[clock_tower]

That's true, but non-volatility counts for something there. Money classically has three roles, as a medium of exchange, a measure of value, and a store of value; when something's value fluctuates dramatically over time, it's failing to fulfill the second and third roles. Measure of value is unimportant for day-to-day use (although vital for accounting), but store of value is indispensable.

I'm guessing that we're secretly talking about Bitcoin here; I think that what BTC needs is some organization that controls a lot of capital, and is willing to underwrite the value of the bitcoin. Fiat currencies work to the extent that their issuing countries can underwrite their value (by accepting the currency in payment of debts, primarily); precious metals work to the extent that there's non-monetary demand for them (so gold isn't actually very valuable in an apocalypse -- look at prices in the Siege of Sarajevo, discussed in a survivalist blog a few years back). Bitcoin doesn't really have either of these. It's a sort of fiscal hot potato -- good for exchange, certainly, but you wouldn't want to be the last person with all the world's bitcoin if everyone else lost interest in it.

[ekianjo]

Fiat currencies can also suffer from hyperinflation so the second and third problems are not unique to BTC at all.

[notahacker]

Sure, but avoiding hyperinflation is Monetary Policy 101. Most currencies in developed countries have never experienced a hyperinflation and never will because money is created via the fractional reserve banking system as credit for which there is a definite future demand for repayment and taxes denominated in that currency create additional future demand[1]. People are prepared to accept currency because they have future debts and expected future debts denominated in it, and that confidence is boosted because whenever the central bank sees price rises above the level it's prepared to tolerate it steps in to adjust the supply.

The BTC mechanism for attempting price stability on the other hand does the opposite: the supply is designed to grow very steadily, but with no reason whatsoever to believe a stable and sustainable demand for that particular cryptocurrency exists in future.

[1]Hyperinflations occur when the supply of money grows steadily without even bigger growth in future demand obligations, which in practice invariably happens because the government has resorted to printing it to discharge debts and release people from future tax obligations. This actually looks more like a Bitcoin economy (albeit with more potential for the money supply to grow really, really quickly) in that what the government is doing is decoupling supply from demand.

[clock_tower]

On avoiding hyperinflation, it's certainly true that we know how to do it. For the infamous Weimar hyperinflation, I'd refer you to Adam Fergusson's When Money Dies; what drove the hyperinflation was two things, that the government was unwilling to control its spending (it risked France annexing the Saarland), and that the head of the national bank was poorly educated. When Schacht was brought in, in 1923 (10 years before Hitler; Schacht has a reputation as Hitler's banker, but had never heard of Hitler in '23), he was able to stabilize things pretty quickly: Britain had intervened to rule out a French annexation of the Saarland, and Schacht was more with-it on monetary theory than his predecessor had been.

The risk of Wiemar-like circumstances striking again in the West are basically zero, unless a Wiemar-like perfect storm of defeat and ignorance strikes again; and even then, hyperinflation never lasts long (no one can live under it for long). One woman weathered the Wiemar hyperinflation by selling one link of a gold Rosary chain a day to buy food; a quite modest amount of precious metal is enough to outlast this sort of disaster.

[ekianjo]

> hyperinflation never lasts long

How about Venezuela then ?