> People are leaving failing paper curencies which are being print nonstop all over the world. Go bitcoin.
What "failing paper currencies" are you referring to? USD? EUR? GBP? JPY? AUD? CAD? CNY? MXN? Other?
Also, 'printing money' is a feature, not a bug: it allows for currency needs to be met so that economic activity/growth can occur. Otherwise you get into troubling situations:
> Also, 'printing money' is a feature, not a bug: it allows for currency needs to be met so that economic activity/growth can occur.
We all know the Central Bank hymn book by now.
That said, printing money doesn't create economic activity nor economic growth nor wealth. I know central bankers and their inflationist acolytes want you to believe this and they have dazzling models to show this, and convincing buttoned-up tales to prove this, and I'm not trying to re-litigate an argument as old as Vienna.
Hopefully some subset of humans will remember how wealth is created. And incidentally, if you look in your library, you can find very different interpretations of the various booms and economic depressions of history.
Yes, but some folks don't seem to accept the evidence and the historical record of what didn't work, and why we moved towards the current system. Some folks still think that FDR (and Keynes) got things wrong.
> That said, printing money doesn't create economic activity nor economic growth nor wealth.
While liquidity is not (necessarily) sufficient for economic activity it is necessary, and a lack of liquidity certainly hinders it. This is evidenced not least from the Great Depression and that once a country abandoned the gold standard they started to recover:
Fixed supply monetary systems (like the gold standard) are a hindrance, and it's not like they do anything useful like create a stable monetary base either:
> but some folks don't seem to accept the evidence and the historical record of what didn't work, and why we moved towards the current system. Some folks still think that FDR (and Keynes) got things wrong.
They did get things wrong. But that's my opinion. And economics isn't a science but a confidence game, mostly.
They were wrong because the market is a coordination mechanism that works based on information. The most important information in the market is the price signal. The first important price is the price of money. Central planners mess with that price and thus distort the market. In fact, the era of money printing has created more economic instability than prior periods.
But why mess with the price signal? So that you can pick and choose winners and losers. If they couldn't do that it wouldn't be worth the effort to centrally manage and control all human economic activity.
But again, I'm not trying to re-litigate a boring debate. The Central Bankers won, monetary and fiscal control has been centralized in the hands of a few people. Gold has been confiscated and expropriated from civilian hands, the dollar is backed by nothing except guns and oil, and 90% of the world's trade and debt is dollarized.
Money printer go burrr and thanks to that printing all my assets over the past 20 years have become insanely valuable as denominated in dollars, which keep being printed.
> the historical record of what didn't work?
Work, for whom? By what measure? At what cost? And who paid the costs? You talk about the Great Depression but unless you're a time traveller you'll remember the GFC as well?
Ah. But this is all so boring and not worth debating because it's been debated for as long as humans have wanted central planning of economies and markets.
Thanks for all your referenced articles but I did not read your citations because I've read all this stuff before endlessly over many years, decades actually, because central bankers keep promoting their interpretation of history to justify their control of markets.
>> Some folks still think that FDR (and Keynes) got things wrong.
> They did get things wrong. But that's my opinion. And economics isn't a science but a confidence game, mostly.
I'm curious to know in what way you think FDR/Keynes got it wrong.
Hoover and others tried things in the (then) orthodox way in the early 1930s and things didn't recover. Further, as the Delong link shows, as soon as other countries followed the US' lead they too started to recover.
Then, when the US went back to then-orthodoxy in ~1936 under political pressure and moved towards (e.g.) a balanced budget, the economy started tanking right away. Further, the orthodoxy of (so-called) "sound money" and balanced budgets caused political turmoil in more than one country:
A whole bunch of folks had to relearn this not too long ago when there was a push for "expansionary austerity", which Keynesians said would be bad for economic growth/recovery post-GFC, and which did in fact turn out to be bad:
> But why mess with the price signal? So that you can pick and choose winners and losers.
