[AElsinore77]

Think of it as a high-risk hedge against future hyperinflation - the Fed can expand the monetary supply arbitrarily to infinity; but Bitcoin's expansion is limited by design.

I think of money as simply a distribution mechanism for the world's resources - a unit of currency can be thought of like a share; a right to allocate a portion of resources represented by that share. With the dollar, you can be diluted to infinity, with bitcoin, you cannot. With any fiat, it only has value because everyone else says it does. ETH is interesting because it is more than just currency, but it remains to be seen how valuable the ability to run decentralized apps will become.

[albertgoeswoof]

> Think of it as a high-risk hedge against future hyperinflation - the Fed can expand the monetary supply arbitrarily to infinity; but Bitcoin's expansion is limited by design.

That's true of bitcoin, but not bitcoin forks. You can just fork the chain and there's your dilution / inflation e.g. Ethereum classic, Bitcoin Cash, both of those are taking value away from the Bitcoin and deflating the currency futher.

[AElsinore77]

This is a very interesting point. One distinction I'm getting hung up on is that this dilution is in the form of a different currency (Ethereum classic, Bitcoin Cash), not in Bitcoin itself. So the "dilution/inflation" effect comes in the form of competing currencies. In these events, do you have a sense of what mechanisms might affect whether the new currencies gain traction?