[Andrew_nenakhov]

In the past 110 years Russian currency depreciated against USD at a something like trillion times.

It's a safe bet that it'll continue the trend (with some occasional and not too long lapses of stae slowish decline), and actually bitcoin is a rather safe bet against rouble. After all, it's not backed by Putin's government!

[arcticbull]

This is an utterly ridiculous statement. Not only is the trillion fold devaluation not at all a reasonable assessment of the situation, the exchange rate only matters at the time of the exchange, not after. That's the point.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

I was answering to a person who said that RUB lost half of its value against USD in a span of a year. I just pointed that it is a part of a general trend, what do you find ridiculous about that?

Btw, 'a trillion times' is an understatement. Exact figure in 2014 was... 57 460 000 000 000 000 (fifty seven quadrillion four hundred and sixty trillion) times [1], and just add some more since that time. Still thinking that bitcoin is a risky currency, huh?

[1]: https://zhartun.me/2014/12/usd.html

[arcticbull]

Yes of course it's the risky investment. BTC has seen 3 drawdowns of -86% in the last couple of years, and also, what happened to XRP shows that the football can be deflated in seconds with the right SEC memo.

Currency isn't an investment. Currency has never been an investment. You're not supposed to hold currency. You're supposed to use currency to buy assets. A spot exchange rate means absolutely nothing. This is ECON-101.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

Is gold an asset or a currency? Now it is definitely the former, but throughout history it was mostly an asset and a currency, with rather vague lines between them.

Bitcoin is not a USD replacement. It's more of a gold replacement: finite supply, great malleability, but with modern benefits regarding storage and transfer.

[arcticbull]

> Bitcoin is not a USD replacement. It's more of a gold replacement: finite supply, great malleability, but with modern benefits regarding storage and transfer.

This is an opinion that Bitcoin advocates throw out every time someone criticizes Bitcoin's ability to be a currency. As soon as someone criticizes its ability to be an asset, someone trots out that its actually been a currency this whole time. It's bad at both.

It's bad at both in no small part because it tries to bring back the asset-backed currency approach, which was dreadful last time around, and that's why it was ended.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

> This is an opinion that Bitcoin advocates throw out every time someone criticizes Bitcoin's ability to be a currency.

This 'opinion' comparing Bitcoin properties to Gold appeared before Bitcoin antagonists appeared. It is part of a design.