Actually it's to regulate/moderate economic activity. Because it is not Friedman's money supply (quantity) that determines price stability (i.e., the rate of inflation), but rather its velocity. Even Milton Friedman admitted (Financial Times, 7 June 2003) that "The use of quantity of money as a target has not been a success. I'm not sure I would as of today push it as hard as I once did."
Even in the right-leaning Reagan/Thatcher 1980s central banks (e.g., Fed under Volker) gave up on money supply control and went to interest rates. This was formalized staring in the 1990s:
> […] and 90% of the world's trade and debt is dollarized.
And before that most of the world's trade was (British) 'poundicized', because the UK had the largest economy in the world. And before that…. It seems to be fairly common that world trade tends to be done in the currency of the country that does the largest portion of world's trade—and if two countries are close both of their currencies tend to be used:
> Work, for whom? By what measure? At what cost? And who paid the costs? You talk about the Great Depression but unless you're a time traveller you'll remember the GFC as well?
Yes, I remember the GFC.
I remember then-monetarists abandoning Friedman's (and Greenspan's) ideas and (re-)embracing those of Keynes. I remember rending of garments by right-leaning folks when QE was announced about the terrible things would happen:
> We believe the Federal Reserve’s large-scale asset purchase plan (so-called “quantitative easing”) should be reconsidered and discontinued. We do not believe such a plan is necessary or advisable under current circumstances. The planned asset purchases risk currency debasement and inflation, and we do not think they will achieve the Fed’s objective of promoting employment.
I remember Keynesian saying it would be fine… and being right.
It was fortunate that Bernanke was the Fed chairman at the time, as his area of academic research was things like the Great Depression (of the 1930s) and how tight monetary policy (dictated by the gold standard) made things worse:
> I'm curious to know in what way you think FDR/Keynes got it wrong.
No, you shouldn't be. I'm just a random guy on the internet.
>> But why mess with the price signal? So that you can pick and choose winners and losers.
> Actually it's to regulate/moderate economic activity.
You see how you miss the point while restating my point? It's as though you're trolling me. We've literally said the same thing.
Ah well, I definitely can't read your long post, as well intentioned as it is because it's too long and I've already spent far too many years debating this stuff.
But thanks again. Maybe someone else will indulge you. I just happen to lack the energy and inclination.
It's simply a matter of first principles and values: If you believe in central planning and control of human activity, then you'll choose your adventure that way. If on the other hand, you don't want a cabal choosing winners and losers, and you truly believe in free markets, for money and everything else, then you'll choose a different path.
You and I can pontificate all day about our chosen interpretations of history, but to what end? You've already made up your mind. I used to believe what you do and buried interlocutors under endless citations extolling central banking.
What does debate with strangers accomplish? Nothing really.
1) Bitcoin is more convenient to store and transfer: it's digital. You can literally use your brain as a Bitcoin wallet.
2) The supply of gold is less predictable. For instance, just last month, China announced the discovery of the world's largest known gold deposit, estimated to be worth over $80 billion.
To be clear, $80 billion is not earth-shattering in the gold market. Lots of gold exists in the world but is too expensive to mine. I don't remember how expensive but I think it is at least half of the current price. The supply of gold grows at a very slow rate of at most 2% per year. It is getting harder to mine all the time. Demand and futures market manipulation matter far more to gold than its small supply. All the world's gold that was ever mined could fit in roughly two Olympic size swimming pools.
> 1) Bitcoin is more convenient to […] transfer: […].
As some phishing victims have learned to their peril. Of course BTC transfers are non-reversible / non-refundable, with no means of redress (unlike a bank transfer).
Precisely. Bitcoin operates as a bearer asset, much like physical gold or cash - once it's gone, it's gone. For those who need payment reversibility or dispute resolution, a payment layer built on top of Bitcoin is required. For example, a BTC-denominated bank account or credit card could theoretically provide these features, though I'm not sure if such options already exist.
I was referring to the fact that you can memorize your seed phrase. If the seed is not recorded anywhere, the Bitcoins can be thought of as being held only in the mind of the owner.
