5 ms·

Krugman on Bitcoin's problems with deflation (2011)

23 points by codex 13y ago

codex 13y ago
TL;DR Bitcoin mimicks the gold standard, so you'll see the problems with the gold standard play out all over again.
- msandford 13y ago
  If by the gold standard you mean the one that millions of people all over the world voluntarily chose over the course of thousands of years? Well, at least until it was co-opted by fiat currencies in many countries. I'd rather have the problems that come with a free currency than those that come with a fiat one.
  - JPKab 13y ago
    Can you eat gold? No. Can you make anything useful with it, other than some component in electronics? No. Gold was only valuable because it didn't corrode, and was scarce in the ancient world, therefore making it an ideal medium of exchange in an environment of weak central governments and zero ability to stop counterfeiters. If a zombie apocalypse happened today, and somebody tried to buy food or weapons from me with gold, I'd tell them off. Gold has ZERO inherent value. When you understand that the purpose of a currency is simply to facilitate exchange of goods and services as efficiently as possible, you reach a conclusion that a gold standard is stupid, because it prevents governments from increasing quantity in times where hoarding is occurring.
    - msandford 13y ago
      Can you eat dollars? Can you make anything useful with them, other than small fires or cocaine straws? If there was a zombie apocalypse today and somebody tried to buy food or weapons from me with dollars, I'd tell them off. Dollars have ZERO inherent value. When you understand that the purposes (PLURAL) for a currency are (according to wikipedia and many other places) a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value; you'll reach the conclusion that the dollar standard is stupid because it cannot be a store of value so long as there is a printing press. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money
      - msbarnett 13y ago
        > Can you eat dollars? Can you make anything useful with them, other than small fires or cocaine straws? If there was a zombie apocalypse today and somebody tried to buy food or weapons from me with dollars, I'd tell them off. Dollars have ZERO inherent value. Yes, precisely. Gold is just another kind of 'fiat' currency. You're catching on. Given the choice between two kinds of arbitrary, intrinsically valueless currency, I'll take the one whose supply we have far more control over.
        deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
        throwaway420 13y ago
        > Given the choice between two kinds of arbitrary, intrinsically valueless currency, I'll take the one whose supply we have far more control over. * Who is this "we" you are referring to? You seem to be implying that the people have some control over the currency when the reality is that the Federal Reserve and in fact all centralized currencies are incredibly corrupt and machined and manipulated for very powerful people. When interest rates are manipulated or certain banks get access to loans and getting money and bailouts through these central banks, that's so obviously not for the people. Gold can't be manipulated in this way, but paper can. That's why the government loves its paper. It can pay for wars and anything it wants through inflation instead of raising taxes. But the end result of wealth getting sucked out of peoples' hands is the same. * For the record, everything is intrinsically and inherently valueless. You can't use a microscope to examine any type of object and find a tiny particle called "value". All value people place on everything in an economy is subjective in nature, whether its gold or paper or corn or milk or iron or wood. Your argument here for gold being valueless doesn't make a point because that's inherent in anything and everything. * That being said, gold has successfully been used as a currency throughout the planet's history. It was accepted worldwide with no barriers to its ability to trade throughout countries. * The argument that people make against gold being suitable as a currency because of its lack of stability compared to paper is unbelievably laughable. What type of event is more likely: gold somehow losing its application in all kinds of industries/mass quantities of gold being suddenly discovered that alters its fundamental market value (events never before seen in human history) or somehow corrupt politicians and powerful people that manage these paper currencies manipulating the currency for their own benefit? * That being said, regarding this larger argument about Bitcoin, these coins lack any practical value as far as I can see outside of perhaps anonymity. I say perhaps because Bitcoin isn't actually an anonymous currency, but all transactions can ultimately be traced in some fashion. So it remains to be seen if this will work as a currency long-term.
    - tsotha 13y ago
