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by clarkmoody
3213 days ago
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Each type of currency has advantages on different dimensions. I disagree that fiat is better is every way except for decentralization. Fiat money is great as a medium of exchange in your local jurisdiction. Start moving across borders and you have problems. Save long-term in your bank account, and inflation will eat its value away. Have political or religious views that run counter to an oppressive regime, and you will find your accounts seized or frozen. Live through a war or serious economic downturn, and you may find that all your previous cash and savings are completely worthless. Bitcoin doesn't have take-backs if you mess up: a bit of lax security and a hacker can get all your money. Insufficient backup solution also loses all your coins. Using on-chain transactions for daily point-of-sale purchases is slow due to the block times. Speculative pressures drive wild swings in prices due to illiquid markets for crypto. There are plenty of reasons to avoid each type of currency, and each has its own advantages. |
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You have similar problems with bitcoin except they manifest themselves in a different part of the process, namely when you have to convert the transferred funds into local currency in order to use it for goods and service. Trying to coordinate in-person meet ups to exchange bitcoin for spendable money is inconvenient, unsafe and comes with a high markup, it's also a non-starter if you have to transfer the funds to a region with limited electricity/internet access or you're dealing with a non-technical recipient.
> Save long-term in your bank account, and inflation will eat its value away.
Bitcoin does not solve this "problem". The logic behind inflationary economic incentives aside, there is no guarantee that bitcoin's price will continue to rise, it could easily crash to half price tomorrow and recent history shows us that nobody really knows what events cause the price to swing wildly.
> Have political or religious views that run counter to an oppressive regime
As I said, not being operated by a central authority is one of the only benefits of bitcoin, however, in the case of an oppressive regime, bitcoin's usefulness begins to approach 0 since the oppressive regime could eliminate your ability to access the internet or they could just imprison or kill you.