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Comment by thkim | Hacker News Reader

i am saying that when bitcoin value takes a hit by some global event, and people panic to sell, there is nothing that will stop the value from gyrating to zero. what are you talking about? what does charging interest or reserve have anything to do with this? you make no sense.

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You know that's totally, completely different from a bank run, right?

Central banks have very little influence on the value of their currency once people lose faith in it, people will buy anything instead of holding on to their (usually rapidly devaluing) currency.

One thing every holder of bitcoin knows is it will never suffer through hyperinflation, ever.

central bank scheme is not perfect. however central bank has proven to be very effective at providing stability to currency. bitcoin's scheme is vastly inferior. protection from hyperinflation is not a great benefit compared to unstable currency value bitcoin is designed to suffer. also hyperinflation doesn't occur unless the government is essentially defunct. I'm sure people would just switch to some other reputable currency before it happens.

There's at least one thing to stop them: fundamentals and speculation. People buy back in (in part) because Bitcoin is designed to strengthen itself (not price, I'm mainly referring to incentives to mine and to steward). (And it's not equivalent to the shitcoins that it spawned so the assumption it it's not special is invalid.) That makes Bitcoin a completely different asset to model than a fiat currency. If there's one difference, there are probably more. And there certainly are.

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