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927 points smallerfish | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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portaouflop ◴[] No.42926658[source]
IMF gave them 1.4 billion to abandon the “experiment”:

> The IMF made this a condition for a loan of 1.4 billion US dollars (1.35 billion euros). In December of last year, the IMF reached an agreement with President Nayib Bukele’s government on the loan of the stated amount to strengthen the country’s “fiscal sustainability” and mitigate the “risks associated with Bitcoin,” as it was described.

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I dislike cryptocurrencies as much as the next guy but this was clearly something else than a failure of the currency itself

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stephen_g ◴[] No.42926769[source]
Despite that interference, from everything I’ve read though it’s hard to describe the bitcoin experiment as anything else than a massive failure…
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kylebenzle ◴[] No.42926864[source]
Yeh, it failed so hard no one even uses it anymore.
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Kindra ◴[] No.42927268[source]
Are you able to point to a single case where Bitcoin was used as legal tender in an every day business transaction? By this I mean, can you give an example where someone ordered a cup of coffee with Bitcoin directly and not through a proxy?
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cturner ◴[] No.42929431[source]
Gresham's law says that "bad money drives out good". Due to the dynamic this describes, it is unlikely bitcoin would commonly be used to buy and sell things even if it did not suffer practical obstacles.

Bitcoin experiences less inflation than regular currencies. Some coins get created now, but over time we know its character will become deflationary: no new coins will be created, and some will be lost at times due to poor wallet management.

As a result, people will chose to spend other currency in preference to spending bitcoin. This is self-reinforcing. The infrastructure will not be in place to use it on the odd occasion that someone wanted to.

You could create a blockchain currency which had a natural and continuous rate of inflation, to encourage people to spend it. You could bootstrap this by mutualising it across an industry. e.g. imagine if the largest datacentre groups got together to create ModestlyInflationaryCoin, and then said they would offer discounts to customers who paid in ModestlyInflationaryCoin, as a means of bootstrapping it. Other groups might start to use it, and it would stay in circulation because people would want to be rid of it once they had it.

Even if such a currency existed, it would probably be short-lived. /Once it was bootstrapped/, its stakeholders would have strong incentive to change its contract to be non-inflationary. Making that change would convert their holdings from Bad Money to Good Money, and as a result the character it would significantly increase its value.

But the datacentre groups could then mutualise a new currency in place of the old one. It is possible that there is a virtuous loop here, and that there will be a race to quality in currencies in our future, grown from how easy it is to create new currencies. We might start to see the identity of currencies a bit more like the way we see futures contracts in our current era.

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strogonoff ◴[] No.42929743[source]
Society needs at least some inflation for things to keep moving, but an individual usually wants the opposite.

The elected government serves the society of its citizens, while inventors and holders of unofficial currencies are individuals who ultimately serve only themselves.

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1. cturner ◴[] No.42929803[source]
There is a legitimate role for both things: to have some non-inflationary things that serve as a store-of-value, and then some inflationary things to serve as regular currency.

It is worth emphasising here: non-inflationary currency does not grow its value, so it would be unusual for people to want to put their wealth exclusively into store-of-value. Rather, most people will want a mix of inflationary-currency, store-of-value, and investment in growth-generating businesses.

When people talk about wanting to use bitcoin as a day-to-day currency, I feel like they are missing the best benefit if could offer us.

We already have effective day-to-day currencies. But we have not had a reliable store of value. The US, UK and Australia each have a history of denying ownership of gold when it suits them, which is when people need it most.

The lack of reliable store-of-wealth has made it too-easy for governments to fleece wealth-generating people in order to buy votes. This is not the long-term strategic path, but it creates a race-to-the-bottom due to short-term incentives. Perhaps blockchain will change that, by allowing the creation of an easily accessed utility that sits beyond the easy influence of the nation state.

To be effective it does not need to be perfect, just better than the options we have now. It has been encouraging to me to see the CCP struggling with blockchain, and then outlawing it because they cannot control it.

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2. strogonoff ◴[] No.42931566[source]
An argument can be made that if there is a 100% reliable, maybe even deflationary, store of value, it would have a similar effect to currency deflation: since it is worth more tomorrow, then you are disincentivized to spend your wealth, and not spending wealth (not investing it in some value-producing enterprises, buying things and services) seems like a recipe for stagnation and wealth gap increase.