22 ms·

100% this. Food, medicine, transportation, education, and everything else at or near the bottom of Maslow's pyramid of needs still cannot be directly purchased

by 1970-01-01 2y ago

100% this. Food, medicine, transportation, education, and everything else at or near the bottom of Maslow's pyramid of needs still cannot be directly purchased with bitcoin. The other punchline to the Bitcoin joke is that it's finite. In 120 years it will begin to evaporate from existence as more and more wallets are simply lost to time.

GamerUncle 2y ago
>The other punchline to the Gold joke is that it's finite. In 120 years it will begin to evaporate from existence as more and more gold chests are simply lost to time. This is how insane that sounds
- shash 2y ago
  That's because it's actually quite sane; relying on commodity backed currencies - especially those which are _finite_ leads to deflation. You see that with BTC, where the value keeps rising and you need more and more fractional denominations to make sense. With gold (and historically, more so silver), it was _very rarely_ used for actual trade because it ended up being like five gold coins == someone's entire life savings. It was always silver, copper and unit of account. Debased currency - a problem every large state eventually faced - is a consequence of deflation.
  - jpcom 2y ago
    Interesting take. Therefore they needed a bridge between the deflationary BTC and a low-inflationary day-to-day note. Is there an obvious fix, my liege?
  - TeaBrain 2y ago
    >Debased currency - a problem every large state eventually faced - is a consequence of deflation Inflation in the monetary supply, not deflation, leads to the debasement of a currency. An example is how the influx of gold from the conquistadors into 16th century Spain led to inflation, due to the increased supply of this means of exchange resulting in the debasement in value of a given unit of this means of exchange. Edit: I'd remembered wrong. It was silver, not gold, that Spain experienced an influx of.
    - lmm 2y ago
      > Inflation, not deflation, leads to the debasement of a currency. An example is how the influx of gold from the conquistadors into 16th century Spain led to inflation, due to the increased supply of this means of exchange resulting in the debasement in value of a given unit of this means of exchange. No, that's not debasement - in fact it was the opposite, the huge supply of silver (not so much gold) meant those Spanish coins were good-quality bullion. Inflation happened, and while that can commonly be caused by debasement, that wasn't the cause in this instance.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - Aloisius 2y ago
      Em. Spain, famously, didn't debase its currency. The gold escudo was 22-karat for basically it's entire existence,.
      - TeaBrain 2y ago
        I was more thinking in terms of the modern conception of currency debasement resulting from the increase in the monetary supply, though I think I must have just been thinking of the real, not the escudo. Several years ago, I read a couple of books on the conquistadors, where the details of the devaluation of silver was discussed, but it's been a while since the information was fresh in my mind.
  - int_19h 2y ago
    A bit more detail on the subject of historical coinage and the place of gold in it: https://acoup.blog/2025/01/03/collections-coinage-and-the-tyranny-of-fantasy-gold/ https://acoup.blog/2025/01/03/collections-coinage-and-the-ty...
    - shash 2y ago
      I was literally thinking of this article!
wruza 2y ago
It is highly divisible though, there’s 2.1e15 satoshi and 2.3e14 cents in the world (re google). It can lose 90% of itself before being unable to replace cents. Also, the network can just agree to change the protocol to fix this issue, should it arise. Countries do redenominations all the time.
- the_sleaze_ 2y ago
  I think the fundamental appeal of Bitcoin is the lack of ability to change the protocol based on any external factors at all. Otherwise it's just fiat all over again
  - notpushkin 2y ago
    But you can change the protocol – you just need to convince people to use your version, i.e. make a softfork. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Softfork https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Softfork (Or a hardfork, if your changes have to apply to all transactions, though this would be extremely tricky.)
    - j16sdiz 2y ago
      and update the hardware wallets if needed
  - geysersam 2y ago
    Of course the protocol can change if a large majority of miners agree to the change. It's just a question about updating the source code. The fundamental appeal of bitcoin is the lack of ability to change the protocol without buy-in from a sufficient fraction of the community.
  - wruza 2y ago
    What it really is is basically a consensus between participants. Once the consensus about a change gains critical mass, that change just happens, by someone coding it into the software and people updating to it. The change (fork) becomes mainstream and the old version becomes fringe. And vice versa, if consensus never achieved. There will be people who stay on old version anyway. It’s up to who believes in what, based on available software based on ideas that are worth new code.
kylebenzle 2y ago
Your being silly. Its an INTERNET currency for use on the INTERNET. I use it to pay for cloud storage, VPN and web hosting on the INTERNET.
genem9 2y ago
What? People buy food with bitcoin all the time …

