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Bitcoin largely was born as a response to financial crisis that nearly wiped out worldwide financial system 10 years ago. With the leveraging currently going o

Bitcoin largely was born as a response to financial crisis that nearly wiped out worldwide financial system 10 years ago. With the leveraging currently going on, albeit at government level, i wonder how long it will be before next financial mess happens that would resurrect these deflationary, government currency decoupled instruments.

tedajax 8y ago
> Bitcoin largely was born as a response to financial crisis that nearly wiped out worldwide financial system 10 years ago. I'm by no means an expert here but this seems... very not true.
- sheeshkebab 8y ago
  it's pretty much written in plain language as possible in all the bitcoin explainers, docs, and bitcoin's source code - https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/04/02/the-history-of-bitcoin.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/04/02/the-history-of-bit... https://www.bitcoin.com/guides/bitcoin-white-paper-beginner-guide https://www.bitcoin.com/guides/bitcoin-white-paper-beginner-... https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/code/133/tree/trunk/main.cpp#l1613 https://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/code/133/tree/trunk/main.c...
- haakon 8y ago
  It's not, it's just a popular and appealing narrative. Bitcoin was in development for at least a few years before the financial crisis, but its developer's own admission.
  - decentralised 8y ago
    Bitcoin was the culmination of the engineering work done by Chaum, Wei Dai, Szabo, Finney and a few others but it's launch was marked by the economic crisis and many of its earlier adopters are people who believe that separating money and state will have the same net positive effects that separating state and church had some centuries ago.
  - anonymouzz 8y ago
    It was in development before, but the at least philosophical ties to the troubles of the classic economic systems are right there in the Genesis block of Bitcoin, persisted forever by Satoshi Nakamoto: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block Scroll to "Coinbase".
    - artursapek 8y ago
      Exactly. The very first block in the very first blockchain directly referenced classic economic systems' instability.
notahacker 8y ago
Bit embarrassing for cryptoenthusiasts to still be insisting their assets are "deflationary" when many of them have lost more value in a year (and far more unpredictably) than the US dollar has since the mid 1970s, including all the financial crises...
- drb91 8y ago
  Well they also gained much of that value in the same year—looks exactly like an asset getting overvalued by a lot of people followed by a dump. I don’t think this is contrary to a deflationary currency—it’s not like they only move in one direction.
  - notahacker 8y ago
    Losing 80% of purchasing power in a year seems pretty contrary to the ideal of being a "deflationary currency" to me.
    - drb91 8y ago
      Would you like to elaborate on what you consider inflation and deflation to be? Any currency can gain or lose value against other currencies regardless of the currency in circulation, which is different than comparing the proportion of bitcoin you have to the (eventually constant) number in circulation. The former is just being a currency, and the latter addresses its inflation (or deflation in this case).
      - notahacker 8y ago
        Inflation is a sustained increased in the level of relevant-currency-denominated prices of a weighted basket of goods (or "all goods") over time; deflation the reverse. Alternately and equivalently inflation can be viewed as the dilution of purchasing power of that currency (in terms of real world goods and services). This is the orthodox definition of inflation, as used by economists and laypeople, inflation hawks and inflationistas alike. Unlike counting numbers in circulation and hoping purchasing power will be broadly proportional to it, this standard definition of inflation has practical relevance. The number of now-defunct Zimbabwean dollars in circulation turned out to be eventually constant, but it didn't mean they didn't turn out near worthless because people strongly preferred payment in other currencies instead.

tedajax 8y ago

> Bitcoin largely was born as a response to financial crisis that nearly wiped out worldwide financial system 10 years ago. I'm by no means an expert here but this seems... very not true.

sheeshkebab 8y ago
it's pretty much written in plain language as possible in all the bitcoin explainers, docs, and bitcoin's source code - https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/04/02/the-history-of-bitcoin.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/04/02/the-history-of-bit... https://www.bitcoin.com/guides/bitcoin-white-paper-beginner-guide https://www.bitcoin.com/guides/bitcoin-white-paper-beginner-... https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/code/133/tree/trunk/main.cpp#l1613 https://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/code/133/tree/trunk/main.c...
haakon 8y ago
It's not, it's just a popular and appealing narrative. Bitcoin was in development for at least a few years before the financial crisis, but its developer's own admission.
- decentralised 8y ago
  Bitcoin was the culmination of the engineering work done by Chaum, Wei Dai, Szabo, Finney and a few others but it's launch was marked by the economic crisis and many of its earlier adopters are people who believe that separating money and state will have the same net positive effects that separating state and church had some centuries ago.
- anonymouzz 8y ago
  It was in development before, but the at least philosophical ties to the troubles of the classic economic systems are right there in the Genesis block of Bitcoin, persisted forever by Satoshi Nakamoto: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block Scroll to "Coinbase".
  - artursapek 8y ago
    Exactly. The very first block in the very first blockchain directly referenced classic economic systems' instability.

notahacker 8y ago

Bit embarrassing for cryptoenthusiasts to still be insisting their assets are "deflationary" when many of them have lost more value in a year (and far more unpredictably) than the US dollar has since the mid 1970s, including all the financial crises...

drb91 8y ago
Well they also gained much of that value in the same year—looks exactly like an asset getting overvalued by a lot of people followed by a dump. I don’t think this is contrary to a deflationary currency—it’s not like they only move in one direction.
- notahacker 8y ago
  Losing 80% of purchasing power in a year seems pretty contrary to the ideal of being a "deflationary currency" to me.
  - drb91 8y ago
    Would you like to elaborate on what you consider inflation and deflation to be? Any currency can gain or lose value against other currencies regardless of the currency in circulation, which is different than comparing the proportion of bitcoin you have to the (eventually constant) number in circulation. The former is just being a currency, and the latter addresses its inflation (or deflation in this case).
    - notahacker 8y ago
      Inflation is a sustained increased in the level of relevant-currency-denominated prices of a weighted basket of goods (or "all goods") over time; deflation the reverse. Alternately and equivalently inflation can be viewed as the dilution of purchasing power of that currency (in terms of real world goods and services). This is the orthodox definition of inflation, as used by economists and laypeople, inflation hawks and inflationistas alike. Unlike counting numbers in circulation and hoping purchasing power will be broadly proportional to it, this standard definition of inflation has practical relevance. The number of now-defunct Zimbabwean dollars in circulation turned out to be eventually constant, but it didn't mean they didn't turn out near worthless because people strongly preferred payment in other currencies instead.