A currency does not have to be tangible, nor does it need to be linked to physical metals. The reasons certain metals, gold in particular, was used as currency for so many years is because it has a high stock:flow ratio, meaning there exists a high amount of stock and a small inflation rate (flow) relative to the existing stock. Gold is very difficult to mine, which is why its flow ratio is so small. It unfortunately still has a 1.5-2% inflation rate, which, even at 1.5% is still a loss of 25% of your purchasing power over 15 years. Gold cannot be created out of thin air or easily created/discovered. Gold is durable and lasts many, many years with minimal wear and tear.
Because of properties such as these, gold has been an agreed upon currency for many societies. I say agreed upon because anyone can use anything for currency. I can trade you apples for goats if we agree upon it. Historically, many things have been used as currency until someone else co-opted it either by force, creation, or various other measures.
Comparing Bitcoin to gold, Bitcoin's inflation rate will be lower than gold's by mid-April of this year and will continue to be cut in half every 4 years until it hits zero. This alone is unprecedented. Purchasing power of the currency is preserved much better than gold. Bitcoin cannot be forcefully taken from your (if you're not absolutely retarded), unlike gold. Traveling with metals is incredibly cumbersome, especially with large amounts of value, and requires large transaction fees to move them (guards, planes, pallets, forklifts, smelting for verification, etc). You can transact with Bitcoin for fractions of a penny, instantly. Bitcoin is decentralized. To kill it, you'd have to kill every computer in the world that is running the software - all at the same time. No one can force you to use/run a different version of the code (which could potentially alter supply or other properties). This also makes it very durable.
Bitcoin removes the two essential government funding requirements: forced taxation and forced inflation.
Because of Bitcoin's absolute scarcity, which is unheard of, simple supply and demand drives its price/value/purchasing power. What this does is turn the world upside down. Instead of expecting the price of goods/services to increase year after year, the opposite happens. EVERYTHING will get cheaper every year - and we have been watching this happen since its inception.
Bitcoin is repricing the world and slowly limiting/removing government. It is inevitable. Those who say otherwise are simply uneducated or miseducated, which is not surprising considering the government has taught most people everything they know.
"It unfortunately still has a 1.5-2% inflation rate, which, even at 1.5% is still a loss of 25% of your purchasing power over 15 years."
Which doesn't track with the real world, see the "oz of gold still buys a nice suit in 1900 and 2000" argument.
"Comparing Bitcoin to gold, Bitcoin's inflation rate will be lower than gold's by mid-April of this year and will continue to be cut in half every 4 years until it hits zero."
Small amounts of natural inflation are good, the unrecoverable nature of BTC means there will eventually be 0 BTC available for transacting due to deaths of people with memorized cols wallets, destroyed HDDs, etc.
"Traveling with metals is incredibly cumbersome, especially with large amounts of value, and requires large transaction fees to move them (guards, planes, pallets, forklifts, smelting for verification, etc)."
People regularly carry around jumbo sized phones, take for instance an Iphone 13, at 6 oz that's $13,000 worth of gold, nobody regularly carries that in today's world. And somehow, they didn't need to "verify" and smelt coinage when it was pre-stamped with mintage marks.
"Bitcoin cannot be forcefully taken from your (if you're not absolutely retarded)"
Be honest with people about what that means. The keys to your coin wallet are EVERYTHING, and since there is no take backs on the chain, if your BTC is taken, you are FUBAR, permanently. The generally accepted practice for significant amounts of crypto is 1: fully memorize your 15-16 word seed phrase and NEVER write it down in any fashion, and 2: use a permanently offline computer to sign transactions. Anything else is open to compromise, despite being "absolutely retarded" or not
Which doesn't track with the real world, see the "oz of gold still buys a nice suit in 1900 and 2000" argument.
But it does. Even though gold has lost some purchasing power since then, the decreased cost of production of suits through better technology has offset that.
Small amounts of natural inflation are good, the unrecoverable nature of BTC means there will eventually be 0 BTC available for transacting due to deaths of people with memorized cols wallets, destroyed HDDs, etc.
Inflation is never good. That is loss of purchasing power. With an infinitely divisible currency, there is no need to increase the money supply. The infinite divisibility also means that there will never be 0 BTC. Gold has a divisibility limit in that it would be too small to see and/or easily lost.
People regularly carry around jumbo sized phones, take for instance an Iphone 13, at 6 oz that's $13,000 worth of gold, nobody regularly carries that in today's world. And somehow, they didn't need to "verify" and smelt coinage when it was pre-stamped with mintage marks.
If you want to move internationally or pay for more valuable items, such as in the millions, my argument still stands. People in the past didn't verify their gold before because they "trusted" their governments and yet, coin clipping happened constantly.
