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In the last 50 years, at what point has the US dollar swung... Bitcoin is only 4 years old. If you want to compare it to the US dollar then you should compare
by moe 14y ago
In the last 50 years, at what point has the US dollar swung...
Bitcoin is only 4 years old.
If you want to compare it to the US dollar then you should compare it to the dollar from 217 years ago, not the dollar from 50 years ago.
- tptacek 14y agoNo, the comparison doesn't happen in a vacuum. 4-year-old Bitcoin must compete with the 217-year-old dollar, not with economy of the times of the Articles of Confederation. I think I was being generous by supplying a 50 year window of comparison.
- moe 14y agoMakes no sense. At the least you'd have to compare today's dollar with bitcoin in 217 years (when both are mature - if they still exist). Since that's not possible dollar-comparisons are probably best avoided.
- tptacek 14y agoNo, Bitcoin is not an abstraction. People are trying to "use" it today.
- moe 14y agoAbstraction is the keyword here, I really don't agree with yours. Bitcoin and USD are not the same abstraction. USD is a currency and Bitcoin is an entire monetary system. One that's different enough that initial friction is entirely unsurprising. It has the potential to change how a core function of society works (money transactions). Much more so than e.g. the invention of the credit card, or electronic banking. Such a shift is quite obviously not happening within 4 years or anywhere close to it. At this point it's still a tiny experiment that may very well fail. But apple/orange comparisons don't do it justice. And since this all happens between consenting adults I'm sometimes a little confused by the negativity.
- gojomo 14y agoMost novel technologies (and social/legal-arrangements) start off much worse than the established alternatives. Risky, unfamiliar, sketchy, only of interest to niches. But then they get better.
- tptacek 14y agoAnd sometimes it's just people taking radium pills.