The stability of bitcoin depends entirely on the adoption of it. Your guess is as good as mine as to when we hit critical mass in terms of adoption rates to usher in that era. The 2140 mark is just when the (estimated) last bitcoin will be mined, has no bearing on adoption.
So the success of bitcoin is contingent on the entire human population just agreeing to go with it and is more of a wishful dream for enthusiasts to tout?
The success of any global currency is always going to depend on how many people choose to use it. It's the same way with language. The fewer people speak English, the less practical application it has, and so fewer folks will invest time and energy into leveraging it. A universal language (in addition to a universal currency), btw, would be another great step forward for humanity. Adoption is a fluid, gradual process. Not an on/off switch. If BTC presents enough utility, it will gain adopters. It's the free market at work. So far, folks appear to be keen on it.
This is true to a degree. But insurance is almost always done in the same currency as the underlying asset due to currency risk. If you get to the point of BTC being the world's primary store of wealth, you'd need to insure most of it. And since there's no option to print your way out of a mess, that's impossible - you can't insure, say, 10 million of people's Bitcoins globally without having another 10 million Bitcoins that don't exist. That's why I say government is ultimately the only entity that can truly backstop it. Even with dollars, private insurers can go under in a collapse, but people trust that the government is there to bail it all out like we saw in 2008 (with no inflation, as it turned out). Currency's value is backed by confidence as much as anything else and having that "backstop of last resort" is a key to people trusting their life savings in that system. That said, I agree that on a smaller scale, custodial insurers can exist/etc. But another one of bitcoin's strengths - it's limited supply - also limits the ability of this industry to scale up. Agree on the different risk profiles. But when you're talking about making bitcoin the default currency of the world or things like that, the risk has to be minimal because it's no longer a speculative investment - it's people's life savings.
Lots of good discussion in here. Thanks to everyone involved, particularly @DonnyMost and @London'sBurning for putting in the time to distract me from more important things. I want to go point-by-point at a later time, but for now, 2 things I wanted to bring up: 1. Would consumer protections (and other benefits) not require centralization in order to function well? We get a lot of these things from the traditional system and other services because of centralization IMO (at least in part). Crypto always seems to be pushing decentralization, so while it is possible to offer those things, it feels at odds with the core beliefs (i.e., lack of protections is a feature, not a bug). You can handwave and say we'll get those things over time, but if that was the case, I'd think we'd just end up with a system not too dissimilar from the current system (i.e., one where certain entities have large power of the system). Arguably a worse one given the issues with blockchain. 2. I can understand the excitement of new technology and the hope that, eventually, we'll just technology our way to a solution that solves our problems. With the potential downsides of BTC/crypto, I think we should be figuring out those solutions (at least conceptually) now vs hoping we'll figure it out later. It doesn't help that 95% of crypto proposals are just a collection of fancy sounding buzzwords that promise impossible things (e.g., blockchain gaming/NFTs that can be leveraged in multiple games/etc.). People end up getting super excited about these ideas and assume we can just work out the kinks, but I think if you just dig into it a bit, you might see that those "kinks" are fundamental problems that might be unsolvable. Unfortunately, there is incentive to act now and ask questions later with crypto, whereas in other areas, maybe this wouldn't be as big of a problem. To bring up a popular example, I see proposals about how something like BTC (or other crypto) can be a huge help to 3rd world countries facing economic problems largely caused by corrupt politicians. It all sounds good in theory, but I really struggle to come up with a process where this would *actually* end up helping (especially outside of a temporary short-term band-aid). I'd like to see a well-thought out plan of how this would actually work, and preferably one that takes into account the human factors involved (e.g., um couldn't said corrupt politicians just ban crypto and/or limit access to technology?). These seem to be complex human problems that need complex human solutions, not technology solutions. Not relevant to BTC, but I wanted to share this video as an example of what I mean about thinking through an exciting crypto idea: Lots of people talked about the possibilities of what blockchain/NFTs could bring to gaming, and they just kinda handwaved these "minor" complications ("We'll figure those things out later."). If you actually dig into it, you'll realize you can't really handwave those things away. I get that sense when it comes to some of these discussions about BTC, and I think if folks really want this stuff to take off, it would be good to erase these concerns with some good plans on how this stuff actually works. Without it, it just looks like the rest of crypto (i.e., a big scam).
