[jboydyhacker]

Economists writing about the end of the dollar as a reserve currency is not a new thing. With the Fed printing money tho at record rates this would be the time for a shift to happen.

The problem is there is no alternative. The Euro has it's own structural issues and as we saw in March when folks got scared they sold alternatives like Bitcoin down hard. In short, there is no alternative without international cooperation to make a change which doesn't appear likely any time soonish.

[justinzollars]

Lynn addresses your point directly if you read the article. She provides 2 options a slow and fast option. She notes, it is already happening, slowly. But it can also happen very quickly:

> On the other hand, a structural change could happen with a shock and stepwise change, like the end of the Bretton Woods system. This can happen in a few ways, but becomes more probable if the United States decides to actively promote a change rather than defend the status quo.

[paulpauper]

in his defense, it is more like a book than an article, so it is understandable if he missed some of important points

[jaredtn]

There are two concepts here: medium of exchange and store of value. Currently the US dollar (and Treasury bonds) do both. It's unlikely that the US dollar disappears as a medium of exchange, though there are steps being taken here, such as China + Russia pricing their oil trade in yuan rather than dollars. Yet with M2 money supply increasing 25% in the last year and the DXY crashing by 10%, the US dollar is no longer a reliable store of value.

The larger shift is out of Treasury bonds into different reserve assets, such as commodities (oil, gold, alternative currencies). That one is very real.

[birdsbirdsbirds]

Gold is not priced as a commodity and if everybody is starting to buy oil to store their value, it will stop being a commodity, too. The oil price would go up for a short moment, investments into renewable energies would increase and oil would actually drop in value after it had sucked up the value to be stored.

Can't the increased M2 money supply be interpreted as a move to stabilize the value of the dollar? Maybe the crisis made that increase necessary to maintain the value?

[jaredtn]

It was certainly a move to stabilize the stock market and Treasury market. However, having a reserve asset that steadily, stably climbs lower is not a store of value by any definition.

[JohnJamesRambo]

Bitcoin broke all time high a few weeks ago. :)

Rats leaving the sinking ship that is the US dollar and all fiat currency seems to be happening very quickly. I hear almost everyone talking about it now, it isn't the loonies anymore. Money that isn't tied to whatever stupid policies your government has implemented will always be attractive. No one asked me if I wanted to prop up the stock market by printing ~25% of all US dollars that have ever been printed, in 2020.

https://digitalik.net/btc/

[michaelyoshika]

I really don’t understand why a hacker community would consistently downvote crypto currency related comments. Can anyone explain it to me? Like, folks can build their own cpu so not to be controlled by big companies, but they all like using money controlled by some big banks?

[JohnJamesRambo]

I've been surprised by this as well. I've always chalked it up to the fact that the average Hacker News commenter is likely a very rich Silicon Valley dev type that has a lot of USD stacked now and doesn't like to hear uncomfortable truths about money alternatives (no matter how cool and techy and decentralized and open source crypto is), now that they have a lot of it.

[alasano]

Probably a mix of things.

People who appreciated the technology initially but changed their minds seeing it being driven by what people often consider a toxic community who hides behind the pretense of technology to make money.

People who think Bitcoin itself, despite the technology, is no good for it's stated initial purpose of being a peer to peer electronic cash system. Whether that's true even with additional layers like lightning remains to be seen perhaps.

People who either missed out on the rise, sold early or lost money trading it in the past. Frustrated or bitter perhaps, wanting to be right about Bitcoin so much that they've shut out any possibility that it will succeed.

And I guess people who don't quite understand the technology, purpose or possibilities Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies bring to the table.

And obviously all the "tether scam" people.

There is positive and negative to cryptocurrencies, same as there is with the internet itself. Do we wish for the internet to fail (if somehow that were even possible) because it enabled mass manipulation of people through social media? Well maybe some people do but I think the vast majority take the good with the bad and some are working to try and solve these problems.

Will Bitcoin fail? I don't think it can at this point to be honest. Genie is out of the bottle, interest is there and it's getting more legitimized every day, whether it's through the direct actions taken by individuals, companies or institutions to further the entire space or through the inaction of governments who don't want to stifle innovation or possibly don't see it as the threat to the monetary system it could (potentially)_be.

Time will tell!

[MrRadar]

Don't forget another type (of which I count myself among): those who think "proof of work" cryptocurrencies are an environmental disaster. Recent estimates place the energy used to mine Bitcoins at around the same as the entire energy use of Switzerland[1] and as each new generation of miner is created the previous generations become mountains of e-waste.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48853230

[alasano]

Indeed! Very common as well, thanks for the reminder.

[phyalow]

What if I told you it was 64.5% not 25% https://twitter.com/NorthmanTrader/status/133808592857801932...

[JohnJamesRambo]

Ugh my information was not updated and I'm not sure I wanted to know that haha.

[FpUser]

Everything we produce can be measured in / has energy cost. So maybe some kind of energy units should be the universal currency.

[birdsbirdsbirds]

Energy will become much cheaper in the future. Every time a new solar cell improvement happens, your money would be worth less. Having those disruptions baked into your currency would make it almost useless.

[FpUser]

Nope it will not be rendered useless.

1) Price of the energy when you pay for it only grows over time. Short disruptions are possible but overall trend persists.

2) More energy also correlates to more goods produced so unless artificially manipulated the ratio should stay more or less the same.

3) All major currencies undergo inflation so even if energy becomes more plentiful there is nothing really new here

[birdsbirdsbirds]

(2) actually remains constant. If you use energy to pay for energy, then one unit always costs one unit.

But if the world energy production doubles, do you think that scarce resources cost the same? Prices of e.g. concert tickets or art pieces will adjust.

[FpUser]

Some of scarce will become not so scarce as their availability limited by energy. Other will increase in price as they're limited by other factors. Same way as with inflation.

If you do not like it you're always free to by gold or whatever resource does not depreciate long term.

[birdsbirdsbirds]

>Some of scarce will become not so scarce as their availability limited by energy.

Then those resources will cost the same in units of energy

>Other will increase in price as they're limited by other factors.

So why use energy to store value and not those resources? Of course I am free to choose gold on a personal level, but shouldn't it be the default strategy of every investor to not store value in energy?

Going back to your first comment:

>Everything we produce can be measured in / has energy cost. So maybe some kind of energy units should be the universal currency.

I can imagine that energy can be used as the unit for value transactions. For value storage however, it's the other way round: I think value has to be stored in assets that don't depend on energy.

[dehrmann]

For goods, it's more like money represents a debt of human labor. You can use that labor to drill for oil, design a robot, or sew a garment.

[paulpauper]

There is no correlation between FOMC and fiscal policy and the dollar. The dollar has strengthened since 2008 despite all this QE, stimulus, and other stuff that has gone on. I think the dollar is more like a proxy for US dominance in the world. If the US assumes a smaller role, likely the dollar will fall.

[ilaksh]

I personally dream that Ethereum 2.0 will be used as the basis for an alternative which is built on and readily exchanged with all the new major sovereign digital currencies. Or maybe somehow it will be based on carbon or energy although that is a long-shot.

[wintersFright]

https://twitter.com/lukegromen/status/1338161298119548930?s=...

[bitwize]

Time to revive the bancor.