      >Can you make anything useful with it, other than some component in electronics? Yes, you can. Gold has uses in dentistry and aerospace as well. For example, a space suit has a really thin layer of gold foil to keep out (some kinds of) radiation. Also, there's a reason jewelers like to use gold. It's very malleable, so it's easier to make intricate designs. Yeah, that property won't help much in the zombie apocalypse, but in the real world there will always be some amount of demand for gold in jewelry (plus jewelry-like products such as guns with gold inlay). While it's true 90% of the gold that gets mined goes straight into a vault somewhere it has far more intrinsic value than any fiat currency.
    - smrtinsert 13y ago
      It's amazing how consistently the defense of gold is "because we used to". Autocracy and theocracy served humanity so long also, why do we need this democracy thing?
    - astine 13y ago
      "because it prevents governments from increasing quantity in times where hoarding is occurring." As opposed to a currency which allows a government to deliberately and invisibly transfer wealth from the poorest to the richest in society? With hoarding you can switch to silver or copper. With the current system you have to put up with the decisions of an unaccountable class of people who can manipulate the currency for their own personal gain without repercussion. It's as if the government was trying to solve the problem of hoarding by printing more money and giving the money to the hoarders.
      - danielweber 13y ago
        Inflation doesn't transfer wealth from the poorest, for normal-world version of "poorest." They have debt, not piles of cash hidden in their mattresses, and inflation reduces the amounts of those debts. Inflation is a bugger for someone who wants to hide dollars in their mattress and have them be worth the same in 30 years.
        astine 13y ago
        "and inflation reduces the amounts of those debts." Only if inflation is at a higher rate than than the interest on the debt. Which is rarely the case. Bank loans are constructed so that the bank makes money and that couldn't happen if they loaned money at a lower rate than inflation allowed. If you want to escape inflation, you put your money in a savings account and hope that the interest rate is properly matched to the inflation rate (they're commonly indexed to inflation.) This is less feasible for poorer people who don't have enough money to take out bank accounts and who necessarily have a higher percentage of their money in cash.
        msandford 13y ago
        The newly minted money is given to: the banks. Who benefits from that new money? The banks! Who benefits from the banks benefiting? The rich! The poor have to pay higher prices and see their raises lag the increased prices. The poor get poorer while the rich get richer. Once your income substantially outstrips your daily need for food, water, shelter, etc inflation hurts you less as you are able to invest. The poor are always behind and thus pay the most for inflation.
  - codex 13y ago
    Kind of like human sacrifice, rain dancing, the application of leeches to cure disease, etc? Yes, truly the ancients knew best.
- waterlesscloud 13y ago
  But only if it's the sole/main currency. Otherwise it becomes like gold is today, only a bit easier to move money in/out of it. That's always been the main flaw in the "deflationary" theory, it depends on some absolutes that wouldn't exist in the real world.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > But only if it's the sole/main currency. Otherwise it becomes like gold is today, only a bit easier to move money in/out of it. That's always been the main flaw in the "deflationary" theory, it depends on some absolutes that wouldn't exist in the real world. The deflation argument is usually an argument against the proposal that Bitcoin ought to become a major currency and that it should displace traditional sovereign currencies. So, no, its not a problem with that argument that it relies on assumption of a dominant-currency role for Bitcoin. Its probably true that such a role won't ever happen, in no small part because there are enough people with enough economic power that understand the problem to prevent it from happening, but that doesn't make the argument is invalid as to why it shouldn't happen.
- danielweber 13y ago
  At least the gold supply tended to increase over time, and (by luck) tended to increase by the size of the overall economy. With Bitcoins having a finite supply, it's guaranteed deflation. The early adopters love it for that, but there's no reason for anyone else to hop on board.
msandford 13y ago
Deflationary, sure. But where are the problems? More people are CHOOSING to conduct transactions in bitcoin. If we can tolerate 2-8% inflation yearly surely we could tolerate that much deflation.
- NegativeK 13y ago
  > surely we could tolerate that much deflation. This does not follow.
  - msandford 13y ago
    You say it does not, I say it does. If an economy can handle fluctuation in the value of money in one direction surely it could do so the other way too. In fact, this is precisely what has happened over thousands of years. The constant loss of value of money without limit is a relatively recent invention. In centuries past prices would go up, then back down, then back up, then back down and so on. If our unsophisticated, foolish and stupid ancestors could handle such fluctuations certainly the enlightened and modern people of today could as well. EDIT: Here's a graph of inflation vs deflation in the US over a few hundred years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Major_deflations_in_the_US http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Major_deflations_in_t...
