So when you say 'Bitcoin as saving account during transition to a full Bitcoin world', the only way that transition will happen is if you dont just use it as a speculative savings account.

If you spend it, they will come.
Problem is, when playing in the same market as fiat, it's detrimental to spend our BTC.

Stan I like the link, innovation into new markets rather than competing with current ones is the only way BTC can thrive.


P.S. One last point that worries me. If I was BTC's creator and had a huge proportion of supply. I would want to encourage the adoption of my new technology by spending my BTC. Instead Mr Creator remains anonymous.
Is it to hide what he's really doing? That being maybe sitting on his BTC while hoping it gains traction through the support of others.
If Mr Creator came out and confirmed that he is not spending his BTC, then we'd all lose confidence very quickly and BTC would die.

[GreenStox]

No, technically, paper BTC can't work, because, if the private key is obfuscated, you can have a publique key with no private key

even if I can give you a private key, I can pay with it seconds after giving it to you with a copy of it

plus you say no internet and use a mobile phone to check

never accept private key, or you'll get burn

You must own the private key, plus be the only one to know it

let's hope we keep internet, if society goes this down, food and ammo will be money 

No, you can test the private key, if it corresponds to the address.

You can also test if the address contains bitcoin.

After you accept the paper coin you quickly transfer it to another address, and wait for 1 confirmation.

Also remember it's not you who would issue the notes, it would be a trusted 3rd party, so you would not know the private key unless you would scratch it, but then if you do then the note would be compromized and it could not be traded.

So you see you just buy that note from a 3rd party who would keep the private keys safe like blockchain.info, and you can trade the note, until you dont scratch it, because when you do then it is already compromized, like this:



======================

Another way of doing it, if the previous version seems flawed,

Is to just issue a paper currency which would be denominated in BTC. The note would be exactly pegged to BTC, and would have watermark and other security features like normal notes, to prevent counterfeiting .

And of course 1 BTC NOTE can be redeemed for 1 BTC from anyone, so if you just happen to live in a zone where you have no internet, you could just use the BTC NOTE, and then when you get to an area with internet you can redeem it from an exchange to real BTC into your BTC wallet.

Or just have both versions, nothing is impossible , there are many creative and innovative people in bitcoin who thought about this

[GreenStox]

For third party, I know, I have two Casascius coins, but the system isn't trustless anymore and you would have to trust the issuer.
I thought a lot of this trust issue, because I have wanted to create physical bitcoins in the past and concluded I would never have requiered trust for this to be a success.

I still think we need "internet" or just enough connected nodes on a kind of network, if we lose so many infrastructure, I don't see a lot of things keeping value
(food, water, guns, ammunitions) and maybe caps if you played fallout 


For BTC backed paper money and other uses, as long as we can access internet sometimes, BTC can live, because we only need to change BTC sometimes to something that can be easily used (gold, paper money, caps)

Yes, but just think about Africans, there are not many internet connections there, so we have to think about everyone. Even if we survive the collapse with the internet intact (which we will, the internet is the last thing to go away, your pension savings will be the first  ), still you will have poor villages without acces to it, where the BTC Note as I call it would come handy, and they can just redeem that whenever they want in an exchange, to their wallet, if they get acces to internet.

Besides, i think the fallout games exagerate a little bit, i didnt played them but I sawed videos, so I think people in USA exagerate about those FEMA camps and survival kit and whatnot. Even the 1929 collapse wasnt that horrible, so it wont be worser than that, because we can recover from it much quicker with the internet intact.

If the dollar will collapse and it will, then the internet trading and bartering economy will grow by atleast 5 orders of magnitude 

I mean you will see people in Facebook trading stuff because the local shops will be bankrupt and closed, and they will use postal service or whatever courier to exchange goods, that is how it will be.

It wont be a post apocaliptic world where armed vigilant mobs will be on the streets because you still have an army which would keep relative peace. It will be just that normal shops will be closed and a lot of services bankrupt.

So twitter,facebook, youtube and other social sites will become the global exchange 2.0 

So do will be BitMessage and OpenBazaar.

So don't exxagerate, I know that people are scared and stuff but, really we need to put things in perspective, the majority of the collapse will only hit banksters, because they inflated the 1.6 quadrilion derivative bubble, and still they own the majority of it, so if it will pop, only they lose their money mostly . Middle strata and poor people doesnt have much to loose, but only gain freedom of commerce and trading, by bartering peer-to-peer and they would become much richer than before the crisis because there will be no central power to steal from them.