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by fanciestManimal 1950 days ago
So I own some crypto too, but the dollar has a much larger social network effect of people who agree it's the store of value for the future, no? So does the Euro. It's a bit weird that you would claim that bitcoin's intrinsic value is that it's a store of value, but then deny the same reality for other traditional currencies.
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I don't think that's true at all. Inflation of fiat is widely accepted as people know more gets printed all the time. You know your dollar will be worth less next year due to inflation. This is why people invest in interest baring accounts and stocks. Dollars by themselves lose money over time.
And yet more people use dollars, and have bank accounts with dollars or their home country's currency.

Bitcoin's block reward can be changed as well, it's not some immutable law of the blockchain. I'm not claiming that it will change, but I also see the potential for there to be a change there to incentivize mining once the block rewards are minuscule and miners are dependent on transaction fees for profitability.

> And yet more people use dollars, and have bank accounts with dollars or their home country's currency.

Those people are losing money due to inflation. This is well known and an issue with people keeping cash in "mattresses".

> Bitcoin's block reward can be changed as well, it's not some immutable law of the blockchain. I'm not claiming that it will change, but I also see the potential for there to be a change there to incentivize mining once the block rewards are minuscule and miners are dependent on transaction fees for profitability.

This is called a hard fork, and has been done more or less unsuccessfully multiple times now.

And yet people still own dollars. I own various investments, and also dollars.

I'm aware of what a hard fork is, I'm also aware of what a 51% attack is. The risk of that down the road could be a fair amount of incentive for folks (and the network effect) to get on board. I'm not saying something will happen there. You do need to maintain clarity to understand the reality of what's possible though. It's also possible that bitcoin's first mover advantage is overcome at some point.

As I said, I own some cryptocurrency too. It's important to see through the mania that is the current market.

You (and I) own dollars but the government can always print more. It's like owning shares in a company that has the habit of regularly issuing more shares, diluting you. We know the denominator on BTC (21,000,000) the denominator on USD is unknown and always increasing.

The fixed, deflationary nature of Bitcoin isn't the only financial instrument we need, but it is desperately needed in its own right.