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> If I had something in my pocket that I knew would become more valuable by systemic necessity, I’d save it as long as I possibly could. I also save my USD “as

by baddox 9y ago

> If I had something in my pocket that I knew would become more valuable by systemic necessity, I’d save it as long as I possibly could. I also save my USD “as long as I possibly can,” by which I mean “until I value something more than the USD it costs to acquire.” In practice, that very frequently ends up being relatively small purchases of things I literally need to survive and function in society, like food, rent, and clothing, but beyond that I try to save as much USD as I can despite it being nearly guaranteed to decrease in value over time.

tonfa 9y ago
You really keep your savings in cash beyond your emergency fund? (I'd think most people don't)
- scurvy 9y ago
  Cash or cash equivalents (savings, CD, etc) if your main goal is to finance a home. One measure of "can I afford this home" is, did you earn your money from regular work and savings or one two years of extraordinary stock market gains. Keeping savings simple at times is prudent. I have a feeling a lot people are going to be mostly in cash in the next 18 months...
dclowd9901 9y ago
That frequency is small because the central bank targets an inflation rate of about 1-2% (and does so by pumping currency into the market, more or less). This does two things: makes it not worth it to save your money, and makes it not worth it to invest it it anything with less than a -1% yield (unless it is a good or service of some kind). So you’ve not answered the questions of “why would I spend this currency on _anything_, including other investments, if holding onto it is the best investment out there?” And how does bitcoin not consistently stay in a deflationary spiral?
- baddox 9y ago
  > why would I spend this currency on _anything_, including other investments, if holding onto it is the best investment out there? Different people value different things differently, thus there is no universal agreement on what the “best investment” is. Remember that the price of Bitcoin cannot change without both a seller and a buyer. Each bitcoin bought is a bitcoin sold. The most obvious and simplistic example of a reason people might sell Bitcoins right now is that they are hungry and want food, but that generalizes to more complex differences between individuals’ time discount functions.

by baddox 9y ago

tonfa 9y ago

You really keep your savings in cash beyond your emergency fund? (I'd think most people don't)

scurvy 9y ago
Cash or cash equivalents (savings, CD, etc) if your main goal is to finance a home. One measure of "can I afford this home" is, did you earn your money from regular work and savings or one two years of extraordinary stock market gains. Keeping savings simple at times is prudent. I have a feeling a lot people are going to be mostly in cash in the next 18 months...

dclowd9901 9y ago

That frequency is small because the central bank targets an inflation rate of about 1-2% (and does so by pumping currency into the market, more or less). This does two things: makes it not worth it to save your money, and makes it not worth it to invest it it anything with less than a -1% yield (unless it is a good or service of some kind). So you’ve not answered the questions of “why would I spend this currency on _anything_, including other investments, if holding onto it is the best investment out there?” And how does bitcoin not consistently stay in a deflationary spiral?

baddox 9y ago
> why would I spend this currency on _anything_, including other investments, if holding onto it is the best investment out there? Different people value different things differently, thus there is no universal agreement on what the “best investment” is. Remember that the price of Bitcoin cannot change without both a seller and a buyer. Each bitcoin bought is a bitcoin sold. The most obvious and simplistic example of a reason people might sell Bitcoins right now is that they are hungry and want food, but that generalizes to more complex differences between individuals’ time discount functions.