    - codex 13y ago
      Before the modern era, economies were quite fragile, falling into crisis frequently and severely (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Unemployment_1800-1890.gif http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Unemployment_1800-1890....). The one saving grace was that in those times most people were farmers, and thus were self-employed (and could at least eat).
      - msandford 13y ago
        In my lifetime the economy has been quite fragile too. I'm not convinced that the booms and bust of old are any worse than they are today. Sure these days they're smoothed out more but the pain lasts longer. When removing a bandaid do you simply rip it off all at once or slowly peel it back? Which is the superior method?
RandyH 13y ago
Is there any way to measure the "Gross Bitcoin Product"? Krugman mentions that as of that writing (2011) the GBP was falling. Is that still the case?
- peterjancelis 13y ago
  http://blockchain.info/charts http://blockchain.info/charts
nhashem 13y ago
The whole point of having a country with a central bank that can print money at will (fiat currency), is to have full control over inflation/deflation. When the increase/decrease of the monetary supply is controlled by outside factors, whether it's tied to shiny yellow rocks, or computed bits, or another country's currency, then you run into problems like this: - Bank runs. It's standard practice that banks will loan out more money than they have in deposits, because it's unlikely that all their loans will go bad at once, and/or it's unlikely that all their deposits will want their money back at once (this is known as fractional reserve banking[0]). But if your currency is anchored to something fixed, this can happen. FDIC insurance is guaranteed in the US because even in some absurd financial economic meltdown scenario, Ben Bernanke can print out USDs to make every depositor whole, if necessary. The only "cost" to that kind of "bailout" is the potential inflation. But you can't do this as a government if your monetary supply is limited because it's fixed to something you can't directly control. The government can borrow money and then make depositors whole, but those that you borrow money from may impose conditions, and those conditions may exacerbate the problem you're trying to solve. See: Cyprus[1]. - The deflation-debt spiral[2]. Yes, inflation "punishes savings," but deflation punishes debt. Generally, debt becomes a big problem in recessions. If you owe $20,000 on your car, and you get a 20% wage cut because your company can only sell goods at 20% of the price they were previously able to, your debt does not go down to $16,000. It's still $20,000. So more of your income will go to paying off debt, which means less of it will go to discretionary spending, which means even more economic slowdown, which means more deflation, which means more wage cuts, which means debt becomes an even bigger burden, etc. The only real danger to a fiat currency is whether your government's central bank will be so irresponsible with the money supply that inflation spirals out of control. If you're a resident of a third-world country like Zimbabwe[3], transacting in bitcoins will be great because you'll happily trade potential deflationary pain for not being at the whim of a dictator that will print money to increase inflation to one thousand trillion bazillion percent. But if you're the resident of a first-world country which has a responsible central bank, then increasing the monetary supply to fight off deflation is a very good thing. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_reserve_banking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_reserve_banking [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/why-the-euro-is-doomed-in-4-steps/274470/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/why-the-... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_deflation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_deflation [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe
chrisdevereux 13y ago
Someone who knows more about this stuff than me: would it be possible to create a crypto-currency that avoids the problems existing currencies have with (inf|def)lation? I'm thinking of a system like bitcoin that also acts like a central banker in regulating the money supply, perhaps by linking the availability of new coins to the current supply/demand.
- danielweber 13y ago
  Yes, and from what I understand some people have made Bitcoin competitors that tend to grow. They haven't taken off, because 1) we already have a crypto-currency, and 2) they don't have the "get rich quick with this new currency" because they aren't deflationary so they don't attract the speculators. Some people will say "we need the speculators in order to start the market," but the speculators have ruined the ability to use Bitcoin as a currency. Just because the light is better over there instead of here where you lost your keys doesn't mean you should look over there.

