[BoorishBears]

And some people moved their savings into cryptocurrencies half a year ago and it's been orders of magnitude worse than the silly 1-2%.

Kind of like advising putting your savings in naked options plays because it worked for you that one time.

[bufferoverflow]

The difference is, inflationary currency is guaranteed to lose value over long term. One-year fluctuations are not very important to me, this is short-term thinking.

That's why even now I buy as much cryptocurrency as I can.

[dragonwriter]

> The difference is, inflationary currency is guaranteed to lose value over long term. One-year fluctuations are not very important to me, this is short-term thinking.

The whole point of currency is short-term; it's the virtual particle of the economy intended to lubricate the flow of useful goods without incentivizing hoarding of itself over investment in productive assets.

[bufferoverflow]

> The whole point of currency is short-term

Not if you're saving for retirement or your kid's college fund.

We never had any deflationary currencies till recently. Now we have a choice.

If you want to quickly spend your money, go right ahead, nobody is stopping you.

I prefer to spend for what I need, and save the rest, and it's been working great so far. That's what most financial advisers advise anyway - live within your means, and create a financial cushion.

[dragonwriter]

> > The whole point of currency is short-term

> Not if you're saving for retirement or your kid's college fund.

No, even there: it's to be the short-term stable thing you trade other stuff (for most people, labor) for and then use to buy the productive asset you invest for those purpose. It's an important part of the process, just not the final vehicle.

It is very much not for direct use as the final vehicle for those purposes itself, because the attributes which make something good as a long-term investment are very different than those that make it good as currency. (Savings accounts, which still are only good for fairly short-term reserves and not the purposes you lay out, aren't the same as raw currency.)

[BoorishBears]

>One-year fluctuations are not very important to me, this is short-term thinking.

Very easy to say this when 6 month fluctuations haven't wiped out your savings.

People with this same thinking got in 6 months ago and have lost more than 50% of their savings.

When this happens during a recession it's everyone, the government is working to fix it, the world literally grinds to a halt and tries to dig out of it.

When this happens in BTC it's a "yearly occurrence" and "don't worry just HODL".

[bufferoverflow]

> People with this same thinking got in 6 months ago and have lost more than 50% of their savings.

Well, nobody guarantees growth, especially short term.

But 50% loss after a 1000% growth is still better for many people experiencing hyperinflation. Bolivar lost more than 90% of its value in the last 6 months [1].

And hey, if you prefer dollars or euros, all the power to you, use them. But I won't, cause I know it's designed to lose value.

[1]: https://i2.wp.com/cdn.investinblockchain.com/wp-content/uplo...

[BoorishBears]

>Well, nobody guarantees growth, especially short term.

But you're focused on long term remember? Long term, the government is the closest anyone can come to guaranteeing growth. If the government can't grow the economy long term, way more is going wrong than just currency, soon enough it won't matter if your money is in beanie babies or BTC, there's going to be a lot of gnashing of teeth.

>But 50% loss after a 1000% growth is still better for many people experiencing hyperinflation. Bolivar lost more than 90% of its value in the last 6 months [1].

Perfect example, who cares if you have all the BTC in the world if you're in a country where there's not even food to buy? So you figured it out and hoarded BTC, did the shopkeeper? Let's even say they did, well did the power company take BTC? Did the power company's stakeholders and employees take BTC? Did those people's bill collectors take BTC?

Because if not, you don't have food, and that's that.

Long term growth of the economy is literally one of the things countries are built on, if it doesn't happen and hyperinflation takes a hold and the currency is down 90% in 6 months, having 10 years of BTC saved up is going to do much.

The people who were rich enough to have a sizable horde of Bolivar could easily transfer it out of the country at the start of hyperinflation, everyone else is SOL. Same with BTC, if you have enough to leave you leave, if you didn't have enough to leave maybe you're even worse off when the power goes out and the mobile networks start flaking and you don't even have loose leaf which could maybe be traded in one day for a valuable currency.

Inflationary currency is designed to "lose value" as the entire country "gains value", hard to call it "losing money" at that point.

[bufferoverflow]

That's a bunch of really strange claims.

> If the government can't grow the economy long term

Governments generally decide policies, and it's private businesses that actually grow the economy. Unless you're talking about socialism, your statement doesn't make sense.

> if you're in a country where there's not even food to buy?

The only country I'm aware with real food shortages at the moment is Venezuela, and the situation is entirely created by the socialist idiots in charge. Thankfully most countries are not going that route.

> and hoarded BTC, did the shopkeeper?

Well, they still can. Nobody is stopping them. Cryptocurrencies are just starting, in my opinion.

> having 10 years of BTC saved up is going to do much

It will do much. They would have more money saved. Which they can use to get out of a shitty country, for example.

> if you didn't have enough to leave maybe you're even worse off when the power goes out and the mobile networks start flaking and you don't even have loose leaf

Maybe. But then your credit/debit cards or ATMs won't work either. Are you advocating holding your money in paper dollars with that argument?

Some cryptocurrencies work over SMS, which doesn't require a data network.

> Inflationary currency is designed to "lose value" as the entire country "gains value", hard to call it "losing money" at that point.

That statement doesn't make any sense. If you made $100, and saved it 100 years ago, it's worth only $3 now. You would be losing money by not investing it. And not necessarily in cryptocurrencies, you can invest into ETF or mutual funds or stocks - almost anything is better than a traditional currency.

[BoorishBears]

I’m usually the one getting annoyed when people play the fallacy card but... this is one contextomy after another.

I’ve addressed every single point you made, you just seem to have intentionally skipped those sentences:

- Taking half the paragraph where I say there’s no power and saying the shopkeeper should horde BTC...

-Saying they should horde BTC to leave when I literally said the same thing and pointed out how if you’re rich enough to leave BTC or Bolivar doesn’t matter, since you’ll have to leave early in the inflation curve to avoid turmoil.

-Saying the sentence about inflation doesn’t make sense then literally explaining exactly what it means like the entire freaking comment before it isn’t literally about investing in the enconomy vs investing in crpyto

I could go on, but I don’t want to waste any more of my time. Good luck with your Monopoly money.