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I consider Bitcoin more of a "collective interest" than money produced by governments. History is full hyperinflation horror stories. Do you trust professional

I consider Bitcoin more of a "collective interest" than money produced by governments. History is full hyperinflation horror stories. Do you trust professional encyclopedia writers more than a bunch of anonymous volunteers collectively writing articles? But Wikipedia is a fact no? It works. Distributed things seem to work, in practice. I agree that Bitcoin still has to prove itself. But if such a thing as Wikipedia can work, why not Bitcoin? But I get your point. Although the world is bigger than US and Europe alone. What about current unstable states? One thing will never happen to Bitoin: hyperinflation.

notahacker 9y ago
You can get the equivalent crash in currency value from people choosing to exit their BTC en masse without emitting new coins. Ultimately hyperinflation is a massive imbalance of supply and demand, and whilst the supply side is much more fixed with BTC than a floating, fractional reserve currency, the demand side is much less fixed because there really aren't that many future obligations to pay things in BTC. And I was under the (possibly incorrect?) impression that with the support of enough of the hashing power, core Bitcoin could hypothetically be forked in a way which massively increased the rate at which new BTC were emitted. (Something which would be highly unlikely as miners have strong incentives not to do this under normal circumstances, but the same applies to governments having no incentives to rapidly debase their currency under normal circumstances)
subroutine 9y ago
I do like the idea of distributed efforts, and I think Bitcoin has some really positive aspects. Still regarding Bitcoin as the stable alternative to USD is a major stretch, and I think that is partially due to it being decentralized. For one, with no state backing, what does a country risk in simply banning Bitcoin? China has already proven they are paying attention to crypto exchange, and their willingness to institute bans. Do you not fret the US could do the same at any moment? What options are there if the US put a ban on bitcoin exchange? Do you think it would still retain its value?

notahacker 9y ago

You can get the equivalent crash in currency value from people choosing to exit their BTC en masse without emitting new coins. Ultimately hyperinflation is a massive imbalance of supply and demand, and whilst the supply side is much more fixed with BTC than a floating, fractional reserve currency, the demand side is much less fixed because there really aren't that many future obligations to pay things in BTC. And I was under the (possibly incorrect?) impression that with the support of enough of the hashing power, core Bitcoin could hypothetically be forked in a way which massively increased the rate at which new BTC were emitted. (Something which would be highly unlikely as miners have strong incentives not to do this under normal circumstances, but the same applies to governments having no incentives to rapidly debase their currency under normal circumstances)

subroutine 9y ago

I do like the idea of distributed efforts, and I think Bitcoin has some really positive aspects. Still regarding Bitcoin as the stable alternative to USD is a major stretch, and I think that is partially due to it being decentralized. For one, with no state backing, what does a country risk in simply banning Bitcoin? China has already proven they are paying attention to crypto exchange, and their willingness to institute bans. Do you not fret the US could do the same at any moment? What options are there if the US put a ban on bitcoin exchange? Do you think it would still retain its value?