GamerUncle 2y ago

>The other punchline to the Gold joke is that it's finite. In 120 years it will begin to evaporate from existence as more and more gold chests are simply lost to time. This is how insane that sounds

shash 2y ago
That's because it's actually quite sane; relying on commodity backed currencies - especially those which are _finite_ leads to deflation. You see that with BTC, where the value keeps rising and you need more and more fractional denominations to make sense. With gold (and historically, more so silver), it was _very rarely_ used for actual trade because it ended up being like five gold coins == someone's entire life savings. It was always silver, copper and unit of account. Debased currency - a problem every large state eventually faced - is a consequence of deflation.
- jpcom 2y ago
  Interesting take. Therefore they needed a bridge between the deflationary BTC and a low-inflationary day-to-day note. Is there an obvious fix, my liege?
- TeaBrain 2y ago
  >Debased currency - a problem every large state eventually faced - is a consequence of deflation Inflation in the monetary supply, not deflation, leads to the debasement of a currency. An example is how the influx of gold from the conquistadors into 16th century Spain led to inflation, due to the increased supply of this means of exchange resulting in the debasement in value of a given unit of this means of exchange. Edit: I'd remembered wrong. It was silver, not gold, that Spain experienced an influx of.
  - lmm 2y ago
    > Inflation, not deflation, leads to the debasement of a currency. An example is how the influx of gold from the conquistadors into 16th century Spain led to inflation, due to the increased supply of this means of exchange resulting in the debasement in value of a given unit of this means of exchange. No, that's not debasement - in fact it was the opposite, the huge supply of silver (not so much gold) meant those Spanish coins were good-quality bullion. Inflation happened, and while that can commonly be caused by debasement, that wasn't the cause in this instance.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - Aloisius 2y ago
    Em. Spain, famously, didn't debase its currency. The gold escudo was 22-karat for basically it's entire existence,.
    - TeaBrain 2y ago
      I was more thinking in terms of the modern conception of currency debasement resulting from the increase in the monetary supply, though I think I must have just been thinking of the real, not the escudo. Several years ago, I read a couple of books on the conquistadors, where the details of the devaluation of silver was discussed, but it's been a while since the information was fresh in my mind.
- int_19h 2y ago
  A bit more detail on the subject of historical coinage and the place of gold in it: https://acoup.blog/2025/01/03/collections-coinage-and-the-tyranny-of-fantasy-gold/ https://acoup.blog/2025/01/03/collections-coinage-and-the-ty...
  - shash 2y ago
    I was literally thinking of this article!

wruza 2y ago

It is highly divisible though, there’s 2.1e15 satoshi and 2.3e14 cents in the world (re google). It can lose 90% of itself before being unable to replace cents. Also, the network can just agree to change the protocol to fix this issue, should it arise. Countries do redenominations all the time.

the_sleaze_ 2y ago
I think the fundamental appeal of Bitcoin is the lack of ability to change the protocol based on any external factors at all. Otherwise it's just fiat all over again
- notpushkin 2y ago
  But you can change the protocol – you just need to convince people to use your version, i.e. make a softfork. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Softfork https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Softfork (Or a hardfork, if your changes have to apply to all transactions, though this would be extremely tricky.)
  - j16sdiz 2y ago
    and update the hardware wallets if needed
- geysersam 2y ago
  Of course the protocol can change if a large majority of miners agree to the change. It's just a question about updating the source code. The fundamental appeal of bitcoin is the lack of ability to change the protocol without buy-in from a sufficient fraction of the community.
- wruza 2y ago
  What it really is is basically a consensus between participants. Once the consensus about a change gains critical mass, that change just happens, by someone coding it into the software and people updating to it. The change (fork) becomes mainstream and the old version becomes fringe. And vice versa, if consensus never achieved. There will be people who stay on old version anyway. It’s up to who believes in what, based on available software based on ideas that are worth new code.

kylebenzle 2y ago

Your being silly. Its an INTERNET currency for use on the INTERNET. I use it to pay for cloud storage, VPN and web hosting on the INTERNET.

genem9 2y ago

What? People buy food with bitcoin all the time …