[Mistletoe]

I feel exactly the opposite-

“At some point there won't be any more suckers left. That's when banking will really collapse.”

The news every day sends the message more urgently that a global hard money that can never be debased by money printing and that is free from the whims of governments and dictators is sorely needed.

[surgical_fire]

> debased by money printing

Why is this a bad thing?

This is repeated by the crypto people as some kind of root of all evil, and it puzzles me.

I see monetary policy - including the ability of devaluing a currency - as a powerful tool central banks have to keep the economy working.

I fail to see how "hard money", which normally comes peppered with some vague desire for a deflationary economy as desirable. In my view this would very quickly turn into an intolerable distopia.

[SkyMarshal]

Central banks aren’t needed to keep the economy running, you really just need some areas of law (contract, commercial, etc) and an effective court system for that. The economy ran on its own prior to the Federal Reserve being created in 1913.

Central banks may be useful in preventing banking crises every ~20yrs as happened back in the 1700s and 1800s. But even that’s not a certainty since the two most severe banking crises in history - the Great Depression and Global/Great Financial Crisis - happened under the watch of central banks. Some even argue the latter occurred because of the central bank keeping interest rates too low too long.

One benefit of central banks is to depoliticize monetary policy by moving it away from the Executive Branch, and giving it a consistent, Congressional mandate that it must prioritize in its policy and operations - low inflation and high employment. That’s probably one of the few indisputable advantages they have.

As for whether inflationary or deflationary money is better, I don’t know. Both have their pros and cons. The more I go down rabbit hole on each of these, the less decisive I am about it. But this website makes a comprehensive case for deflationary money, fwiw: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

[latchkey]

> this website makes a comprehensive case for deflationary money

After the switch to burn a portion of funds on every transaction as well as the switch from proof of work, to proof of stake, Ethereum is now deflationary [0].

Say what you will about the cryptocurrency experiment, it will be fascinating to watch the effect of this over time.

[0] https://ultrasound.money/

[Mistletoe]

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BOGMBASE

Does this seem normal to you? Imagine you are a patient and you took data like this to your doctor. Would he say you are healthy after having such a gradual rise all your life and then complete chaos?

If things have been going great the past few years I’d say maybe it doesn’t matter, but things don’t seem to be going great for anyone except the wealthy (those by nature closest to the money printer).

https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/charts-that-explai...

>Since 2007, wealth has declined for all but the top 20%.

Oddly (or not oddly) enough that’s when the monetary base graph starts skyrocketing.

[surgical_fire]

> Does this seem normal to you?

Yes. Currency is a mean of exchange, nothing more.

Economy is essentially how to satisfy the needs of its participants with the limited resources available. For the graph that you linked in a somewhat alarmist fashion to make sense, you need to compare it with a plethora of other information for it to make sense.

What is the productivity of people and corporations? What are the level of imports and exports? What is the cost of living? How much in taxes did the government earn? How adequate are the expenses in infrastructure? What is the level of debt held by the public and private sectors? Is that debt sustainable?

All those are just questions that I haphazardly put together while writing this reply, and they all tell other facets about the state of the economy that the money supply won't tell you.

>>Since 2007, wealth has declined for all but the top 20%.

>Oddly (or not oddly) enough that’s when the monetary base graph starts skyrocketing.

A deflationary economy would massively widen wealth inequality, as it heavily favors capital holders (as money itself gets more expensive over time).

A lot other things happened after 2007 that helped increase wealth inequality. I see the "skyrocketing" money supply as a side-effect of those things.

Correlation does not mean causation.

[Geee]

Wealthy people don't own money, they own assets. And they're usually in debt. Inflationary currency massively benefits wealthy people. Inflation is a transfer of buying power from poor people to rich people. That's the function of inflation. That's exactly the mechanism by which it makes poor people work harder, and makes the economy "grow".

Inflation makes people work harder, but it's not the right thing to do, and not good for the economy in the long term. Economy is not just the GDP; it's also happiness, freedom and mental health.

All productivity increases in the economy should belong to the people who are working and saving their money. They made the decision to limit their consumption and wait for cheaper products.

Inflationary currency is very unethical, and will result in total centralization of wealth when productivity keeps increasing.

[nintendo1889]

Bitcoin will be the poor man's inflation hedge. Eventually others will wake up- see bhutan quietly mining it, and even family and private wealth offices (traditionally very conservative investors) are buying it.

[surgical_fire]

Bitcoin is a complete failure as a currency. Your argument, not mine.

For all the talk and posture of it being a return to "hard money", all it is used for is as another investment tool for the wealthy.

And that is me giving it the benefit of doubt.

[JumpCrisscross]

> imagine you are a patient and you took data like this to your doctor

As someone who knows a doctor or two in the Bay Area, where it's apparently common for self-diagnosed charts to be texted in panic by clueless patients at 2AM, this analogy is apt.

[jonkho]

Would you be annoyed if you owned shares of a company and the company prints new shares to dilute the value of your holdings?

[lxgr]

Why would I?

Either the company's board and leadership are trustworthy (i.e. are acting in the best interest of all, not just majority or voting, shareholders), in which case they'll have carefully weighed the cost (dilution) and benefits (additional capital) of issuing new shares.

Or they aren't – in which case dilution is one of many problems and it's questionable why I'd want to continue owning shares in that company.