Be honest with people about what that means. The keys to your coin wallet are EVERYTHING, and since there is no take backs on the chain, if your BTC is taken, you are FUBAR, permanently. The generally accepted practice for significant amounts of crypto is 1: fully memorize your 15-16 word seed phrase and NEVER write it down in any fashion, and 2: use a permanently offline computer to sign transactions. Anything else is open to compromise, despite being "absolutely retarded" or not
Correct. This is what personal responsibility is about. However, there is no possibility that everyone will be able to self-custody Bitcoin. There will still be custodians of sorts. Uncle Jims, family, Bitcoin banks, etc.
A currency does not have to be tangible, nor does it need to be linked to physical metals. The reasons certain metals, gold in particular, was used as currency for so many years is because it has a high stock:flow ratio, meaning there exists a high amount of stock and a small inflation rate (flow) relative to the existing stock. Gold is very difficult to mine, which is why its flow ratio is so small. It unfortunately still has a 1.5-2% inflation rate, which, even at 1.5% is still a loss of 25% of your purchasing power over 15 years. Gold cannot be created out of thin air or easily created/discovered. Gold is durable and lasts many, many years with minimal wear and tear.
Because of properties such as these, gold has been an agreed upon currency for many societies. I say agreed upon because anyone can use anything for currency. I can trade you apples for goats if we agree upon it. Historically, many things have been used as currency until someone else co-opted it either by force, creation, or various other measures.
Comparing Bitcoin to gold, Bitcoin's inflation rate will be lower than gold's by mid-April of this year and will continue to be cut in half every 4 years until it hits zero. This alone is unprecedented. Purchasing power of the currency is preserved much better than gold. Bitcoin cannot be forcefully taken from your (if you're not absolutely retarded), unlike gold. Traveling with metals is incredibly cumbersome, especially with large amounts of value, and requires large transaction fees to move them (guards, planes, pallets, forklifts, smelting for verification, etc). You can transact with Bitcoin for fractions of a penny, instantly. Bitcoin is decentralized. To kill it, you'd have to kill every computer in the world that is running the software - all at the same time. No one can force you to use/run a different version of the code (which could potentially alter supply or other properties). This also makes it very durable.
Bitcoin removes the two essential government funding requirements: forced taxation and forced inflation.
Because of Bitcoin's absolute scarcity, which is unheard of, simple supply and demand drives its price/value/purchasing power. What this does is turn the world upside down. Instead of expecting the price of goods/services to increase year after year, the opposite happens. EVERYTHING will get cheaper every year - and we have been watching this happen since its inception.
Bitcoin is repricing the world and slowly limiting/removing government. It is inevitable. Those who say otherwise are simply uneducated or miseducated, which is not surprising considering the government has taught most people everything they know.
"It unfortunately still has a 1.5-2% inflation rate, which, even at 1.5% is still a loss of 25% of your purchasing power over 15 years."
Which doesn't track with the real world, see the "oz of gold still buys a nice suit in 1900 and 2000" argument.
"Comparing Bitcoin to gold, Bitcoin's inflation rate will be lower than gold's by mid-April of this year and will continue to be cut in half every 4 years until it hits zero."
Small amounts of natural inflation are good, the unrecoverable nature of BTC means there will eventually be 0 BTC available for transacting due to deaths of people with memorized cols wallets, destroyed HDDs, etc.
"Traveling with metals is incredibly cumbersome, especially with large amounts of value, and requires large transaction fees to move them (guards, planes, pallets, forklifts, smelting for verification, etc)."
People regularly carry around jumbo sized phones, take for instance an Iphone 13, at 6 oz that's $13,000 worth of gold, nobody regularly carries that in today's world. And somehow, they didn't need to "verify" and smelt coinage when it was pre-stamped with mintage marks.
"Bitcoin cannot be forcefully taken from your (if you're not absolutely retarded)"
Be honest with people about what that means. The keys to your coin wallet are EVERYTHING, and since there is no take backs on the chain, if your BTC is taken, you are FUBAR, permanently. The generally accepted practice for significant amounts of crypto is 1: fully memorize your 15-16 word seed phrase and NEVER write it down in any fashion, and 2: use a permanently offline computer to sign transactions. Anything else is open to compromise, despite being "absolutely retarded" or not
But it does. Even though gold has lost some purchasing power since then, the decreased cost of production of suits through better technology has offset that.
Inflation is never good. That is loss of purchasing power. With an infinitely divisible currency, there is no need to increase the money supply. The infinite divisibility also means that there will never be 0 BTC. Gold has a divisibility limit in that it would be too small to see and/or easily lost.
If you want to move internationally or pay for more valuable items, such as in the millions, my argument still stands. People in the past didn't verify their gold before because they "trusted" their governments and yet, coin clipping happened constantly.
Correct. This is what personal responsibility is about. However, there is no possibility that everyone will be able to self-custody Bitcoin. There will still be custodians of sorts. Uncle Jims, family, Bitcoin banks, etc.
"Gold has lost some value" "which, even at 1.5% is still a loss of 25% of your purchasing power over 15 years."
Pick one, it's doubtful that luxury suits have magically become ~15% the price in 100 years.
"Bitcoin banks"
You can't be serious.