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Comment by randomhodler84 | Hacker News Reader

I feel like you live in an imaginary world where the data doesn’t fit reality:

Fiat is going to ZERO. All fiat currencies. I’d you fail to see the utility now at year 13, I hope you will not let another 13y pass.

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Zero what? Zero purchasing power? No, it is not.

Talk to any 70 year old, they'll say $100 was a lot of money in those days. At 7 pct inflation your pp will get cut in half in 10 years, but im being pedantic since this is obvious to everyone.

With BTC your purchasing power can get cut in half overnight

So what? That is, like I said, 100% by design. In order for currency to be useful as a currency, it should inflate gradually. We're slightly high right now and were even higher for a while 40 years ago, but in neither case has the system broken. Sellers and employers know what to expect and how to pace prices and wages in a sensible way to keep pace. When the system starts to buckle, policy makers have mechanisms to fix it and they have. Bitcoin fluctuates wildly and its price is 100% speculative. It is neither backed by commodities (ie gold standard), by promise of dividend, by equity, nor by the "full faith and credit" of a nation. It's pure supply and demand where supply is arbitrary and demand is 100% elastic and could drop to zero at any time for any reason. Consider the recent pandemic where GDP contracted at an apocalyptic rate for a few quarters and yet policy makers were able to bail out both employers and workers with the help of massive fiat monetary assistance. Poverty actually decreased in the US during the pandemic.

What would that 70 year old say if they bought a house 10 years ago for 400 BTC and solid it today for 5? On the flip side, someone working for BTC 10 years ago might have expected a salary 50 BTC a year and someone being hired today might be 1 BTC a year. Is that a better situation? While the price per coin skyrockets, the only sensible position is to hoard it and never spend or invest anything. That would be a disaster.

QE creates inequality via asset bubble inflation (those without assets are on the losing end), there's a housing crisis because housing (and now commodities) is used as a store-of-value. The Petro-dollar system is not ESG friendly and it is coming to and end: China is no longer buying treasuries, Saudi is willing to price oil in Yuan, and the West is seizing Russian reserves. Your faith in the dollar system seems unphased by macro events. When the price of coins skyrockets, its better to hold, but people still need to live, so they still spend money.

QE prevents deflation. Asset bubbles, college costs, housing supply are all well outside the ability of any central bank to affect. And 2007 gold bugs want their talking points back. We very obviously don't need any other country to buy our treasuries and yet they trip over themselves to do so. Nor do we care how oil is priced. Those are barely valid criticisms of USD but USD isn't the only fiat that's been extremely resilient to disruption. EUR, GBP, CHF are all stable through a series of disasters. What do honestly think would have happened if BTC was the standard currency for the last 15 years? We'd be on the barter system by now.

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