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Comment by Swenrekcah | Hacker News Reader

Yes it’s strange indeed.

But anyway, here you actually presented some arguments and explanations for why bitcoin can be useful.

Now, I don’t think bitcoin will actually end up anywhere useful in the end because it doesn’t really solve anything that fiat doesn’t (except perhaps for people in the illegal payments market) but we can disagree on that.

My point was about the previous argument, that there was inherent usefulness or value in bitcoin just because there are people speculating on it, that is fallacious.

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If Bitcoin, or something like it, can ever become the only monetary asset - this would probably be an amazing achievement for humanity.

This would mean much cheaper commodities(including gold and silver), much cheaper land, much cheaper housing, a lot fewer bubbles in the stock market. Much more healthy fiscal environment overall, with other stores of value "demonetized" and devoid of the monetary premium. A stretch goal for sure, but maybe can be eventually approached asymptotically on a longer time scale.

However, a pure monetary asset doesn't need to have any intrinsic value. It just needs to be a widely accepted store of value (and preferably, but not necessarily medium of exchange).

As such, it would seem that an entirely speculative asset would be one of the greatest achievements we will ever make.

Seems contradictory at first, but if you really think about it, I see nothing of fundamental importance that comes even close to it today. Especially today.

> This would mean much cheaper commodities(including gold and silver), much cheaper land, much cheaper housing, a lot fewer bubbles in the stock market. Much more healthy fiscal environment overall, with other stores of value "demonetized" and devoid of the monetary premium.

How would you suppose bitcoin or any other crypto would lead to this?

It’s a big IF, and something we probably won’t live long enough to witness even if it somehow works out.

If it becomes the global reserve currency, and remains accessible to everyone - the world would end up on a disinflationary Bitcoin standard.

In a disinflationary/deflationary environment the cost of borrowing/interest rates goes up, thus the leverage that is fueling asset inflation is removed. Blackrock doesn’t buy single family houses cash, they have access to the fed discount window.

During the gold standard we’ve had prices stable for hundreds of years in some examples, so at least we’ve seen that historically prices can be quite stable.

Today, land has become the primary saving vehicle and that’s less than ideal.

Personally I’d love to see land demonetized as an asset via Georgist taxes.

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