[jarek]

> Fiat currency is printed on the whim of governments, effectively defrauding the citizens of every country in the world through value dilution. Bitcoin is a technological innovation which allows for a constant and known rate of currency generation. I'd prefer to intrust my pension to maths than to a civil servant with an economics degree. This aspect shouldn't be overlooked or taken lighty because it disrupts the power, ergo the control that governments can wield over their citizens.

Yawn. If people as a whole cared about 1% of what you just said there'd be revolutions in every country yesterday.

Money is inherently a social thing. You provide goods or services today to earn a social credit and be able to acquire goods and services after you retire. Your pension is useless without an economy made up of ordinary people who don't care about maths and cryptography but feel they owe you something. They only care about power governments can wield over citizens when things go really wrong. And when things go really wrong you can't buy potatoes with a hard drive.

[aianus]

There are numerous examples in history (and today!) of governments wiping out their citizens' savings through hyperinflation, restricting their access to foreign currencies, etc. This is not just an ideological libertarian conspiracy theory.

It is a virtue of Bitcoin that it helps subvert the power of those corrupt governments over the economy in much the same way TOR and proxies help to subvert their power over free speech.

[XorNot]

What is Bitcoin but a collectivist agreement that something has value? Those bits aren't reimbursable. You can't get that electricity back for them once it's spent - unlike gold, which holds some real world value by virtue of being the element it is.

Bitcoin advocates rage about fiat, while trading the ultimate fiat currency since it doesn't take too many people deciding they don't want Bitcoin (say: landlords, farmers/wholesalers) before the currency is useless.

[vertex-four]

Actually, fiat money means something else. According to Wikipedia: "Fiat money is currency which derives its value from government regulation or law".[0] It doesn't mean "currency which derives its value from a collectivist agreement".

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money

[bduerst]

Equivocation fallacy. By that logic every other available currency in the world is saving us from the corrupted governments. Hell, the "virtue" of cowry shells can save me from hyperinflation and help protect my free speech!

Except people stopped using cowry shells as a currency, just as people stopped using Bitcoins as a currency. Now people hoard/trade them like digital beanie babies. If liquidity and insurance problems ever get solved, then we might see mass adoption.

[aianus]

When $1 million in cowry shells become as simple to smuggle in and out of Argentina as a signed Bitcoin transaction, you'll have a point.

[bduerst]

So only "True" currencies are $1m signed bitcoin transactions now?

That level of No-True-Scotsman shows confirmation bias. How much have you put into bitcoins?