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It's astounding how these nocoiners refuse to understand Bitcoin is the ONLY asset that is always worth exactly 1 BTC. The rest of the world's unstable goods l
by rspeele 6y ago
It's astounding how these nocoiners refuse to understand Bitcoin is the ONLY asset that is always worth exactly 1 BTC.
The rest of the world's unstable goods like gold, fiat currency, real estate, stocks, cars, and even groceries are always fluctuating in BTC value but BTC stays perfectly level.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y agoIsn't that a feature of literally every currency? Has 1 USD ever not been worth exactly 1 USD?
- Jtsummers 6y agoGP is being sarcastic. The idea that a currency is stable because it always has the same value with respect to itself (1BTC is always 1BTC) even though literally every other good or service price is fluctuating wildly is a fundamentally absurdist position to take, and what GGP seems to be suggesting (and others have on here and other places, earnestly, before, not sarcastically or ironically about BTC). It's irrelevant that you can always trade 1 USD for 1 USD or 1 BTC for 1 BTC if the prices for goods are so unstable that every purchase or sale becomes a risk ("Wait, did the pizza price drop by 10,000x? Crap, that delivery guy can retire on his tip now and I'm broke!").
- SketchySeaBeast 6y agoOk, yeah, thank you. At this point I can't tell sarcasm from satire from honesty. Edit: I now again have no idea if they are or not. Looking at their comment history it doesn't appear they are.
- Jtsummers 6y agoYeah. Me neither. A definite problem in these discussions, especially text only. You can't tell who is being earnest, who is being a contrarian, and who is being sarcastic.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y agoI'm thinking they may be being sarcastic again, but they sure are committed.
- rspeele 6y agoSorry for yanking your chain. I tried to be absurd enough in my initial post to make it clear. When that failed, my reaction was to add more absurdity. It's not the first time this has failed. I should have known better when imitating a group that defies parody, like crypto aherents.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y agoI am incredibly relieved.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rspeele 6y agoYes, but because it's centralized, there can be more USD printed and that's how destabilization works. Let me give you an example. Chuck E. Cheese tokens are hardly worth anything. They're a terrible store of value. Why is this? Because Mr. Cheese can direct more to be minted at any time in an attempt to quantitatively ease the Chuck E. Cheese economy. One day, Chuck E. Cheese will go out of business for good, and no more of his tokens will be minted. At that point the value will stabilize and, relative to depreciating assets like USD, stocks, bonds, or other things that aren't types of coin, it'll actually skyrocket. Limited supply equals stable or increasing value, forever.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y agoBut every USD will be the same price as every other regardless if they are devalued, that was your initial point. Same with Chuck E. Cheese. Same with Bitcoin. In fact, Bitcoin, which is largely treated as a commodity, could be greatly reduced in price if a lot of the currently unmoving coins flooded the market causing them to lose value. They'd still be worth 1 BTC of course, but that has no value in itself.
- rspeele 6y agoIt's the law of supply and expand. Any object is worth approximately (all the world's wealth) / (number of that object in existence). This guarantees Bitcoin will always have value since supply is limited to 21 million. It's also why my cheese tokens become sound money if Chuck E. Cheese goes bankrupt and is no longer operating, but they're junk right now while they can still be used to play arcade games. It's also why I'm forking a new version of Bitcoin with the supply limited to 21 thousand. It's also got stable value and currently isn't trading for much but I'm holding it with the expectation that the value of every other asset in existence will rapidly depreciate soon.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y agoObjects are only worth what people would pay for them - rarity is only one factor. Bitcoin forks are even less compelling as anyone can make them at any time - there is an infinite number of them. So the actual supply isn't 21,000 of your bitcoin, it's all the possibly forked version of bitcoins. Some of those may gain popularity, but I have no idea why you think yours would be.
- noch 6y ago> Has 1 USD ever not been worth exactly 1 USD Not really. If you own 1 fiat dollar today and I double the money supply tomorrow, I have just halved the value of your fiat dollar over time. Your share of the money supply has been diluted[1]. 1 nominal FD tomorrow is worth 0.5FD in real terms all else held constant. Of course this thought experiment is trivial and oversimplified because the real question is about purchasing power. But consider that majority of USD in existence were "printed"[2] last year. Consider that the global fiat monetary base expanded by ~50% last year. "Since 1933, the U.S. dollar has lost 92 percent of its domestic purchasing power. Even at its “moderate” 1994 inflation rate of 2.7 percent, the dollar will lose another half of its purchasing power by 2022." https://www.google.com/amp/s/fee.org/articles/central-banks-gold-and-the-decline-of-the-dollar/amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/fee.org/articles/central-banks-... [1]: https://cryptovoices.com/basemoney https://cryptovoices.com/basemoney [2]: https://www.lynalden.com/money-printing/ https://www.lynalden.com/money-printing/
- SketchySeaBeast 6y agoBut that's not what the statement was - that it's always 1 to 1, which it always is. If you have a $1 bill from 1973 it still can be exchange for a 2021 $1 bill. If you look at today and tomorrow, sure, the value will change, but bitcoin has also gained and (occasionally lost) buying power. The statement is doubly useless as you could also say that "1 oz of Gold has always been worth 1 oz of gold." so it's not just currencies, it's also commodities that this rule is going to apply to.
- noch 6y ago> If you have a $1 bill from 1973 it still can be exchange for a 2021 $1 bill. Nominally. How do you grok the practice of coin-clipping? You hand in one gold coin which is then clipped and you are given a coin with a smaller percentage of gold in it. 1 solidus is still nominally worth 1 solidus. But it's really worth 0.x a solidus. Does this debasement matter? The coin has the same name but it's not the same coin. > bitcoin has also gained and (occasionally lost) buying power. Over the long term, Bitcoin can only gain and has only gained purchasing power, algorithmically. Unlike with fiat, your proportional share, based on your stack of coins, of the total value in the economy has not changed. This assumes a Bitcoin Standard where bitcoin is the world currency. (Some of us already live on a Bitcoin Standard preemptively.) With fiat, your share has been debased. 1 usd is not equal to 1 usd over time. With Bitcoin, your ruler is always accurate. 1 satoshi = 1 satoshi over time unto eternity. Fiat cannot make that claim. That's what we mean when we say 1 btc = 1 btc. > "1 oz of Gold has always been worth 1 oz of gold." Now you see why gold was the world's hardest money. It's chemical stability guaranteed this statement. Hardly any other commodities behave this way. Unless you have examples?