• untakenusername@sh.itjust.works
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    5 days ago

    I’m actually pissed Bitcoin is so deflationary because that incentives people to invest and hold it, and sure that causes the price to rise a ton, but it also lowers the pressure on people to sell it, making it less like a currency and more like an investment.

    Satoshi low-key just wanted to be rich, otherwise there wouldn’t have been a cap on the number of Bitcoins that can exist

    good thing there’s other currencies that actually don’t suck

    • green_copper@kbin.earth
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      5 days ago

      Yea, it is sad to see that many of crypto-coin project are handled as trading assets and not as what it started with: open currency. I would love to see more stability so that cryptocurrencies can be used for buying stuff more easily.

      otherwise there wouldn’t have been a cap on the number of Bitcoins that can exist

      there are other reasons for this: an uncapped coin is inflationary, so it can loose its value given enough time, no matter what happens to the economy around it. But then again, many projects without a cap try to set the emission-rate so that it somewhat balances creation with burn (for example by lost wallets or transactions to invalid addresses).

      • untakenusername@sh.itjust.works
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        5 days ago

        I really prefer that second option to cause deflation because it allows currencies to be only slightly deflationary, but not too much like bitcoin which has just turned into an investment

  • Zenoctate@lemmy.worldOP
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    5 days ago

    I can’t believe that Dollar (or any other currency) isn’t backed by anything and runs on hopes and believes

    • Gladaed@feddit.org
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      5 days ago

      That’s reductive.

      It’s backed by the economic and militaristic might of the issuing country.

    • Alexstarfire@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Anything is only worth as much as someone else wants it. Everything comes down to supply and demand. Currency is just a medium so you don’t have to trade fish for lumber in order to trade the lumber for some bacon. Also, pretty convenient to be paid in currency instead of fish, lumber, or bacon. You can use it to directly buy/get what you want.

      If no wants to buy or sell the currency then it’s a pretty worthless currency. That’s why you can’t just crate your own currency and buy things with Bob’s Bucks.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      5 days ago

      That’s… not how that works. It runs on supply and demand, just like gold backed currency, but it’s supply and demand for the currency instead of the underlying asset. If you want to control inflation/deflation, fiat is the way.

      • Zenoctate@lemmy.worldOP
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        5 days ago

        Well I didn’t really gave much of a thought when writing. I was narrowminded. This makes sense

    • Another Catgirl@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      5 days ago

      Currencies often run on tax law. If you earned and produced and imported valuable goods or services, you have to pay tax in your local country’s currency.

    • missingno@fedia.io
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      5 days ago

      That is how currency typically works, yes. If you want it to be backed by gold or whatever, well then what’s the gold backed by? Both the dollar and gold are only valuable because we decided they are, there’s not much meaningful difference.

      • Tekhne@sh.itjust.works
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        4 days ago

        There is much meaningful difference - gold has widespread practical use, while paper currency does not

        • 0ops@lemm.ee
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          4 days ago

          Gold’s practical value to this day is still dwarfed both by its value as a subjectively pretty metal for jewelry and as an investment/storage of value. If the world at once decided that we’d no longer purchase gold unless we were part of a supply chain making a product with it (like is already the case with most non-money goods), the prices would crater. The number of people holding gold for practical reasons is pretty small, most hold or desire to hold gold because there’s near-universal demand for it because everyone else desires to hold gold because there’s universal demand because everyone else desires to hold gold… get the picture? Everyone is trying to be someone else’s middle-man, and sure some of that gold makes it’s way into practical use, but most of it is just the snake eating it’s own tail.

          That’s what makes it effectively no different from paper currency, artificially inflated value is just an inherent property of any money. Any good that becomes money is going to have it’s value increase because supply decreased because all or a significant portion of a money’s owners own it only to store value without any intention of using it themselves.

        • Dragonstaff@leminal.space
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          4 days ago

          US dollars are necessary to pay taxes to the US government and, currently, most oil transactions are in US dollars. This use is exponentially larger than the practical use of gold.

    • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 days ago

      I think the other answers people are giving are wrong. It’s backed by debt and the enforcement of that debt.

    • magic_lobster_party@fedia.io
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      5 days ago

      The US dollar gives access to the US market. People want the US dollar because they want to buy things in the US.

      Well, that is unless some president enacts some stupid policies.

        • atro_city@fedia.io
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          5 days ago

          They abandoned the gold standard because they couldn’t mine enough gold to back the amount they were lending.

          • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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            5 days ago

            Couldn’t mine gold in the US. The Soviet Union was the biggest gold producer the world back then. So in effect, the Soviet Union controlled the West’s money supply while they were on the gold standard.

        • MachineFab812@discuss.tchncs.de
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          5 days ago

          The boom and bust cycles never went away though. They merely threw up enough barriers for the commoners to believe they are safe, while also locking most commoners out of meaningful participation in the markets.

  • ryedaft@sh.itjust.works
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    4 days ago

    You should read that Terry Pratchett book about money. Money? Printing Money? It explains pretty well why money exists and how it’s backed. And it’s funny.