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Comment by _Microft | Hacker News Reader

This is exactly what I do not understand. How would a system with a fixed amount of coins work in real life, i.e. in a case like we currently have, when you just need to get money into people's hands so that they can pay their rent and do not starve?

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The answer is of course that the question does not apply, because printing "money" and giving it to people is not the one and only way to ensure people do not starve (don't get me wrong it is a way, but is probably the most detrimental in the long run because of all the unintended side effects, some of which we have already been witnessing)

If the goal is to not starve, the government could give, you know, actual edible food to people and not pieces of paper. (I am not suggesting this, it is just another possibility)

But to your more broader question, the fixed amount of bitcoins is only a problem if you intend to keep the system working as it has, but bitcoin advocates favor a new way (or the old gold-backed way) to look at the economy on which savings is the bedrock of it and not debt like we currently "enjoy".

With fiat currencies, money is basically an IOU from the central bank. So it is easy for them to give loans by "printing money", since a loan from the central bank is just as good as cash.

You could still layer a system like that on top of Bitcoin. However, you might have trouble getting people to accept your bitcoin IOUs as equivalent to real coins.

That said, why would you want that? Why not just use fiat currencies where they are appropriate, and leave Bitcoin for the use cases in which it's appropriate? It doesn't need to replace the whole economy to be useful as a technology.

That money has to come from somewhere, no matter which system you are using. Even if the government just prints it, there's still a cost.

People might ask the same question about gold, but after hundreds of years, it's still here as a scarce asset with speculative value.

And gold was awful money which is literally why we stopped using it as money. Trying to bring back a digital gold based money is just making new crap digital money.

The current fiat system has be around for about 50 years. Don't you think it is a little premature to compare it with 5000 years of monetary history and declare it a winner?

In any case, the fact that fiat money has not been able to prevent the business cycle from creating devastating crises would seem to imply otherwise.

The World Wide Web has only been around 30 years don’t you think it’s a little premature to compare it with 5000 years of carrier pigeons and horse drawn letter delivery? I for one remain unconvinced. Ooh my pigeon just arrived! I wonder what news she brings from the Capital! ;)

> don’t you think it’s a little premature to compare it with 5000 years of carrier pigeons and horse drawn letter delivery?

No. It is almost as if the two situations are not related.

I’m just saying the length of time it’s been around isn’t the sole determining factor of whether it’s demonstrated value, or of whether the system it replaced is better or worse. You have to evaluate that on its own merits, and yeah I do think 50 years is long enough to begin to draw some meaningful conclusions. Otherwise "50 years is too soon" seems like some arbitrary conclusion you've reached without a real basis?

Fiat money isn't new, in general the transition between hard money (gold/metal), paper money, and fiat is cyclical. The transition from fiat to hard isn't always pleasant.

Some nice graphs from Ray Dalio that show it plotted out for various currencies throughout history if you scroll down: https://www.principles.com/the-changing-world-order/#chapter...

People stopped using gold because of greed and power. They introduced a usurious system in order to collect wealth to a small group of people, resulting in the mess we're in today. Gold, silver, and commodities are the superior solution.

Well, there’s nothing stopping subdivision of a currency by any means available. Bad money drives out good as well, so in practice, people cash in bitcoin and pay with dollars in order to pay small fraction of what 1 bitcoin is worth. In theory, a “sub coin” could handle this but I guess it hasn’t been desired enough for anyone to bother specializing in it. All I am saying is theoretically there is no issue.

Oh and others mention subdividing bitcoin directly so there is that.

There's a fixed amount, but it can be divide to very tiny parts (1e-8 of a BTC).

So, there's a fixed amount, but in practice, there quite a lot of it (2.1e15 if I'm not too drunk).

That means nothing if the wealth distribution is somehow worse than that of US dollars, which it is, and there’s no mechanism to create new dollars to give to folks to even it out.

Non-sequitur olympics, here I come.

Nope you’re not understanding my point and that could easily be my bad.

That’s part of what inflation does. It allows the monetary system to react to shocks and changes like population growth and global pandemics. Deflation without creation of monetary units benefits the existing concentration of wealth as you and your children get to fight each other for scraps. These pieces are all connected. This system will lead to the existing moneyed class of coiners becoming more and more wealthy as a function of economic productivity forever.

>This system will lead to the existing moneyed class of coiners becoming more and more wealthy as a function of economic productivity forever.

This, along with depriving The Great State-an of a means to operate an effective revenue collection system, has been the real objective since the beginning. Decentralization has never been anything other than a mantra, a fig leaf to be casually dropped when no longer useful or credible. "Hyperbitcoinization" means never having to say you're sorry for selling a fraud to 'the masses'

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