23 points by codex 13y ago

codex 13y ago

TL;DR Bitcoin mimicks the gold standard, so you'll see the problems with the gold standard play out all over again.

msandford 13y ago
If by the gold standard you mean the one that millions of people all over the world voluntarily chose over the course of thousands of years? Well, at least until it was co-opted by fiat currencies in many countries. I'd rather have the problems that come with a free currency than those that come with a fiat one.
- JPKab 13y ago
  Can you eat gold? No. Can you make anything useful with it, other than some component in electronics? No. Gold was only valuable because it didn't corrode, and was scarce in the ancient world, therefore making it an ideal medium of exchange in an environment of weak central governments and zero ability to stop counterfeiters. If a zombie apocalypse happened today, and somebody tried to buy food or weapons from me with gold, I'd tell them off. Gold has ZERO inherent value. When you understand that the purpose of a currency is simply to facilitate exchange of goods and services as efficiently as possible, you reach a conclusion that a gold standard is stupid, because it prevents governments from increasing quantity in times where hoarding is occurring.
  - msandford 13y ago
    Can you eat dollars? Can you make anything useful with them, other than small fires or cocaine straws? If there was a zombie apocalypse today and somebody tried to buy food or weapons from me with dollars, I'd tell them off. Dollars have ZERO inherent value. When you understand that the purposes (PLURAL) for a currency are (according to wikipedia and many other places) a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value; you'll reach the conclusion that the dollar standard is stupid because it cannot be a store of value so long as there is a printing press. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money
    - msbarnett 13y ago
      > Can you eat dollars? Can you make anything useful with them, other than small fires or cocaine straws? If there was a zombie apocalypse today and somebody tried to buy food or weapons from me with dollars, I'd tell them off. Dollars have ZERO inherent value. Yes, precisely. Gold is just another kind of 'fiat' currency. You're catching on. Given the choice between two kinds of arbitrary, intrinsically valueless currency, I'll take the one whose supply we have far more control over.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
      - throwaway420 13y ago
        > Given the choice between two kinds of arbitrary, intrinsically valueless currency, I'll take the one whose supply we have far more control over. * Who is this "we" you are referring to? You seem to be implying that the people have some control over the currency when the reality is that the Federal Reserve and in fact all centralized currencies are incredibly corrupt and machined and manipulated for very powerful people. When interest rates are manipulated or certain banks get access to loans and getting money and bailouts through these central banks, that's so obviously not for the people. Gold can't be manipulated in this way, but paper can. That's why the government loves its paper. It can pay for wars and anything it wants through inflation instead of raising taxes. But the end result of wealth getting sucked out of peoples' hands is the same. * For the record, everything is intrinsically and inherently valueless. You can't use a microscope to examine any type of object and find a tiny particle called "value". All value people place on everything in an economy is subjective in nature, whether its gold or paper or corn or milk or iron or wood. Your argument here for gold being valueless doesn't make a point because that's inherent in anything and everything. * That being said, gold has successfully been used as a currency throughout the planet's history. It was accepted worldwide with no barriers to its ability to trade throughout countries. * The argument that people make against gold being suitable as a currency because of its lack of stability compared to paper is unbelievably laughable. What type of event is more likely: gold somehow losing its application in all kinds of industries/mass quantities of gold being suddenly discovered that alters its fundamental market value (events never before seen in human history) or somehow corrupt politicians and powerful people that manage these paper currencies manipulating the currency for their own benefit? * That being said, regarding this larger argument about Bitcoin, these coins lack any practical value as far as I can see outside of perhaps anonymity. I say perhaps because Bitcoin isn't actually an anonymous currency, but all transactions can ultimately be traced in some fashion. So it remains to be seen if this will work as a currency long-term.