[eric-hu]

You’ve just connected the hypothetical question to the current behavior in play on the global scale. USD is still technically the worlds reserve currency, meant to be the base unit of all petroleum transactions. Countries have been motivated to keep USD on hand for decades for that reason.

In 2009 and 2021, the USD’s “board and leadership” has shown it’s willing to massively inflate its existing liabilities to help it solve its severe problems.

It’s very questionable why any country with large trade surpluses would want to hold US treasuries at this point. That’s precisely why China has brokered energy deals denominated in RMB, and BRICS is exploring a basket of their currencies to act as a new reserve.

[lxgr]

> It’s very questionable why any country with large trade surpluses would want to hold US treasuries at this point.

Fair point – then maybe they shouldn't!

But I'm not a large country; I need to pay for rent and food in USD, and my highest priority for the USD accordingly is short and medium term price stability for those two things. For long-term savings, there's other assets.

If the USD continues falling short on short term price stability as well, I agree that that would be a major problem.

[surgical_fire]

Shares in a company is not currency. It's not supposed to be used as currency. It is not a means of exchange.

And companies sometimes dilute the value of shares. It's part of the risk in investing in a company.

[roland35]

I wouldn't even say sometimes dilute shares - isn't this pretty much what happens every single time there is a new round of investing?

On the other hand, companies can use buybacks for the exact opposite effect.

[conceptme]

Because you probably live in a nice country without hyperinflation.

[surgical_fire]

Oh, I come from a poor country that had its hyperinflation issues.

Hyperinflation is bad, but there are ways to solve it.

Deflation is potentially worse.

[Robotbeat]

Money is fundamentally community based. It is based on exchange with your neighbors and colleagues and peers and anyone you do business with. You’re not getting away from the entity representing that community from exerting some control over it.

Precious materials like gold are probably the best you can get as the material itself has some value.

[nailer]

Why do precious metals have value?

[dale_glass]

They're relatively useless for other purposes. Eg, gold is rare, heavy and malleable. In situations where you need those qualities other options exist, like lead. It has the advantage of not oxidizing, so it makes for great jewelry.

But all of that is extremely contextual. If it turns out there's a huge reserve of it somewhere, it will crash in value. Or if things crash badly enough there may be other things to worry about. Eg, a community that desperately needs water is probably more interested in pipes than gold.

[justinator]

Gold is far from useless - I’ll wager whatever hardware you typed that comment on is made up in small part with gold.

[codedokode]

Only a tiny amount of gold is used in electronics. Also, this doesn't explain why people were greedy for gold thousands years before.

[justinator]

>Only a tiny amount of gold is used in electronics.

That's what interesting - only a tiny amount of gold is needed. This wouldn't work with lead.

>this doesn't explain why people were greedy for gold thousands years before.

You're asking me to do this research?

[mrkstu]

They (i.e. materials like gold/silver) have inherent value as being relatively difficult to obtain without significant work and being useful in creating valuable objects.

Because of those properties they become a store of value (representing the work and rarity) which then makes them a useful proxy for trading that value, which increases their rarity/value by taking it out of circulation when used as a store of value.

[Robotbeat]

Still, it should be said the vast majority of the value of gold is contextual. Just like aluminum before we perfected ability to make it cheaply.

[codedokode]

Can we conclude that gold is similar to cryptocurrency because of this?

[mrkstu]

As a store of work, sure,

The difference being the currency in this case has no inherent value to fall back upon.

[nailer]

Why do precious metals have inherent value?

[tremon]

Because the community believes their value will outlast the currency system. People have believed the same thing about tulips, peppercorn, wine, and buildings (or rather, land).

[Robotbeat]

Well there’s residual value in metals as you can build stuff with it. Agree that the vast majority of the value of precious metals is contextual, but I guess you can appeal to human’s love of shiny stuff plus history, beyond just community context.

[codedokode]

Land is still very valuable today, especially if it is a land in the center of a city.

[throwawaycities]

A metal such as gold has both intrinsic and extrinsic value from the time of antiquity to modern day.

For one, gold, enables the electronic device you used to post your comment.

[codedokode]

Then why did it have value before semiconductor manufacturing?

[Robotbeat]

Jewelry and it doesn't rust or erode.

[wycliffb]

They are precious

[rini17]

But for that, general population to be able (and willing!) to manage secret keys properly is sorely needed.

[G3rn0ti]

Yes, handling private keys is very inconvenient. I also can’t imagine my mother (although rather tech-savy for her age) handling all her financials with crypto wallets.

However, one of the next Ethereum upgrades (ERC-4337) will make it possible to safely recover wallets without a key seed phrase. Its implications seems to be huge but I am not deep enough into it to explain how exactly it is going to work. Perhaps somebody more competent than me can elaborate on that.

https://beincrypto.com/learn/erc-4337/

[lxgr]

You can't eat your cake and have it too: Either you are the only party controlling access to your accounts – which then necessarily includes the possibility of losing everything – or you don't, in which case somebody else does.

This isn't a tradeoff unique to cryptocurrencies: Cash works exactly the same way (qualitatively, if not quantitatively, in terms of the risks of losing access to it) – if you store your life savings under your mattress, they can be stolen easily or burn down together with your apartment.

[misnome]

This is never going to happen, and nor should it. Any system that you can lose your entire life savings without any recourse by forgetting, revealing, or being hit by a wrench, for one number - is irreparably flawed and extremely unsuitable.

[rchaud]

Interesting how these incorruptible currencies are always valued in terms of its debased fiat siblings.