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I agree that it's important that early adopters have an incentive to adopt early, no doubt, but given the current market, what's their incentive towards: saving
by overgard 14y ago
I agree that it's important that early adopters have an incentive to adopt early, no doubt, but given the current market, what's their incentive towards: saving or spending?
I imagine for a currency to work, the incentive has to be at least tilted a little towards spending. Economically, that's essentially why we have inflation -- the system can't reward people for just hoarding dollars, because that's essentially an economic no-op. If just holding currency was more profitable than investing it, than why would people bother to invest in the first place? I'm not an economic keynesian, but all the same, I don't think it's an accident that hiding a pile of money under your bed isn't going to net you new money in a functional system.
Right now owning a bitcoin is a lot more analogous to owning a stock than it is to owning a dollar. Which is to say it lacks liquidity.
A currency without liquidity isn't really a currency, it's just an asset. The whole point of having currency is the liquidity of it, and that liquidity generally comes from a somewhat stable valuation.
- BrokenPipe 14y agoYou have the incentive to spend. You need to live so you will use your fiat and bitcoin to buy for food, gas, electricity and things that you want. I know the bitcoin is going to be worth more, but I still spend it today just like I know that if I wait just a little bit the laptop will be cheaper and faster but I still buy it today when I need it.
- XorNot 14y agoIf the value of BitCoin increases quickly enough (i.e. you hold a sufficient initial amount) then the amount you spend on food, gas, electricity can be less then the rate of increase. This is literally getting something for nothing.