  - tsotha 13y ago
    >Can you make anything useful with it, other than some component in electronics? Yes, you can. Gold has uses in dentistry and aerospace as well. For example, a space suit has a really thin layer of gold foil to keep out (some kinds of) radiation. Also, there's a reason jewelers like to use gold. It's very malleable, so it's easier to make intricate designs. Yeah, that property won't help much in the zombie apocalypse, but in the real world there will always be some amount of demand for gold in jewelry (plus jewelry-like products such as guns with gold inlay). While it's true 90% of the gold that gets mined goes straight into a vault somewhere it has far more intrinsic value than any fiat currency.
  - smrtinsert 13y ago
    It's amazing how consistently the defense of gold is "because we used to". Autocracy and theocracy served humanity so long also, why do we need this democracy thing?
  - astine 13y ago
    "because it prevents governments from increasing quantity in times where hoarding is occurring." As opposed to a currency which allows a government to deliberately and invisibly transfer wealth from the poorest to the richest in society? With hoarding you can switch to silver or copper. With the current system you have to put up with the decisions of an unaccountable class of people who can manipulate the currency for their own personal gain without repercussion. It's as if the government was trying to solve the problem of hoarding by printing more money and giving the money to the hoarders.
    - danielweber 13y ago
      Inflation doesn't transfer wealth from the poorest, for normal-world version of "poorest." They have debt, not piles of cash hidden in their mattresses, and inflation reduces the amounts of those debts. Inflation is a bugger for someone who wants to hide dollars in their mattress and have them be worth the same in 30 years.
      - astine 13y ago
        "and inflation reduces the amounts of those debts." Only if inflation is at a higher rate than than the interest on the debt. Which is rarely the case. Bank loans are constructed so that the bank makes money and that couldn't happen if they loaned money at a lower rate than inflation allowed. If you want to escape inflation, you put your money in a savings account and hope that the interest rate is properly matched to the inflation rate (they're commonly indexed to inflation.) This is less feasible for poorer people who don't have enough money to take out bank accounts and who necessarily have a higher percentage of their money in cash.
      - msandford 13y ago
        The newly minted money is given to: the banks. Who benefits from that new money? The banks! Who benefits from the banks benefiting? The rich! The poor have to pay higher prices and see their raises lag the increased prices. The poor get poorer while the rich get richer. Once your income substantially outstrips your daily need for food, water, shelter, etc inflation hurts you less as you are able to invest. The poor are always behind and thus pay the most for inflation.
- codex 13y ago
  Kind of like human sacrifice, rain dancing, the application of leeches to cure disease, etc? Yes, truly the ancients knew best.
waterlesscloud 13y ago
But only if it's the sole/main currency. Otherwise it becomes like gold is today, only a bit easier to move money in/out of it. That's always been the main flaw in the "deflationary" theory, it depends on some absolutes that wouldn't exist in the real world.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > But only if it's the sole/main currency. Otherwise it becomes like gold is today, only a bit easier to move money in/out of it. That's always been the main flaw in the "deflationary" theory, it depends on some absolutes that wouldn't exist in the real world. The deflation argument is usually an argument against the proposal that Bitcoin ought to become a major currency and that it should displace traditional sovereign currencies. So, no, its not a problem with that argument that it relies on assumption of a dominant-currency role for Bitcoin. Its probably true that such a role won't ever happen, in no small part because there are enough people with enough economic power that understand the problem to prevent it from happening, but that doesn't make the argument is invalid as to why it shouldn't happen.
danielweber 13y ago
At least the gold supply tended to increase over time, and (by luck) tended to increase by the size of the overall economy. With Bitcoins having a finite supply, it's guaranteed deflation. The early adopters love it for that, but there's no reason for anyone else to hop on board.