The supply of discovered gold and the supply of gold extracted from mines (and recovered from other sources) aren’t the same, and one is more predictable. Which one has a greater impact on the price….
> Gold is 'first place' and has been a symbol of value for most of our recorded history.
Actually it has not. Not in Mesoamerican civilizations (Aztec, Mayans). Also not for the Chinese, who used silver for currency (and gold for ceremonial purposes). Around the Mediterranean, gold became a currency 'only' around 500BC with the Lydians—which is a very long time after the first economic records we have, which take back to Ur III, the Babylonians (Hammurabi), Ancient Egypt.
And when it was used, there were periods of economic stagnation due to its fixed supply:
See the links in the post about the problems with deflationary currencies. See also the links of events that were made worse by finite/deflationary currencies; reposting:
It also cannot be hacked or tracked like Bitcoin. It works offline and can even survive longer than whole countries. The biggest problems are risk of theft and high taxation.
Bitcoin was supposed to be private and secure, so it more or less failed its mission. It is only presently easier to trade because of various gimmicks to warm people up to the idea of accepting it. Gold on the other hand has a long history of being a currency. Everyone in the world knows it is valuable, even if they don't know how much. The fact Bitcoin wildly swings around in value and requires special computer access and sometimes hardware makes it harder to transact with. If you don't care about privacy and security, and want ease of use, you would be far better served by a credit card than a Bitcoin wallet. And if you do care about those three things, gold is better. The only thing I can say positive about Bitcoin is that it is easier to carry across borders than gold. That plus the modicum of privacy it offers might make it ok for some. As for me, I don't think I could privately accumulate enough Bitcoin for that to be a real benefit to me.
Edit: I hit the limit for now so here's a reply:
>Was it supposed to be [private]? A currency with a complete ledger of transactions available for view by anyone in the p2p network is hardly secure by design
It was intended to be secure and private. That is, people can't steal your Bitcoin (theoretically) and the public ledger gives you some potential strategy if you did want to establish a reputation while dealing with anonymous people. Someone could also deal with you without ever knowing your identity, which makes it private. It would be fairly hard to identify Bitcoin users if their wallets were never linked to their identities, e.g. through an exchange. I don't know how other cryptocurrencies do their ledgers but I assume you are limited to querying the network about specific transactions instead of having access to it all. It could be done by having public yet encrypted transaction records as well maybe. Idk, cryptocurrency never appealed to me. I remember thinking my classmates were insane for buying Bitcoin at $70. The price movement we've seen feels like some insiders using it to embezzle money from reputable institutions who have been sold on the hype. We're in real trouble if the government starts buying it. We will be robbed blind.
Was it supposed to be? A currency with a complete ledger of transactions available for view by anyone in the p2p network is hardly secure by design.
Edit: thanks for the reply. In that sense that you are able to be only identified by a wallet address, that makes sense. I guess I meant that, unlike privacy-focused coins like Monero, there is a way to see who sent what to who (even if who is just an address) and to develop surveillance based on this.
The problem is Bitcoin is being treated as a commodity and not a currency. Its value is measured using paper currency, that stuff you'll actually trade for product and services.
It's difficult to use Bitcoin as currency because its value keeps rising. And when there are no more coins to be mined, when the value stops increasing: do you think everyone will suddenly agree to begin using it as currency?
Or do you think everyone will try and sell Bitcoin to cash out for real currency? What happens to Bitcoin value at that point?
> The problem is Bitcoin is being treated as a commodity and not a currency.
That's because that is what it is. Just like gold. (Which, besides mostly jewelry, has few other 'practical' application—modest use in industry and medicine.)
> It's difficult to use Bitcoin as currency because its value keeps rising.
And this is the problem with deflationary currencies, and was predicted a decade ago:
> And when there are no more coins to be mined, when the value stops increasing: do you think everyone will suddenly agree to begin using it as currency?
When there are no more coins to be mined (even if you want to get into slicing BTCs into satoshis) the value will increase: even more: if the demand for it goes up by (e.g.) 2% every year but your supply goes up 0%, what does Econ 101 tell us will happen? Even now folks are mostly hoarding:
Something is worth whatever someone else is willing to pay.