people all over the world have chosen fiat currencies as WRCs on the other hand, in view of this development, , IMF directors urge El Salvador to remove Bitcoin as legal tender IMF executive directors "stressed that there are large risks associated with the use of Bitcoin on financial stability, financial integrity, and consumer protection, as well as the associated fiscal contingent liabilities,"
I like the way El Salvador is headed. The Bitcoin can be traded for fiat or held in the Lightning wallet. There will be countries that will prohibit bitcoin and its derivatives. The immediate advantage is to help 3rd world countries that are not highly authoritarian. Remittances is a huge issue and current solutions are being implemented. Instead of paying 10-30% for transfer fees, peasants can transfer for pennies, if not less. Nor will they be forced to carry cash where they will be subjected to be robbed. If Bitcoin stabilizes, it can become a global remittance network. It doesnt mean it will be the global currency. A banking platform can be built to allow hundreds of millions of unbanked people to participate. Most view Bitcoin as a challenger to all currencies. Bitcoin delves much further and roots itself into many different avenues.
5 year old video, 727 likes, 25K views, 7K subs, and comments turned off. Judging by the looks of it, it was your loss in watching it. From what I can glean from the title and description, all I can offer you is this; A "great step forward" for humanity does not imply an end to violence. That's a stupid assumption. If you don't understand the implications of unifying the way the entire species communicates, then I don't know what to tell you. It would increase the speed and bandwidth of our transfer of knowledge exponentially. In addition, it would increase the longevity of our knowledge and reduce information decay/loss. A ton of effort is put into formulating ideas into language, and a ton more effort is put into porting those ideas from one language and culture to another. This is why math (plus coding) and music are so powerful, they are universal languages that transcend borders.
Some rappers that are trash get a billion views and are not good. Popularity =/= quality. Truth is not many people want to sit down and listen to people with specialized phDs in say linguistics from experts that dispute their "common sense" knowledge that a single unified language would be great for humanity as whole. Again, it's your loss. I think the hosts are incredibly insightful personally.
I've given you an absolute ton of my time already, mostly devoted to arguing against another youtube video. If you think the video is that great, you'll either be motivated enough to summarize it or you'll find its concepts/arguments so easy to relay that it won't be that much effort on your part. Otherwise, I'm moving on.
You are a patient man Donny, I will give you that. Also I appreciate your posts. Thank you for taking the time. At least I understand where you're coming from.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayib_Bukele Maybe the countries with authoritarian leaders would be a more likely target? Where are you getting 10%-30%? I skimmed online, and the average seems to be around 6.3% according to World Bank (a number that's been trending down). Their numbers for remittance to the Philippines seemed to reflect the numbers I'm familiar with (4% on average and less than 2% with the better options). Not zero (though it is possible in cases), but also not high enough to be something that changes the world IMO. Funnily enough, I see lots of talk about how El Salvador has pretty good rates too: https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/iae/f...o-Be-Caught-in-FATFs-Regulatory-Web-Final.pdf I think the PDF and others go into this, but it also sounds like some of these benefits already exist with the USD, so I'm curious how much this would really impact things. That's not to say there aren't any places with high fees and huge problems with the traditional system, but I also don't think something like this would actually fix it (not directly anyway). Basing on write-ups by the World Bank, it seems to be more "people problems" that are causing these issues, and even then, it seems to be something the world is gradually solving (without the need for crypto). And again, not that I want to ignore these problems, but I also don't know how big of a problem it truly is. If we're saying this is a 3rd world problem, then that eliminates all the 1st world countries I suppose. The Philippines and many other "3rd world" counties seem to have decent options for remittance. This could change the world, even though most of the world doesn't really have a huge problem in this area?
As I read it, I was trying to figure I even understood what you were saying, but in most things, I just assume I don't know everything going on about what's going on. I mean, Bitcoin is dog-slow and fee-intensive in comparison to other tech, but there are Layer-2 "solutions" such as the Lightning network that "fix" that, so I just assumed there was something in the works that would give some type of relief for people not wanting to dump their life safings into something and then when something bad happens "oh well" is the only answer they get. I just couldn't figure out how a developer would be able to do it.