msandford 13y ago

Deflationary, sure. But where are the problems? More people are CHOOSING to conduct transactions in bitcoin. If we can tolerate 2-8% inflation yearly surely we could tolerate that much deflation.

NegativeK 13y ago
> surely we could tolerate that much deflation. This does not follow.
- msandford 13y ago
  You say it does not, I say it does. If an economy can handle fluctuation in the value of money in one direction surely it could do so the other way too. In fact, this is precisely what has happened over thousands of years. The constant loss of value of money without limit is a relatively recent invention. In centuries past prices would go up, then back down, then back up, then back down and so on. If our unsophisticated, foolish and stupid ancestors could handle such fluctuations certainly the enlightened and modern people of today could as well. EDIT: Here's a graph of inflation vs deflation in the US over a few hundred years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Major_deflations_in_the_US http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Major_deflations_in_t...
  - codex 13y ago
    Before the modern era, economies were quite fragile, falling into crisis frequently and severely (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Unemployment_1800-1890.gif http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Unemployment_1800-1890....). The one saving grace was that in those times most people were farmers, and thus were self-employed (and could at least eat).
    - msandford 13y ago
      In my lifetime the economy has been quite fragile too. I'm not convinced that the booms and bust of old are any worse than they are today. Sure these days they're smoothed out more but the pain lasts longer. When removing a bandaid do you simply rip it off all at once or slowly peel it back? Which is the superior method?

RandyH 13y ago

Is there any way to measure the "Gross Bitcoin Product"? Krugman mentions that as of that writing (2011) the GBP was falling. Is that still the case?

peterjancelis 13y ago
http://blockchain.info/charts http://blockchain.info/charts

nhashem 13y ago

The whole point of having a country with a central bank that can print money at will (fiat currency), is to have full control over inflation/deflation. When the increase/decrease of the monetary supply is controlled by outside factors, whether it's tied to shiny yellow rocks, or computed bits, or another country's currency, then you run into problems like this: - Bank runs. It's standard practice that banks will loan out more money than they have in deposits, because it's unlikely that all their loans will go bad at once, and/or it's unlikely that all their deposits will want their money back at once (this is known as fractional reserve banking[0]). But if your currency is anchored to something fixed, this can happen. FDIC insurance is guaranteed in the US because even in some absurd financial economic meltdown scenario, Ben Bernanke can print out USDs to make every depositor whole, if necessary. The only "cost" to that kind of "bailout" is the potential inflation. But you can't do this as a government if your monetary supply is limited because it's fixed to something you can't directly control. The government can borrow money and then make depositors whole, but those that you borrow money from may impose conditions, and those conditions may exacerbate the problem you're trying to solve. See: Cyprus[1]. - The deflation-debt spiral[2]. Yes, inflation "punishes savings," but deflation punishes debt. Generally, debt becomes a big problem in recessions. If you owe $20,000 on your car, and you get a 20% wage cut because your company can only sell goods at 20% of the price they were previously able to, your debt does not go down to $16,000. It's still $20,000. So more of your income will go to paying off debt, which means less of it will go to discretionary spending, which means even more economic slowdown, which means more deflation, which means more wage cuts, which means debt becomes an even bigger burden, etc. The only real danger to a fiat currency is whether your government's central bank will be so irresponsible with the money supply that inflation spirals out of control. If you're a resident of a third-world country like Zimbabwe[3], transacting in bitcoins will be great because you'll happily trade potential deflationary pain for not being at the whim of a dictator that will print money to increase inflation to one thousand trillion bazillion percent. But if you're the resident of a first-world country which has a responsible central bank, then increasing the monetary supply to fight off deflation is a very good thing. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_reserve_banking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_reserve_banking [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/why-the-euro-is-doomed-in-4-steps/274470/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/why-the-... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_deflation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_deflation [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe

chrisdevereux 13y ago

Someone who knows more about this stuff than me: would it be possible to create a crypto-currency that avoids the problems existing currencies have with (inf|def)lation? I'm thinking of a system like bitcoin that also acts like a central banker in regulating the money supply, perhaps by linking the availability of new coins to the current supply/demand.

danielweber 13y ago
Yes, and from what I understand some people have made Bitcoin competitors that tend to grow. They haven't taken off, because 1) we already have a crypto-currency, and 2) they don't have the "get rich quick with this new currency" because they aren't deflationary so they don't attract the speculators. Some people will say "we need the speculators in order to start the market," but the speculators have ruined the ability to use Bitcoin as a currency. Just because the light is better over there instead of here where you lost your keys doesn't mean you should look over there.