If everyone thought of Bitcoin the way I do: its price would plummet.
Fiat currency works because it's linked to a county's GDP, its credit (in the eyes of other nations). With such a system, you can put a price on commodity, like gold or Bitcoin.
World trade is mostly done with the US dollar. Others are willing to trade the dollar because of belief in its issuing country's GDP and future economy. I understand that lack of faith in the US dollar and its 'money printer' are part of Bitcoin's rise... But that's a different topic in my opinion.
Anyhow, gold is created in the heart of exploding stars, it looks good (we all love pretty, shiny things), it's rare. It's used in most advanced electronics (it's critical for sure, not sure about practical). Gold has always existed, and there's no doubt it will exist in the future.
Bitcoin is math and ordered electrical charges. It's not being used the way it was intended. Its future is uncertain (quantum computing), and seems to be a big ponzi scheme. How are we expecting the value to keep increasing?
While depletion of mining rewards is very far into the future, it will very soon be virtually nothing, the only reward will be trading fees, and I'm not bullish on that.
Satoshi should have just made a linear minting algo. All early reward was a mistake. We'll see why inflation is necessary. In 80 years will the youngins want a coin that they have no way of minting except begging their grampas for it?
It's a tired trope, but time is money. Fiat currency works because of this idea.
Fiat currency fails when a nation defaults on its loans because people lose faith in the currency.
The money printing scares everyone because of the US's rising debt. If it cannot be balanced at some point, people will think inflation is permanent.
It's difficult to cut costs because the US economy must pay to maintain its status. The only way to reduce our debt is to increase our GDP: aka, sell more shit and do more with less.
That is a property of society, not of the currency itself. Taxes pay for those things, and the US taxes economic activity in all currencies including bitcoin.
I get the argument that taxes might not be a property of the coin (its is, you don't pay taxes in btc, you pay them in usd)
But the ability of the government to print usd to pay for social benefits is 100% a property of the coin.
The argument is simple, Bitcoin has a limited supply and usd has constant minting, therefore btc gives more power to old farts, and usd gives power to everyone (citizens of the us)
I can assure you the printed money is not paying for any social benefits—that is 100% taxes.
If the government were so benevolent as to print money to pay for kids' education, the country would be far better off. Teachers would not be making paltry wages and paying for classroom supplies out of pocket. And bitcoin would not exist. Bitcoin was created by someone who didn't approve of what the old farts did with the money they print, and wanted to give power back to everyone (citizens of the world).
"If the government were .. to print money to pay for kids' education"
Let me cut your hypothetical right there to simplify and ignore the rest. It does, government prints money to pay, among other things for education.
Even in ordinary money creation, yes the government borrows money, but it borrows it to fund state expenses like schools. They are paying interest which they just printed to fund these operations.
Then exceptionally, (if they are ever insolvent or need money), they directly create money. 2008 crisis, 2021 covid crisis, wars.
I don't understand how you simultaneously believe that the government prints money, but doesn't fund government expenses with printed money. Do they just print money to devalue savings and spite you?
> A central bank enacts quantitative easing by purchasing, regardless of interest rates, a predetermined quantity of bonds or other financial assets on financial markets from private financial institutions.[12][13] This action increases the excess reserves that banks hold. The goal of this policy is to ease financial conditions, increase market liquidity, and encourage private bank lending.
--
> I don't understand how you simultaneously believe that the government prints money, but doesn't fund government expenses with printed money. Do they just print money to devalue savings and spite you?
"The government" is not a monolithic entity. Money printing is monetary policy. Taxes and social services are fiscal policy. I think you are mixing those two things up.
The arm of the government that prints money is not doing it to spite the citizens (Hanlon's razor). They're doing to maximize employment, stabilize prices, and moderate long-term interest rates[1]. Funding schools is not part of those goals. That happens elsewhere in government, far away from the money printers.
